This week, the Dallas Cowboys are hoping to win again, and by lucky break, they get to do it at home. They will be trying to win in AT&T Stadium for the 16th time in a row, but it won’t be simple because they are facing the Detroit Lions. Officiating may make all the difference in a game like this one.
Though not by much. The Cowboys were the club with more penalties this past week. They just had five extra yards via penalties and one more penalty than Miami. That comes as a bit of a surprise considering the officials for that game. There’s a potential that the referee team this week will witness another very even penalty distribution.
Entering his tenth season as an NFL head referee, Brad Allen has a special distinction. The native of North Carolina had advanced through the college football officiating ranks to become an ACC head referee. He was hired as an umpire by the NFL prior to the 2014 season after they made a formal request. But when veteran referee Mike Carey abruptly announced his retirement in June, the league moved to promote Allen to head referee, making him the first NFL head referee since 1962 to have no prior experience overseeing games.
Here we see Allen, over ten years later, still going strong. In that short period, Allen has established himself as the home team’s savior. Although Allen’s squad was bottom in the NFL in terms of total penalties called during his rookie campaign, they had assessed almost two thirds of his penalties against the other side. Even though the difference between the home and road penalties turned out to be the biggest his side had ever had, Allen proceeded to give the road team more flags in each of the following four years.
Then, however, there was a noticeable change in Allen’s team. Allen’s team ended up with three more penalties on the home team in both 2019 and 2020. In the 2021 season, Allen’s team raised 22 more flags against the visiting team, just as it seemed like Allen would be shifting toward a more down-the-middle strategy. The next year, that number increased to 33.
Back to form, or so we thought. With just two weeks left in the 2023 season, Allen’s crew has called just one more penalty on the road team. No other crew has a smaller discrepancy between home and road penalties on the year. In fact, six of Allen’s 13 games this year have seen the two teams finish either tied or one away from a tie in penalties assessed.
Although Allen is renowned for significantly aiding home teams, he has mostly kept things close this season. Allen’s crew has never consistently called the same number of total penalties. In his ten years, he has led the league, finished dead last, and experienced everything in between. Only four crews have thrown fewer flags than Allen thus far this season, but they are not a crew known for being forgiving; if they see an infraction, they will call it.
That being said, there don’t seem to be any notable patterns with this team in terms of the kinds of penalties that are called. In terms of defensive holding and false starts, Allen’s team dominated the league the previous year, but this year they are in the lower half. This is true regardless of the situation, as Allen’s team usually calls whatever infractions are really committed rather than keeping a close eye out for particular infractions more than others.
In his nine games as a caller, Allen’s record against the Cowboys is a pitiful 3-6. Strangely enough, though, the Cowboys only won one of those games at home under Allen’s direction—a 20-17 victory over the Bengals in Cooper Rush’s second start of the season—while losing the other seven. Three of Allen’s Cowboys games took place at Lambeau Field: the Cowboys lost in overtime against Mike McCarthy’s Packers in 2015, defeated them in 2016, and last year, McCarthy made his first visit back to the stadium.
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