Here’s something we’ll hope doesn’t become relevant on Sunday. NFL referee Shawn Hochuli and his crew have been assigned to Week 2’s game between the New Orleans Saints and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, making it his fifth Saints game since being promoted to full-time head referee back in 2018. The Saints are 2-2 in games that Hochuli has worked, most recently seeing him and his crew in last year’s road win over the Seattle Seahawks.
Hochuli’s crew fouled the Saints 7 times for 90 penalty yards in that game, against 6 fouls and 53 yards on Seattle. That lined up with his trend on the year of penalizing home teams (107 fouls for 979 yards) less often than the visitors (116 flags for 1,030 yards). In their first game of the 2022 season, Hochuli and his officials worked a chaotic Bengals-Steelers tilt that saw a dozen flags fly: the visiting Steelers drew 8 penalties for 59 yards, whereas the hosting Bengals received 4 fouls and lost 27 yards.
So in theory that would be bode well for the Saints, but these things can fluctuate wildly on a game-by-game basis. New Orleans drew 8 penalty markers in their season-opener, with 6 of them being defensive fouls, ceding 99 yards; Tampa Bay on the hand received 5 fouls, losing just 25 yards. They’ll need to clean up some things (well, a lot of things, as Dennis Allen has repeated to both his players and the media) ahead of Week 2’s game, regardless of who the opponent and referee are. With just three full practices to work with in the days ahead, they’ve got their work cut out for them.
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