Which NFL referees throw the most flags?
Since 1999 the league has averaged 12.5 accepted penalties a game. Larry Nemmers’ crews threw the most, 13.7 a game over 134 games, and Alan Eck’s the fewest, 10.9. Among today’s referees Clete Blakeman, Adrian Hill and Brad Rogers run the busiest crews at 12.7 and Eck, John Hussey and Bill Vinovich the quietest. Flags fall on the home team 48.4% of the time, and the Raiders have been flagged more than anyone.
- 13.7flags a game under Larry Nemmers, 1999–2007, the most of any referee with 20 games
- 10.9under Alan Eck since 2023, the fewest; the league averages 12.5
- 48.4%of all flags land on the home team
- 33accepted penalties in Carolina at Tampa Bay, September 2003, the most in any game since 1999
Based on 7,323 regular-season and playoff games from 1999 through week 2 of 2026, every accepted penalty in the play-by-play, and the 42 referees who have worked 20 or more of them. Explore the live data.
Which NFL referees throw the most flags?
Larry Nemmers, who retired after 2007, leads every referee since 1999 at 13.7 flags a game, with Walt Anderson, Ed Hochuli, Jeff Triplette and Terry McAulay just behind at 13.3 to 13.5. At the other end Alan Eck, Alberto Riveron and Bill Vinovich have run crews at 11.2 flags a game or fewer, a difference of nearly three penalties a game between the extremes.
| Referee | Seasons | Games | Flags per game | Yards per game |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Larry Nemmers | 1999–2007 | 134 | 13.7 | 110.9 |
| Walt Anderson | 2000–2019 | 268 | 13.5 | 112.0 |
| Ed Hochuli | 1999–2017 | 306 | 13.3 | 110.8 |
| Jeff Triplette | 1999–2017 | 292 | 13.3 | 112.8 |
| Terry McAulay | 2001–2017 | 267 | 13.3 | 111.4 |
| Johnny Grier | 1999–2004 | 83 | 13.2 | 109.5 |
| Jerome Boger | 2006–2022 | 260 | 13.2 | 108.7 |
| Ron Winter | 1999–2013 | 229 | 13.1 | 107.4 |
| Gene Steratore | 2006–2017 | 185 | 11.5 | 93.5 |
| Bill Vinovich | 2004–2026 | 277 | 11.2 | 92.5 |
| Alberto Riveron | 2008–2012 | 76 | 11.0 | 89.6 |
| Alan Eck | 2023–2026 | 53 | 10.9 | 91.6 |
Flags per 100 plays strips out pace, and the order barely changes: Nemmers’ crews called a penalty on 11.1% of plays, Riveron’s on 8.7%. Vinovich has run the quietest crew of any referee still working, over 277 games and 18 playoff assignments.
Which current NFL referees call the most penalties?
Over the last five seasons, 2022 to 2026, Clete Blakeman, Adrian Hill and Brad Rogers have run the busiest crews at 12.7 flags a game, against a league average of 12.0. Alan Eck at 10.9, John Hussey at 11.1 and Bill Vinovich at 11.4 have run the quietest. The spread between the busiest and quietest current crew is 1.8 flags a game.
| Referee | Games | Flags per game | Yards per game | Pass interference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clete Blakeman | 71 | 12.7 | 100.6 | 1.06 |
| Adrian Hill | 69 | 12.7 | 103.6 | 1.10 |
| Brad Rogers | 68 | 12.7 | 104.1 | 1.06 |
| Shawn Hochuli | 71 | 12.6 | 104.5 | 0.93 |
| Ron Torbert | 72 | 12.5 | 101.6 | 0.92 |
| Alex Kemp | 71 | 12.3 | 102.9 | 0.86 |
| Carl Cheffers | 71 | 12.0 | 98.7 | 1.13 |
| Land Clark | 68 | 11.5 | 93.7 | 0.76 |
| Bill Vinovich | 71 | 11.4 | 89.5 | 1.03 |
| John Hussey | 71 | 11.1 | 92.3 | 1.14 |
| Alan Eck | 53 | 10.9 | 91.6 | 0.83 |
Sixty-eight to 72 games is a small sample. The report also shows each crew’s home win and home cover rates, and at this size those are mostly which games a crew happened to draw: Land Clark’s home teams have won 34% of the time, John Hussey’s 72%. The same columns are there for any window since 1999.
Do NFL referees call different penalties?
Yes, and the difference is mostly holding. Carl Cheffers’ crews have called offensive holding 2.76 times a game since 2008, 17% above the league; Bill Vinovich’s have called it 1.76 times, 25% below. Pass interference is almost identical under both at 0.90 a game. Vinovich’s one high mark is neutral-zone infraction, half again the league rate.
| Penalty | Cheffers | Vinovich | League |
|---|---|---|---|
| Offensive holding | 2.76 | 1.76 | 2.35 |
| False start | 2.22 | 2.34 | 2.47 |
| Defensive pass interference | 0.91 | 0.90 | 0.90 |
| Unnecessary roughness | 0.72 | 0.63 | 0.63 |
| Defensive offside | 0.71 | 0.57 | 0.71 |
| Defensive holding | 0.67 | 0.61 | 0.64 |
| Delay of game | 0.58 | 0.50 | 0.53 |
The report draws each referee’s fingerprint as a strip for every metric, with every other referee as a tick and the league as a line, so a crew’s tendencies show without anyone deciding what counts as good or bad. Larry Nemmers’ strip is the extreme case: 36% more false starts than the league and more than three times the personal fouls.
