Fans Enraged After NFL Unveils Referee Assignment: Clete Blakeman For Lions & Shawn Smith For Ravens

Fans Enraged After NFL Unveils Referee Assignment

Regretfully, the NFL’s most hated officiating crew was assigned to officiate the Detroit Lions game. Clete Blakeman will officiate Sunday night’s Lions vs. 49ers game, it was confirmed on Monday.

Conspiracy theories and controversy have abounded since referee Shawn Smith was appointed to officiate the NFL Championship game between the Baltimore Ravens and the Kansas City Chiefs.

The identities of the referees for Sunday’s NFC and AFC championship games should be irrelevant in a perfect world. However, since this is sports, mistakes are inevitable. That goes for the players and coaches inside the arena as well as the officials who wear whistles. If past events, both current and past, are any guide, officials are going to create some news this weekend.

Clete Blakeman For the Lions

Football Zebras reports that Clete Blakeman and his officiating staff will be in charge of Sunday night’s Lions vs. 49ers game. In 2019, Blakeman oversaw the crew for the Lions’ 23–22 loss to the Green Bay Packers, a game that players and spectators alike criticized the officials for Trey Flowers’ late, illegal hands to the face penalties.

The unlawful hands to the face penalties prolonged two Packers drives that culminated in 10 points and a comeback victory at Lambeau Field on a field goal with time running out after the Lions squandered a 22-13 lead in the fourth quarter. Umpire Jeff Rice, who is no longer with Blakeman’s crew, threw both of the game’s penalty flags, according to Blakeman’s statement in the pool report following the contest.

“Blakeman’s crew ranks 12th out of 17 officiating crews in flags thrown, per nflpenalties.com,” the Free Press reports. This season, the referee team has thrown 175 total flags in 16 games, or 10.9 total flags per game on average. With 5.25 penalties against home teams and 5.69 penalties against away teams each game, the allocation of flags is fairly evenly balanced between home and away teams.”

The Lions have been on the losing end of very contentious calls in the past, despite Commissioner Roger Goodell, league partners, pro-NFL analysts, and commentators supporting referees.

The next day, the NFL headquarters admitted that the second flag shouldn’t have been raised. It made sense that Lions players and supporters were incensed.

Rice is no longer a member of Blakeman’s crew; he tossed both flags. However, Lions supporters are aware of Blakeman’s background and will be prepared to attack at the first hint of dubious refereeing.

https://twitter.com/Lion4lifedet/status/1749504296066957758

Blakeman worked as an NFL official for 16 seasons, 14 of which he served as a referee. He will officiate his 14th playoff game on Sunday. He officiated the Denver Broncos vs. Carolina Panthers game in Super Bowl 50.

Shawn Smith For the Ravens

Is the NFL selecting officials with a secret agenda?

Smith’s peculiar penalty tendencies, which disproportionately benefit road teams, have drawn criticism for suggesting that he may have partiality toward the Chiefs, who are playing on the road.

Smith’s officiating historically differs much from the norm.
He has a startling propensity to penalize home teams more severely than away teams for a variety of violations, including as unlawful formation, roughing the passer, unwarranted roughness, and false starts.

Football expert Warren Sharp dissected the several reasons why Kansas City benefits from Smith’s hire on Tuesday. He even dabbled with the theory that the NFL could be attempting to exploit a particular A-list celebrity to boost item sales and Super Bowl viewing, as if the game really needed it.

When point spread is taken into account, the difference between Smith and the other referees is significant.

“Home teams in the NFL have covered 49.4% of spreads over the past three seasons… In the previous three years, home teams are just 17-29-3 against the spread (37.0%) under Smith, according to Sharp.

So why did the NFL select such a polarizing referee to officiate a game?

Conspiracy theories that the NFL would love nothing more than to see Taylor Swift, the new Chiefs #1 fan, and her illustrious Swifties fan group in the Super Bowl and go through all the Super Bowl gear surely don’t help, he said.

When you take into account other officials, like Clete Blakeman, who have a history of favoring home teams, this decision becomes even more contentious.

Over the previous three seasons, home teams have won 62.0% of the games under Blakeman’s direction, including the NFC Championship Game.

The difference in Blakeman and Smith’s officiating styles highlights how important referee selection is in important NFL games.

When all of stuff is considered, Smith leads the 24 referees in road team victory %; he attained this ranking in 2018.

Given that the Ravens are the only club preventing the NFL from having Patrick Mahomes and, maybe more importantly, Taylor Swift in Las Vegas for the Super Bowl, those are stats that conspiracy theorists will undoubtedly find entertaining.

For both sides, the path to the AFC Championship has been very unlike.

The Ravens easily defeated the Houston Texans, while the Chiefs defeated the Buffalo Bills by a razor’s thin margin.

The Chiefs, under the leadership of the ever-impressive Patrick Mahomes, have persevered throughout the season, but they are up against a tough opponent in the Ravens, who have continuously displayed supremacy. The odds and predictions favor the Ravens.

Having said that, it’s crucial to remember that a referee isn’t automatically helping road teams simply because he has a strong past record with them.

Furthermore, because the regular season consists of just 17 games, the data may be biased due to unpredictability in the games and officiating. Timo Riske of Pro Football Focus confirmed that with a simulation.

The Chiefs, on the other hand, have a bad history with Smith since he officiated their Week 11 defeat to the Philadelphia Eagles, in which both teams committed seven penalties. Smith has also called one Ravens game, their victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 15.

 

 

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