The NFL looks like they will have two decent refs working this week and two poor ones, which for the NFL is pretty good!!
John Hussey gets the Colts-Chiefs -
Hussey is the guy that looks most like Michael Scott with a half moustache:
His crew is among the tops in the league in throwing flags for defensive holding and pass interference, and he's been in the center of two games early in the year where controversial calls impacted the final outcome. Could look to see a critical PI in this one decide teh game
John Parry gets the Cowboys- Rams - He's one of the better refs, so I'd expect this game to be fairly free of controversy. His crew was in the middle of the pack on nearly all penalty types.
Chargers-Pats has the possibility of being the biggest shit-show of the week. Not only will it feature the first time a female will be working a game, but the head ref is Ron Torbert who is horrific. Jet fans will recognize him as the guy who had the most face time in the OT loss to the Packers in Week 16 when Torbert flagged the two teams a combined 36 times and called 4 defensive penalties on the Jets just in OT. One of which was later the source of an apology to the Jets.
Eagles-Saints gets Carl Cheffers who is for the most part a decent ref. As Giant fans, at least on paper, the two best crews are doing the Eagles and Cowboys games.
Fumbles should be interesting as the female is apt to award them to the wrong team...
An amusing side note - one of my best college buddies will be part of the chain crew in Foxboro for the Pats-Chargers game, in charge of setting the marker based on the ball spot.
He's been a college football ref for several years, mostly D2 and D3 games, working his way up the ranks.
He's also a quintessential Boston masshole, thick Boston accent, born with a dirty Sox cap on his head kind of guy.
We've been having a laugh in our group text about how this means it will be 9 yards for a 1st down for the Pats, 11 yards for the Chargers on Sunday.
He takes it very seriously and hopes to make the NFL one day, so swears he wouldn't fudge the spot at all...we're pretty sure he means it...but not 100%...
John Hussey - Only his regular season is with him. The remaining officials come from Wrolstad, Allen (2 of the 3 deep officials including odds on favorite for Super Bowl FJ), and Smith crews
John Parry - Nobody from his regular season crew
Ron Torbert - 3 of his regular season crew (Thomas, LJ Mark Steinkerchner, SJ Scott Edwards - who has been SJ in 2 of last 3 Super Bowls). Officials from Smith and Kemp crews round out this crew
Carl Cheffers - Only his regular season umpire is with him. Interestingly enough, his BJ for the game is Perry Paganelli who was Parry's BJ in the regular season
Not sure about Parry and Cheffers as I can't remember them being part of any controversy or have a time where it was noted that they lost control of the action