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nfl_referee_tendencies

Pro tier

Referee tendencies

PREFERRED 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).

Example request

A Model Context Protocol tools/call over Streamable HTTP. Replace YOUR_API_KEY with a key from your dashboard.

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
}

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