Referee assignment could lead to penalty-filled Super Bowl

The NFL announced this week that Carl Cheffers will be the referee for Super Bowl LVII next month, and that could be bad news for fans that hate seeing penalties impact games. 

Every year Cheffers' officiating crew is consistently among the leaders in penalty flags thrown per game and has topped the 200-penalty mark in each of the past seven seasons. He is the only referee in the league that can make such a claim. 

During the 2022 season no referee crew had more accepted penalties (214) or penalty yards (1,869) than Cheffers' crew. 

This will be Cheffers' second Super Bowl assignment in the past three years, having also officiating Super Bowl LV where the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defeated the Kansas City Chiefs by a 31-9 margin. That game had 15 accepted penalties, with 11 of them going against the Chiefs.

Speaking of which, the Chiefs and their fans might be the group of people least excited about this assignment should they beat Cincinnati on Sunday.

Cheffers has been involved in some infamous moments with Kansas City over the years, including Super Bowl LV. 

As the Kansas City Star notes, Cheffers has been a long-time antagonist of the Chiefs. Along with the Super Bowl two years ago, he also called a pivotal holding penalty on a potential game-tying two-point conversion attempt in a 2017 playoff game against the Pittsburgh Steelers. After the game tight end Travis Kelce said Cheffers did not deserve to work at Foot Locker because of the call.

There were also a couple of controversial calls in games this season, including a roughing the passer call against the Raiders that was heavily criticized.

A couple of things to keep in mind here. The first is that every team and its fan base tends to think referees are out to get them, so the Chiefs feeling that way is not anything out of the ordinary.

The second is that just because Cheffers tends to call a lot of penalties does not necessarily mean he does a bad job. The NFL says it grades and scores officials throughout the season and only gives playoff games and Super Bowl assignments to the highest graded officials. Other referees might fall into the "let them play" category and not throw flags where they could.

Cheffers obviously does not have that mindset. If he sees a penalty, he is throwing the flag.