Part V What would be a handicap without analysing the referees a bit? Shawn Smith is making the rounds on social media. He will be the ref for the Chiefs vs Ravens game. The home/road call splits are definitely worth noting here. 6.5 flags against the home team compared to 5.69 for the road team. 3-13 SU, 3-11-2 ATS for the home team this season. Home favorites 2-4 SU, 1-5 ATS. Apparently there might not be any home field edge if that is the case. Then we have to look at the top 5 most called penalties by Smith: False Start, Offensive Holding, Unnecessary Roughness, Defensive Pass Interference , and Delay of Game. Ravens slightly ahead of the Chiefs in all categories except Offensive Holding. Shawn Smith leads all refs in the Unnecessary Roughness and Defensive Pass Interference category which puts Ravens at a disadvantage. Ravens are right up there near the top in DPI's with Chiefs not too far behind either. It will be interesting to see how much neutering there will be over plays that are deemed "excessive". Im still trying to figure out how the home team gets more false starts calls than the visiting team if the crowd noise is going against the visitor? We will find out if the NFL has sold out for Taylor Swift. (To be continued)
More on Shawn Smith...
Under Smith, home teams are only 17-29-3 against the spread (37.0%) in the last three years.
This is the second-lowest mark among 19 referees.
Even if you expand beyond the last three seasons to when Smith began as head referee in 2018, road teams have the NFL’s best win percentage with Smith.
He ranks #1 out of 24 referees in road team win percentage since 2018.
Bucking the average of 4.6% more on the road team, Smith has called 34.8% more false starts on the home teams.
This is a massive change from typical officiating.
But it’s not just false start penalties that uncharacteristically favor the road team to a massive degree.
Smith skews massively towards the road team in an entire class of penalties that typically favor the home team.
But a couple of penalty types stand out:
- False start: 22 home, 13 road (69% more on the home team) whereas the NFL average this year was 7.6% more on the road team.
- Holding: 17 home, 10 road (70% more on the home team) whereas the NFL average this year was 17.2% more on the home team.
In total this year, Smith called 924 yards in penalties on home teams and 709 penalty yards on road teams.
That’s 215 more yards on home teams or 30% more yards on home teams than road teams.
Championship Sunday 
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