For the second time this season, NFL referee Shawn Hochuli will officiate a Pittsburgh Steelers game. He is the head ref for Sunday’s contest against the Cincinnati Bengals. What we wrote about him last time applies to the present. Expect lots of penalties.
Per Pro Football Reference, Hochuli and his crew throw an above-average number of flags. For the year, they’re averaging 13.6 per game. That’s nearly a full flag higher than the league average of 12.7.
Hochuli previously officiated the Steelers’ Week 5 game against the Dallas Cowboys. That game resulted in a Cowboys win and plenty of flags. Dallas was called for 11 flags, while Pittsburgh had eight. It remains the most flagged game Hochuli has officiated this season.
According to NFLpenalties.com, the two most common flags he’s thrown are false start (37) and offensive holding (28). These two things could work against Pittsburgh as the away team, which is more prone to miscommunication and issues working on a silent count.
Heading into Week 13, the Steelers have been penalized more often than the Bengals. Neither team is near the top, but Cincinnati is one of the cleanest teams in football, which is a far cry from how they used to be constructed. They’ve been flagged just 52 times this year; only the Arizona Cardinals (51) have been flagged less. Pittsburgh is in the middle with 70 penalties.
Since 2022, the Steelers are 2-2 in the four games Hochuli has ref’d. In 2023, he called a loss to the Cleveland Browns and a late-season win over the Seattle Seahawks. In 2022, he was the head official for the zany regular-season opener, an overtime winner off K Chris Boswell’s leg to knock off the Cincinnati Bengals. Hochuli hasn’t called a Bengals game this season.
The son of famous and former referee Ed Hochuli, Shawn has been refereeing NFL games since 2014. He was promoted to head referee in 2018 following his father’s retirement. He’s known for giving Tom Brady his first-ever unsportsmanlike conduct and for calling a penalty in German earlier this season in a New York Giants-Carolina Panthers game in Munich.
The Steelers and Bengals kickoff is at 1 PM/EST on Sunday.
