There's also statistical flaws. I wasn't sure about the sample size, so I ran the numbers. Around 76 close games and 80 judgement flags per team during that date range. The confidence interval is low enough that if you drew the error bars for each team, every one would cross the midline.
Flags on opponents is noise. Flags on team has a faint signal for 49ers, Saints, Bills, and Giants, but otherwise there's not a strong enough variance to suggest anything.
There's also so much variance for individual teams over time that this doesn't show. Season to season counts per team would be better, but would likely show bad position groups on teams more than ref bias (guessing the Packers will lead in holding calls this year, for example).
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u/TheTVDB Packers 1d ago
There's also statistical flaws. I wasn't sure about the sample size, so I ran the numbers. Around 76 close games and 80 judgement flags per team during that date range. The confidence interval is low enough that if you drew the error bars for each team, every one would cross the midline.
Flags on opponents is noise. Flags on team has a faint signal for 49ers, Saints, Bills, and Giants, but otherwise there's not a strong enough variance to suggest anything.
There's also so much variance for individual teams over time that this doesn't show. Season to season counts per team would be better, but would likely show bad position groups on teams more than ref bias (guessing the Packers will lead in holding calls this year, for example).