Which NFL teams get flagged the most?
The Raiders, and it is not close. Since 1999 they have drawn 4.1 flags a game against 2.7 on their opponents, a net of 1.4 a game and 30.7 penalty yards against them per game. Dallas, Chicago, the Rams, Cleveland and Washington are next at a net of 1.0. Indianapolis is the only team flagged less often than its opponents.
| Team | Games | Flags against | Flags for | Net per game | Yards against |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Las Vegas | 438 | 4.1 | 2.7 | +1.4 | 30.7 |
| Dallas | 445 | 3.7 | 2.7 | +1.0 | 28.5 |
| Chicago | 440 | 3.6 | 2.6 | +1.0 | 26.7 |
| LA Rams | 460 | 3.6 | 2.6 | +1.0 | 26.6 |
| Cleveland | 437 | 3.7 | 2.7 | +1.0 | 27.9 |
| Washington | 444 | 3.7 | 2.7 | +1.0 | 27.4 |
| Green Bay | 466 | 3.2 | 2.9 | +0.3 | 24.2 |
| New England | 478 | 3.1 | 2.8 | +0.3 | 23.7 |
| Atlanta | 445 | 3.2 | 3.0 | +0.2 | 25.6 |
| Indianapolis | 457 | 3.0 | 3.1 | −0.1 | 22.2 |
Every team is flagged more often than its opponents except the Colts, because a flag against one team is a flag for the other only when both are in the table; penalties on teams below the 20-game referee cut-off are not. The report adds, for each team, the referee it has fared best and worst under, with at least six games together.
What is the most penalised NFL game since 1999?
Carolina at Tampa Bay in week 2 of 2003, a 12-9 Panthers win in which Walt Anderson’s crew accepted 33 penalties for 288 yards. The Giants at Washington a week later had 32, and Saints at Rams in 2000 had 31. The record for yards is 300, in Baltimore at Green Bay in 2009, which also holds the record of eight pass-interference calls.
| Game | Matchup | Referee | Flags | Yards |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2003, week 2 | CAR 12 at TB 9 | Walt Anderson | 33 | 288 |
| 2003, week 3 | NYG 24 at WAS 21 | Johnny Grier | 32 | 266 |
| 2000, week 13 | NO 31 at LA 24 | Gerry Austin | 31 | 248 |
| 2016, week 2 | TEN 16 at DET 15 | Brad Allen | 29 | 221 |
| 2016, week 8 | LV 30 at TB 24 | Terry McAulay | 29 | 264 |
| 2003, week 1 | LV 20 at TEN 25 | Ron Blum | 28 | 284 |
The quietest game is Raiders at Chargers in December 2005: one accepted penalty, for 15 yards, under Bill Vinovich. The most one-sided is Packers at Jaguars in 2001, when all 22 flags went against Jacksonville. The report keeps five such lists, each one query away.
Are there more penalties in the NFL than there used to be?
No. The league peaked at 14.4 accepted penalties a game in 2005 and ran above 13 from 2014 to 2019, then fell to 11.1 in 2020 and again in 2022. It has climbed back to 12.8 in 2024 and 12.5 in 2025. Pass interference has gone the other way, from under 0.8 a game in the mid-2000s to about 1.0 a game since 2016.
| Season | Flags per game | Pass interference | Roughing the passer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | 13.1 | 1.08 | 0.27 |
| 2005 | 14.4 | 0.77 | 0.43 |
| 2008 | 11.3 | 0.62 | 0.23 |
| 2015 | 13.7 | 0.91 | 0.39 |
| 2019 | 13.4 | 1.06 | 0.51 |
| 2020 | 11.1 | 1.17 | 0.47 |
| 2022 | 11.1 | 0.82 | 0.33 |
| 2024 | 12.8 | 1.11 | 0.35 |
| 2025 | 12.5 | 1.01 | 0.33 |
Roughing the passer tells the rule-change story in miniature: 0.27 a game in 1999, a peak of 0.54 in 2021 after the emphasis on quarterback hits, and back to a third of a game since. The report charts fourteen of these series by season.
How was this measured?
Schedules, referees and play-by-play come from nflverse, 1999 to the current season, refreshed weekly; full officiating crews come from the nflverse officials data from 2015 on. A flag is a play where the play-by-play records an accepted penalty, so declined and offsetting fouls are not counted, and penalty yards are the yards assessed.
The referee is the crew chief named on the schedule. A crew’s flags are credited to him although the other six officials throw most of them, and a referee’s numbers mix the crews he has led over the years. Leaderboards require 20 games in the window; the fingerprint compares a referee with every other referee who has 40. The schedule spells a few referees two ways across seasons (Ron and Ronald Torbert, Brad and Bradley Rogers), which the report folds together.
The data lives in a Power BI semantic model on Microsoft Fabric. Every number on this page was produced by an AI assistant running the report’s own queries against that model, and the same model powers the live public report.
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