Cowboys at Browns referee report: What to expect from officials in season opener
The Cowboys are preparing to kick off their new season on the road in Cleveland. While we’ve discussed plenty about how the teams match up against each other, it’s time to take a look at the third team that can influence the outcome of this game: the officials. For the season opener, the Cowboys draw the referee crew led by Clete Blakeman.
The Cowboys drew Blakeman’s crew twice last year, winning both of those games. In both games, our weekly referee report suggested that Blakeman’s crew was known for being strict on the rules but ultimately calling things fairly between the two teams. As it turned out, the two games that Blakeman called for the Cowboys saw only one penalty difference between the two teams; the Cowboys drew one more penalty in their win over the Jets and one less penalty in their win over the Seahawks.
For the season, Blakeman’s crew called 87 penalties on the home team and 93 on the road team, one of the slimmest margins of any crew last year. That marked the third straight year where Blakeman’s splits between home and road penalties were in the top five closest margins among officiating crews.
Moreover, Blakeman had developed a reputation for calling penalties at a fairly strict rate, ranking in the top half of the league’s crews in total penalties called in three of four seasons heading into the 2023 season. However, Blakeman found himself calling the sixth-fewest penalties of any referee last year, an indication that his crew isn’t going to throw the flag just for the sake of it.
Now, Blakeman prepares to enter his 15th season as a head referee; only Carl Cheffers and Bill Vinovich have more tenure than Blakeman. He returns much of the same crew from last year, with three new additions. One is the side judge, who is the most seasoned member of Blakeman’s crew with 20 years of NFL officiating experience. Blakeman also has two officials new to the NFL, both coming from the college ranks: field judge Karina Tovar comes from the near-defunct Pac 12, while replay assistant Amber Cornell joins from the Big Ten.
Continuity in the officiating crew for someone as tenured as Blakeman makes it easier to project what we can expect from this group on Sunday. Historically, that means this should be a fairly even game from a penalty standpoint – unless one team plays extremely sloppy, of course – without any hyper-focus on specific types of penalties. Blakeman’s crew tends to call a little bit of everything, though he’s been especially attentive to defensive back physicality in prior seasons.
Home teams have often fared better in games that Blakeman calls, winning just under 54% of Blakeman’s career games. However, that’s gone up in the last three years, which has coincided with Blakeman calling things more evenly between teams; since 2021, the home team boasts a 62% win percentage when Blakeman is on the call. Both games Blakeman called for the Cowboys last year were in Dallas.
Throughout Blakeman’s career as a head referee, he’s called 12 Cowboys games now, and Dallas is 6-6 in those games. All six losses came at home, but three of those featured backup quarterbacks. The Cowboys are 2-0 under Blakeman outside of Dallas, with those games being a thrilling win over the Steelers in 2016 and a huge comeback win over the Rams in 2014, a game that saw Dallas go down 21-0 halfway through the second quarter before winning 34-31.
As for the Browns, they are a dismal 4-9 in games that Blakeman calls, though it has to be noted that the Browns’ record this century has been so poor that you could say this about nearly any officiating crew. Since Kevin Stefanski took over this team, Blakeman has called just three games, with the Browns going 2-1 in those games. Notably, Blakeman called the Browns’ season opener just a year ago, also in Cleveland. The Browns won that game against the Bengals, in part due to Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow playing through an injury that proved to hamper his production for the first month of the season.
In short, this is not a game that should be greatly influenced by the tendencies of the officiating crew, as Blakeman rarely shows favor to one team or another. His even-keeled approach has generally resulted in more home wins, though the Cowboys are the rare inverse of that, having never lost on the road with Blakeman. Expect a fair game, though, that keeps both teams honest and allows the best team to win without much interference from the zebras.