Referee calls · 2019–2026
Do refs favor the Browns?
No more than most teams. Judgment calls have been worth −0.12 wins a season to the Browns since 2019, 22nd of 32 teams. In the playoffs: +2.1% of a win a game over 3 games, a small sample that swings on a handful of flags.
Call luck, season by season
Wins from judgment calls each regular season: the calls that helped the Browns minus the calls that hurt them, each weighted by the moment it came.
Biggest calls for the Browns
- Offensive Holding on the Raiders, 10 yards, wiping out the play · 2021 Week 15 · 58 pts of win probability
- Illegal Contact on the Colts, 5 yards, wiping out the play · 2023 Week 7 · 42 pts of win probability
- Defensive Pass Interference on the Panthers (C.J. Henderson), 34 yards, wiping out the play · 2022 Week 1 · 22 pts of win probability
- Illegal Use of Hands on the Buccaneers, 10 yards, wiping out the play · 2022 Week 12 · 21 pts of win probability
- Defensive Holding on the Ravens (Marcus Peters), 5 yards, wiping out the play · 2019 Week 16 · 20 pts of win probability
Biggest calls against
- Offensive Pass Interference on the Browns (Amari Cooper), 10 yards, wiping out the play · 2022 Week 7 · 66 pts of win probability
- Offensive Holding on the Browns, 9 yards, wiping out the play · 2024 Week 4 · 42 pts of win probability
- Offensive Holding on the Browns, 10 yards, wiping out the play · 2021 Week 15 · 26 pts of win probability
- Offensive Holding on the Browns (Harold Fannin), 10 yards, wiping out the play · 2025 Week 5 · 19 pts of win probability
- Defensive Pass Interference on the Browns (Martin Emerson), 13 yards, wiping out the play · 2024 Week 17 · 18 pts of win probability
Questions
Do refs favor the Browns?
No more than most teams. Judgment calls have been worth −0.12 wins a season to the Browns since 2019, 22nd of 32 teams.
What about the playoffs?
In the playoffs: +2.1% of a win a game over 3 games, a small sample that swings on a handful of flags.
How is this measured?
Every flag that isn’t a pre-snap foul (holding, pass interference, roughing, unnecessary roughness and the like) is valued by what it did to the helped team’s chance of winning at that moment, including any play it wiped out. The same holding call is worth nothing when the game is decided and most of a win at the turn of a close one. A flag on a player who is rarely flagged counts more (up to twice), one on a frequent offender less. A team’s call luck is the calls that helped it minus the calls that hurt it. It says how the calls went, not why: teams that throw deep draw more pass interference, for example.
Is it more than chance?
Mostly not. A team’s call luck in odd weeks barely predicts its call luck in even weeks (correlation 0.06 across all teams since 2019), which is what chance looks like. Over 32 teams, a few will always sit at the top of this list.
All teams, 2026 · Referee crews · Cleveland Browns, every season