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The NFL’s over-officious jerks
Cold, Hard Football Facts for July 30, 2007
By Jonathan Comey
Cold, Hard Football Facts exchequer
Before we even get started here, we'd like to emphasize that in no way do we believe NFL referees are doing anything fishy.
But something still stinks.
A recent story by Mike Sando on ESPN.com detailed the NFL's effort to prevent allegations like those being levied against NBA official Tim Donaghy from surfacing in pro football. The league's stance comes as no surprise. The NFL is proactive about most things concerning the health of the game, and their treatment of officials is no different.
But that does not mean that NFL officiating is perfect.
Far from it.
A look at NFL officiating numbers from 2006 indicates that the league needs to overhaul its officiating system to bring more consistency to the game.
The Cold, Hard Football Facts show that the disparity between NFL officiating crews is both shocking and embarrassing. And while the NBA is scrambling to make changes in the wake of a league-threatening problem, the NFL needs to make changes before they develop credibility issues as well.
Over the course of the 2006 season, STATS tracked the 17 NFL officiating crews, all of which worked a mix of games across the league. No team gets the same crew more than a couple of times over a given season, and all but Terry McAuley's crew (16 games) worked 15 games each.
With each official working under the same set of rules and with a mostly random mix of NFL teams on the other end of the whistle, the penalties should more or less even out among all the crews.
Last season, they didn't.
Ron Winter led the crew that called the most penalties. Controversial Walt Coleman led the crew that called the fewest. The difference was huge: Winter's crew tossed 83 more flags than Coleman's crew over the course of a 15-game officiating season, resulting in nearly 600 more penalty yards.
- Winter's crew called 228 penalties; 205 were accepted for 1,666 yards
- Coleman's crew called 145 penalties; 132 were accepted for 1,074 yards
That's a truly remarkable gap between two officiating crews basically watching the same football games.
- Winter's crew called an average of 15.2 penalties; an average of 13.7 were accepted for 111.1 yards.
- Coleman's crew called an average of 9.7 penalties; an average of 8.8 were accepted for 71.6 yards.
Even assuming that the calls go both ways, that disparity is hard to explain.
While Coleman's crew called the fewest penalties, games officiated by Peter Morelli had the fewest penalty yards: just 69.5 yards per game.
The crews run by Coleman (9.7), Morelli (10.0) and Bill Leavy (10.4) leave the whistles in the pocket, calling the fewest penalties per game.
Tony Corrente's crew calls just as many penalties as Winter's staff (15.2 per game). But a lot fewer were accepted, resulting in a significant difference in penalty yards. Meanwhile, Ed Hochuli, perhaps eager to show off those great referee guns, joins Winter and Corrente atop the trigger-happy list with 14.0 penalties per game, just behind newcomer Gene Steratore (14.4 per game).
THE CREWS
Here's how the NFL's 17 officiating crews broke down in 2006, by chief:
2006 NFL OFFICIATING CREWS
|
Referee |
Games |
Pen. Called |
Accepted |
Yards |
Calls Per Game |
Pen. YPG |
|
Winter |
15 |
228 |
205 |
1,666 |
15.2 |
111.07 |
|
Hochuli |
15 |
210 |
187 |
1,659 |
14.0 |
110.60 |
|
McAuley |
16 |
221 |
186 |
1,610 |
13.8 |
100.62 |
|
Steratore |
15 |
216 |
195 |
1,577 |
14.4 |
105.13 |
|
Austin |
15 |
191 |
172 |
1,576 |
12.7 |
105.07 |
|
Triplette |
|
205 |
186 |
1,557 |
13.7 |
103.80 |
|
Nemmers |
|
211 |
191 |
1,547 |
14.1 |
103.13 |
|
Corrente |
|
228 |
185 |
1,525 |
15.2 |
101.67 |
|
Vinovich |
|
199 |
177 |
1,504 |
13.3 |
100.27 |
|
Boger |
|
207 |
184 |
1,481 |
13.8 |
98.73 |
|
TOTALS |
256 |
3,294 |
2,921 |
24,297 |
12.87 |
94.91 |
|
Carey |
|
192 |
170 |
1,418 |
12.8 |
94.53 |
|
Anderson |
|
184 |
161 |
1,374 |
12.3 |
91.60 |
|
Green |
|
172 |
151 |
1,304 |
11.5 |
86.93 |
|
Carollo |
|
179 |
161 |
1,239 |
11.9 |
82.60 |
|
Leavy |
|
156 |
143 |
1,144 |
10.4 |
76.27 |
|
Coleman |
|
145 |
132 |
1,074 |
9.7 |
71.60 |
|
Morelli |
|
150 |
135 |
1,042 |
10.0 |
69.47 |
Most of the league hovers fairly close around the average, but the high and low ends are well off the beaten path.
