With football comes the obligatory referee talk -- it's inescapable. Just ask Western Michigan fans.
The New York Giants will officially open the John Harbaugh era Sunday night against the Dallas Cowboys at MetLife Stadium. It’ll be the 12th time the two rivals have met in a season opener, with the Cowboys winning all but one of them.
Carl Cheffers will be the man in charge of the laundry under the lights. The veteran official has plenty of history with Big Blue, including a pair of previous Giants-Cowboys games, so there’s at least something worth digging into before I inevitably blame him and his crew for everything that goes wrong for the G-Men on Sunday.
Here is the rest of the crew that will be calling the game with Cheffers:
- Umpire: Derek Anderson
- Down Judge: Derick Bowers
- Line Judge: Quentin Givens
- Field Judge: Nate Jones
- Side Judge: Dominique Pender
- Back Judge: Martin Hankins
What to know about the Giants’ Week 1 refs against the Cowboys
Cheffers has refereed 18 Giants games since becoming a full-time ref in 2008. The G-Men have split those contests right down the middle at 9-9, including a 1-1 record against the Cowboys.
They’re also currently riding a three-game losing streak with Cheffers on the call, most recently a 17-7 Sunday Night Football loss to Joe Burrow and the Bengals in Week 6 of 2024.
And because I've adopted an 'us-against-the-world mentality' and am therefore legally required to assume the officials are plotting against the G-Men, I went back through all 18 games to see if there’s actually anything worth getting irrationally angry about. Surprisingly -- and low-key unfortunately -- not really. Let's take a look at the laundry:
Giants | Opponent | |
|---|---|---|
Total penalties | 111 | 116 |
Total penalty yards | 905 | 1,033 |
Penalties per game | 6.17 | 6.44 |
Penalty yards per game | 50.28 | 57.39 |
Most penalties in one game | 12 | 15 |
Most penalty yards in one game | 92 | 135 |
Big Blue has been called for 111 penalties totaling 905 yards, averaging 6.2 flags and 50.3 penalty yards per game. Their opponents have been flagged 116 times for 1,033 yards, averaging 6.4 penalties and 57.4 yards.
So if you were hoping to uncover some grand Cheffers conspiracy against New York, I’m sorry to burst your bubble. The numbers aren’t suggesting a thing.
There is one hilarious outlier buried in there. Washington was flagged 15 times for 135 yards during a 2013 meeting, while the Giants finished with just two penalties for 18 yards. Thank you for your service, Carl.
Overall, though, Cheffers’ history with the Giants is almost annoyingly balanced. They’re 9-9 with him, the penalty numbers slightly favor New York, and his two prior Giants-Cowboys games ended in a 1-1 split. Now watch the Giants get flagged a million times Sunday night because I wrote this.
If history is any indication, we can probably expect somewhere around six Giants penalties for roughly 50 yards Sunday night, with Dallas finishing somewhere in the same neighborhood. So let me get unnecessarily specific and call it now: Giants get flagged seven times for 62 yards, Dallas gets hit six times for 53.
I’ll either look like a genius Sunday night, or we’ll pretend like this didn't happen and never speak of this again.
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