The Pittsburgh Steelers will open their 2023 regular season at home on Sunday against the San Francisco 49ers and as of late Tuesday night, we now know who the referee will be for that game.
According to an NFL release, Alex Kemp will be the referee Sunday for the game at Acrisure Stadium. Kemp entered the NFL during the 2014 season as a side judge and was promoted to referee for the 2018 season following the retirements of Ed Hochuli and Jeff Triplette. He is the son of former NFL referee Stan Kemp.
If Kemp’s name doesn’t sound familiar, it’s probably because he has refereed a Steelers game for some time. In fact, the Steelers home game against the Colts in December 2020 was the last game Kemp called that included Pittsburgh.
According to a recent post by Rick Gosselin, Kemp and his crews have refereed 78 total games to date. His crews have averaged an above average 12.7 penalties a game for an average of 109.8 penalty yards. Offensive holding is the popular penalty when it comes to Kemp-led crews. According to NFLpenalties.com, Kemp’s crews have called 1,034 penalties these past five seasons with 193 of those being offensive holding calls.
As Gosselin points out in that referenced post, over the last five NFL seasons there have been an average of 12.4 penalties assessed per game for 104.1 yards. So, maybe fans of both the Steelers and 49ers should expect to see some yellow laundry on the Acrisure Stadium grass Sunday afternoon.
As previously mentioned, the last Steelers game that Kemp refereed was in 2020. That game between the Steelers and the Colts included 15 total penalties being called for 132 yards. Four of those 15 penalties were for offensive holding. Yikes.
Also, according to Gosselin, home teams are 41-37 in games that he has refereed to date. So, there is that with the Steelers being the home team.
