The common refrain is "you can call a penalty on every play", and that's fine. But if that were true then the penalties would even out over a long time period, say 23 years.
I am in the middle of a research project to prove this is not the case and that yes, there are darling teams and dog teams and they are who you think they are in each category. I'm not finished yet, but so far Green Bay and Pittsburgh are ref darlings from 2000-2022 while Dallas and Detroit are at the bottom as the dogs.
I have about 12 more teams to go through, but so far the stats are not making the refs look unbiased. Instead they are showing that there certainly is a very lopsided officiating curve that is not evening out over time.
