Clete Blakeman is the referee for the Thursday night game between the Giants and Eagles airing on NBC and NFL Network.
All afternoon games in Week 16 are being played on Saturday, with an oddly slotted Christmas Eve night game on NFL Network (the only other primetime game on Dec. 24 was last season). A third game on NFL Network is in pre-primetime on Christmas Day, followed by the regular Sunday and Monday night games on NBC and ESPN.
Terry McAulay has the week off.
Thursday, Dec. 22
- Giants at Eagles NBC NFLN — Clete Blakeman
Saturday, Dec. 24
- Dolphins at Bills — Craig Wrolstad
- Falcons at Panthers — Bill Vinovich
- Washington at Bears — Brad Allen
- Chargers at Browns — Walt Coleman
- Vikings at Packers — Jeff Triplette
- Titans at Jaguars — Pete Morelli
- Jets at Patriots — Gene Steratore
- Buccaneers at Saints — Jerome Boger
- Colts at Raiders — Ed Hochuli
- 49ers at Rams — Walt Anderson
- Cardinals at Seahawks — Ron Torbert
- Bengals at Texans (8:25 p.m. ET) NFLN — Carl Cheffers
Sunday, Dec. 25
- Ravens at Steelers (4:30 p.m.) NFLN — John Parry
- Broncos at Chiefs NBC — Tony Corrente
Monday, Dec. 26
- Lions at Cowboys ESPN — John Hussey
Why is Triplette calling such an important game??
How does Tony Corrente’s crew get so many primetime games? They botched the Falcons-Seahawks game!
The NFL does try to assign each crew a certain minimum number of primetime games. Refs like Triplette or Boger don’t get more than the minimum. The remainder of primetime games are assigned among the crews that the NFL feels are less likely to have a major gaffe in primetime. Another thing to keep in mind, Bill Vinovich and Brad Allen both lost primetime games (to Terry McAulay and Pete Morelli respectively) due to flex scheduling. Unfortunately there is less ability late in the year to rotate a crew off a primetime game if they have underformed because many crews have already had the maximum number of bye weeks and you have more crews that have officiated teams the maximum number of times during the regular season. That is why you tend to see the same few crews late in the season as the odds were that Tony Corrente’s crew would probably do better than Jeff Triplette’s. The non-call on the DPI in the Falcons-Seahawks game was a miss, but I can’t say it was the fault of the officials. The players were in the perfect position to create a blind spot for the officials whose responsbility were those players. It would be worse for officials to guess about DPI and it wasn’t there (see New Orleans/Minnesota playoff game when New Orleans won it all). The ideal position would have been someone in the old Umpire’s position having a frontal view of the players, but then the official is an unsafe position as there are players to his/her back that could increase potential for injury.
Sarah Thomas is the worst official in the league, bar none. Yet, the league will never get rid of her.
And she is on Triplett’s crew. Maybe their trying to get him to quit…
BS call from Carl Johnson
Seems like Blakeman always gets the Giants at Eagles game every year.
Brakeman is one of the very best. I wish his crew did every Bengals game.
Lol. Blakeman
Players and coaches agree that Sarah Thomas is the best Line Judge working in the NFL.
Walt Coleman is a total azz clown. Just saying.
Paul, c’mon….really? She awarded TOs THREE DIFFERENT times last season when teams didn’t have any left!!! POP WARNER officials don’t screw that up! She is there for one reason only…well, technically she has two.