Thanks to the numerous measures the NFL has taken to maintain parity among its 32 teams, any one contest between any two teams generally comes down to a handful of details, a few key moments that typically steer the outcome one way or the other.
Any given Sunday, as they say.
But when the NFL released Week 14 assignments for its officiating crews, many Cowboys fans immediately sensed the universe somehow placing its thumb on the scale in favor of the Eagles, based solely on who will be wearing the white hat at AT&T Stadium come kickoff.
John Hussey, a veteran NFL official with 348 games under his belt and a head referee since 2015, will be leading the crew for Sunday night’s NFC East showdown.
A dive into his all-time record suggested- to some, anyway- that Hussey has some sort of nefarious allegiance to the Eagles.
True, the Eagles have never lost a game in which Hussey was the head referee. And yes, that is statistically anomalous, considering no other team in the NFL is either winless or undefeated with him leading the officiating crew.
But a +7 swing in Philly’s favor does not necessarily a closet Eagles fan make. The Titans, for example, are also +7 in Hussey-called games, having won nine and lost two. The Saints are 8-2. On the flip side, the Panthers are 1-6. The Raiders are just 1-7 with Hussey calling the fouls.
And all the rest of the teams, predictably, fall somewhere in the middle. (Dallas is 4-4 in games he’s called.) That’s not a conspiracy, that’s the law of averages.
In fact, if Cowboys Nation is looking for a reason to pay attention to officiating, the more telling stat may be that Hussey seems to lean toward the home squad. He’s thrown 68 flags on home teams this season, as opposed to 82 on the visitors. That ratio is well off the leaguewide numbers this season (1,148 home penalties versus 1,208).
And Hussey’s calls have skewed heavily toward the home team in other years, too: 72-to-89 last season, 86-to-120 in 2019, 89-to-104 in 2018.
But then again, in 2021 and 2020, his home and away flags were almost equal- a difference of one single penalty in back-to-back years.
You can drive yourself crazy looking for some pattern that tells you how Hussey (or any official) will call his next game, but the most logical answer is that there’s just no there there. Plain and simple, Hussey isn’t secretly making sure that the Eagles (or anyone else) win the one or two games a year in which he’s on the field with them.
And even though Cowboys fans can recall several games in recent memory that were inundated with flags from overzealous crews or perhaps even tainted with questionable calls, Sunday’s clash isn’t already somehow decided because of who drew the referee whistle.
What may be worth looking at, though- especially for the Cowboys, the second-most penalized team in the NFL- is which penalties Hussey’s current crew tends to call more often than other crews.
Hussey’s squad leads the league in thrown flags per game (16.18) as well as accepted penalties per game (13.64) over 11 contests. And just as with most other crews, false start, offensive holding, and defensive pass interference are among his most-called infractions. As expected.
But Hussey does stand out in a few penalty categories. He’s tied for the league lead in defensive offside flags, something Dallas defenders seem to have trouble with every week. The Cowboys have been called for it 14 times this season; six more than the next closest team.
He’s also tied for the lead in face mask calls. Dallas is tied for the league lead in that infraction, too, with five so far in 2023.
Hussey has thrown more intentional grounding calls than any ref, and he’s one of two officials who’s called unsportsmanlike conduct a surprising five times this season. That penalty has been assessed just 21 times across all games for the whole league; Hussey’s crew threw the flag on nearly a quarter of them. And while the Cowboys haven’t committed either penalty yet this season, it’s worth remembering that this crew is particularly quick to call both.
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Leave it to second-year Cowboys offensive lineman Tyler Smith to ultimately be the voice of reason for the team.
“Discipline is always at a premium,” Smith said this week at The Star. “That’s every week. That’s something Coach McCarthy harps on week in and week out, just being disciplined. I feel like a lot of these tight games are won in the details- not only in between the snaps but before the snap as well. So just being disciplined with our keys, disciplined with our technique, disciplined with our emotions as well is going to be a huge one.”
Indeed. Just like Dallas’s approach to stopping Philadelphia’s tush push is to not get into 4th-and-short situations, the easiest way to make sure the stripes don’t decide the game is by making sure they keep their hankies in their pockets to begin with.
No matter who the head ref is.
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