Referee calls · 2019–2026
Do refs favor the Packers?
No more than most teams. Judgment calls have been worth +0.28 wins a season to the Packers since 2019, 7th of 32 teams. In the playoffs: +0.8% of a win a game over 9 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 Packers minus the calls that hurt them, each weighted by the moment it came.
Biggest calls for the Packers
- Offensive Pass Interference on the Bears, 10 yards, wiping out the play · 2019 Week 1 · 30 pts of win probability
- Offensive Holding on the Colts (Zach Pascal), 10 yards, wiping out the play · 2020 Week 11 · 26 pts of win probability
- Offensive Holding on the Lions, 9 yards, wiping out the play · 2022 Week 18 · 22 pts of win probability
- Illegal Use of Hands on the Lions (John Cominsky), 5 yards, wiping out the play · 2022 Week 18 · 19 pts of win probability
- Defensive Pass Interference on the 49ers (Ambry Thomas), 41 yards · 2023 Divisional round · 18 pts of win probability
Biggest calls against
- Defensive Holding on the Packers (Xavier McKinney), 3 yards, wiping out the play · 2026 Week 1 · 39 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
- Illegal Block Above the Waist on the Packers, 10 yards · 2022 Week 4 · 23 pts of win probability
- Offensive Holding on the Packers (Marcedes Lewis), 10 yards, wiping out the play · 2020 Week 11 · 21 pts of win probability
- Horse Collar Tackle on the Packers (Kingsley Enagbare), 15 yards, wiping out the play · 2024 Week 18 · 20 pts of win probability
Questions
Do refs favor the Packers?
No more than most teams. Judgment calls have been worth +0.28 wins a season to the Packers since 2019, 7th of 32 teams.
What about the playoffs?
In the playoffs: +0.8% of a win a game over 9 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 · Green Bay Packers, every season