Referee calls · 2019–2026
Do refs favor the Lions?
No more than most teams. Judgment calls have been worth −0.20 wins a season to the Lions since 2019, 24th of 32 teams. In the playoffs: −1.7% of a win a game over 4 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 Lions minus the calls that hurt them, each weighted by the moment it came.
Biggest calls for the Lions
- Offensive Pass Interference on the Eagles (Darren Sproles), 10 yards, wiping out the play · 2019 Week 3 · 53 pts of win probability
- Offensive Pass Interference on the Bears (Cole Kmet), 10 yards, wiping out the play · 2024 Week 13 · 40 pts of win probability
- Illegal Use of Hands on the Bears, 10 yards, wiping out the play · 2024 Week 13 · 37 pts of win probability
- Defensive Holding on the Steelers (Devin Bush Jr.), 5 yards, wiping out the play · 2021 Week 10 · 35 pts of win probability
- Offensive Pass Interference on the Packers (Christian Watson), 10 yards, wiping out the play · 2024 Week 14 · 29 pts of win probability
Biggest calls against
- Offensive Pass Interference on the Lions (Amon-Ra St. Brown), 0 yards, wiping out the play · 2025 Week 16 · 99 pts of win probability
- Offensive Holding on the Lions, 10 yards, wiping out the play · 2020 Week 3 · 46 pts of win probability
- Offensive Pass Interference on the Lions (Isaac TeSlaa), 10 yards, wiping out the play · 2025 Week 16 · 45 pts of win probability
- Offensive Holding on the Lions (T.J. Hockenson), 10 yards · 2021 Week 10 · 26 pts of win probability
- Offensive Holding on the Lions, 9 yards, wiping out the play · 2022 Week 18 · 22 pts of win probability
Questions
Do refs favor the Lions?
No more than most teams. Judgment calls have been worth −0.20 wins a season to the Lions since 2019, 24th of 32 teams.
What about the playoffs?
In the playoffs: −1.7% of a win a game over 4 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 · Detroit Lions, every season