NFL record set with 730 penalties accepted through three weeks

If the start of the NFL season has seemed flag-heavy, well, you haven't been seeing things.

There were 730 accepted penalties through the first three weeks, the highest total in league history, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

The previous record was 716, set in 2005.

Week 2 was the biggest culprit, as teams accepted 298 penalties in those games -- the most during a single week in NFL history.

That figure dropped to 206 penalties in Week 3, sparking hope that the penalty totals will lessen in the coming weeks as officials and players grow more comfortable with new rules and points of emphasis for 2015.

According to the NFL Penalty Tracker website, the two most frequent penalty calls have been for offensive holding (154 accepted) and false starts (199 accepted).

As a result, the average time of game during the first three weeks of the season is 3 hours, 10 minutes, according to Elias. That's up nearly four minutes per game from the same time in 2014, when it was 3:10. In 2013, the average time per game in Weeks 1-3 was 3:13.