When the Pittsburgh Steelers and Las Vegas Raiders kick off on Sunday Afternoon, they will have Alan Eck as the head referee, per NFL communications. In terms of officiating crews, Eck and company seem to be pretty balanced and not too flag-happy over the first five games of the season.
This is Eck’s second season as a head referee, though he has nine total years of experience in the NFL. He entered the league as a side judge before becoming an umpire. He also spent time officiating in the Big 12 and Mountain West conferences in college.
His crew has thrown 64 penalty flags this season, which is 12.8 per game. That is roughly average across all of the different crews in the NFL at the moment. That includes a pretty consistent split among the home and away teams.
Eck’s three most common penalty types are offensive holding (14), false start (8), and defensive offsides (7), per nflpenalties.com. That is in the upper third of refs for offensive holding calls, and by far the most defensive offsides calls. Hopefully T.J. Watt isn’t timing up too many silent counts, which there will likely be in Las Vegas with a Pittsburgh-slanted crowd.
On the other hand, the false starts and holding calls make life a little more difficult on the offensive line. That could mean good things for both T.J. Watt and Maxx Crosby, two of the best edge rushers in the league who will be facing off on Sunday. The Steelers’ edge group outside of Watt is completely banged up with Alex Highsmith, Nick Herbig, and DeMarvin Leal all out with injuries.
The position group with the next highest penalties against is the defensive backs. He has called three defensive pass interference, three defensive holding, and a few unnecessary roughness penalties on defensive backs this season.
Eck’s crew has only called nine special teams penalties this season. That is 1.8 per game, so maybe the Steelers will be able to escape their special teams penalty woes this week.
There are much worse crews with far more penalty flags per game than Eck’s, so hopefully that holds true on Sunday.
