Walt Anderson begins the fifteenth week of the season with the Thursday night game in Kansas City. This is his third Thursday night game of the year, and the second in three weeks. Brad Allen and Clay Martin will be working the two Saturday night games in The New Meadowlands and Denver, respectively. Tony Corrente will be working on Monday night in Carolina, in which it will be his third Monday night assignment of the season, and the second in three weeks. Bill Vinovich will be working his fifth Sunday night game of the season this week, in which two of those five were flexed into that time slot.
Craig Wrolstad and his crew are off this week.
In the past two weeks, crews have been assigned to work two home games for the same team in the regular season, which is usually a policy that the officiating department tries to avoid. This week has the most return trips for crews of any so far, with nine different crews re-visiting a stadium they worked in at some point earlier in the season.
Scheduled assignments are subject to unannounced changes.
Thursday, Dec. 13
- Chargers at Chiefs FOX NFLN — Walt Anderson
Saturday, Dec. 15
- Texans at Jets (4:30 p.m. ET) NFLN — Brad Allen
- Browns at Broncos (8:20 p.m. ET) NFLN — Clay Martin
Sunday, Dec. 16
- Cardinals at Falcons — Shawn Smith
- Buccaneers at Ravens — Ron Torbert
- Lions at Bills — Jerome Boger
- Packers at Bears — John Hussey
- Raiders at Bengals — Alex Kemp
- Cowboys at Colts — Carl Cheffers
- Washington at Jaguars — Clete Blakeman
- Dolphins at Vikings — Walt Coleman
- Titans at Giants — Shawn Hochuli
- Seahawks at 49ers — Pete Morelli
- Patriots at Steelers — John Parry
- Eagles at Rams NBC — Bill Vinovich
Monday, Dec. 17
- Saints at Panthers ESPN — Tony Corrente
I expect the change of philosophy on assignments may well be due to the number of new referees, and always trying to keep the veterans on the top games with playoff implications. Just a thought.
The zebras in the Chiefs/Chargers game are absolutely horrible.
If the NFL is concerned about young officials in big games with playoff implications, I am not sure they would do much worse than Walt Anderson’s Crew last night