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nfl_referee_tendencies

Pro tier

Referee tendencies

Use for referee / officiating tendency questions (2015–present). Returns per head referee: games worked, penalties and penalty yards per game, and over/under lean (average actual-minus-closing-total margin and the share of games that went over). Use for 'which refs call the most penalties' or 'which crews trend over the total'. Default sort is most penalties per game first.

Minimum tier: Pro
Data coverage: Varies by query

Parameters

Name	Type	Required	Description
`referee`	string	Optional	Head referee name (partial match), e.g. 'Anderson'.
`season`	integer	Optional	Exact season year (2015–present). Use season_from/season_to for ranges.
`season_from`	integer	Optional	Start of season range (inclusive).
`season_to`	integer	Optional	End of season range (inclusive).
`min_games`	integer	Optional	Only include referees with at least this many games (default 10).
`limit`	integer	Optional	Max rows (default 50, max 500).
`plan_id`	string	Optional	Optional analysis correlation ID returned by nfl_plan. Pass the same plan_id to every tool call that belongs to that analysis.

Example request

A Model Context Protocol tools/call over Streamable HTTP. Replace YOUR_API_KEY with a key from your dashboard. This is a low-level request example; MCP clients manage protocol initialization and browser OAuth for you.

curl -X POST https://mcp.nflmcp.com/mcp \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Accept: application/json, text/event-stream" \
  -d '{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 1,
  "method": "tools/call",
  "params": {
    "name": "nfl_referee_tendencies",
    "arguments": {
      "season": 2024,
      "limit": 10
    }
  }
}'

Example response

Excerpt · lists trimmed

{
  "referees": [
    {
      "referee": "Clete Blakeman",
      "games": 17,
      "penalties_per_game": 15.35,
      "penalty_yards_per_game": 128.3,
      "avg_ou_margin": 0.03,
      "over_pct": 47.1
    },
    {
      "referee": "Craig Wrolstad",
      "games": 17,
      "penalties_per_game": 14.82,
      "penalty_yards_per_game": 123.1,
      "avg_ou_margin": 3.29,
      "over_pct": 58.8
    },
    {
      "referee": "Ronald Torbert",
      "games": 18,
      "penalties_per_game": 13.89,
      "penalty_yards_per_game": 116.2,
      "avg_ou_margin": 3.06,
      "over_pct": 61.1
    }
  ],
  "count": 10
}

Saved reference output, not a live production result. Query your authenticated connection for current data and read its coverage, freshness, and missing-result hints. Understand the limitations.

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