The differential is pretty stark when we look at the numbers in relative terms:
- Games handled by Winter featured 60 percent more penalty yards than games handled by Morelli.
- Games handled by Winter and Corrente featured 57 percent more flags than games handled by Coleman.
It seems ridiculous that the NFL crews could be so different, but it gets worse when you look at the numbers on a penalty-by-penalty basis:
ENCROACHMENT
Jeff Triplette's crew whistled 10 of these – 10 times that of Gene Steratore's crew (1). Was there something about Triplette that made defensive linemen jumpy? We doubt it. But he sure saw a lot of them do things that Steratore's crew didn't.
Ten of the 17 crews didn't call this penalty even once in 2006. But amazingly, the over-officious Ron Winter's crew called it 5 times – almost as many times as the penalty was called by everyone else combined (8). Bad luck for Winter? Or does his crew need a serious lesson in what fair-catch interference actually entails?
Again, Winter's crew leads the way here with 13 calls – two more than Mike Carey's crew. Meanwhile, Tony Corrente's crew called only two face-masking penalties all season, both of them 15-yarders. An entire season without an incidental facemask call? Sounds like someone needs to check the rule book again. On the other end of the spectrum, all three of Carollo's face-mask calls were five-yarders – no excessive force shown in his games.
Boy, that Ron Winter likes to use the PA system. Even when it makes a feedback noise, what a thrill to hear your voice booming from the sky like a god! Winter's crew called 58 false starts last year, almost twice as many as last-place Peter Morelli (31).
They say that holding occurs on every play in the NFL, and it's up to the officials to be judicious with the calls. Carollo takes this to heart – he called only 18 holding penalties, last in the league. That number is a whopping 30 – THIRTY! – behind Triplette's 48 holding penalties. That's an average of two more holding calls per game. Are they looking at the same sport?
ILLEGAL BLOCK IN THE BACK
Perhaps Terry McAuley was shoved around alot as a kid, because his numbers here are totally out of whack with the rest of the league. His crew called 21 illegal blocks in the back, more than double the average of 9.03. And that number was SEVEN TIMES more than Morelli's grand total of three. Gentlemen, you need to get your stories straight.
Here's another way for Hochuli and his bulging biceps to get more TV time. He called seven illegal formation penalties last year, twice the league average. Austin and Steratore called zero.
Walt Coleman needs to look at the rule book. Personal fouls and taunting are two different things, but because they're both 15-yard penalties, he's apparently chosen to lump them together. He called a league-high 11 personal fouls, in a league where the average was 3.9, but did not flag a single taunting infraction. Scott Green, on the other hand, let the boys be boys – one personal foul, no taunting calls.
ROUGHING THE PASSER/UNSPORTSMANLIKE CONDUCT
The infamous Coleman strikes again. If you want to throw the lumber around, he doesn't mind – he called a league-low one roughing the passer penalty (the average was 5.6) and a league-low three unneccesary roughness penalties. Hochuli, on the other hand, called a league-high 11 roughing the passers and 16 unnecessary roughnesses – and that doesn't include the number of times he roughed up other officials with his meaty man-pythons.
Here's the big one. If you're not in full control of your body as a receiver or as a man in coverage, you better hope Gerry Austin is working a different game – his crew called an average of 45.9 yards in pass interference penalties (offensive and defensive combined) last year, well above the No. 2 man, McAuley (35.75). Meanwhile, Bill Carollo has never even heard of pass interference, with 12.5 yards per game.
How can one crew see almost four times as much pass interference as another?
-----------------------------
Judging from the numbers, both overall and penalty-by-penalty, the NFL has a serious continuity issue. Are their other variables that would explain a general difference from top to bottom? Sure. But the extreme numbers? Hell no.
Some crews are doing a good job and staying in the middle of the numbers. Tony Corrente's crew was around the league average in all the major categories, and earned the Super Bowl nod.
Jerome Boger was probably the best, going just above the league average in total yards called and not jumping out of line in any single category – not bad for a first-year referee.
But some ... well, let's just say they need a talking-to. And we won't be the first to suggest that having part-timers as refs doesn't exactly seem fitting for the most powerful sporting league in America.
The roster of 2007 officials hasn't been released yet, but we'll be eager to see who's doing what. Will Winter and Morelli come back to the pack? Will the wild fluctuations in individual penalties continue?
Yet another reason to look forward to football season.
The Cold, Hard Football Facts are watching ...
( EDITOR'S NOTE: The 2006 referee numbers appear on foxsports.com, but they inadvertently doubled all of the stats. We figured this out while wondering why each crew had called an even number of penalties, and have put in a call into Fox asking them to fix it. But for reference, you can look at the list and halve everything.)
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