The 2025 NFL season playoffs begin this weekend with Wild Card weekend, which means the six seed Buffalo Bills are on the road to face the three seed Jacksonville Jaguars. It seems as though each week, fans have are sidetracked by at least one noteworthy thing thanks to officiating. As such, it seems important to highlight the referee that you may or may not be seeing a lot of during the broadcast.
The lead official for the game will be Brad Allen. You may remember a lot of controversy with Allen and
his crew recently during the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Carolina Panthers game a couple weeks ago. In that game we saw a backwards pass that was ruled dead thinking it was an incomplete pass and then a tacky tack offensive pass interference call that stalled momentum for the Panthers.
The difference with Allen heading into the playoffs is that it will not fully be the crew that joined him in the regular season. With him for this game, there will be officials from three other crews as well as two of his regular crew members. With all officials you must take some good with some bad and Allen is no exception with that. He called the third-fewest penalties in the league this year which should excite both fan bases. The Jaguars head into the game averages the third-most penalties per game while Buffalo enters tied for the league in offensive holding. Specifically for holding, Allen and crew ranked last in the amount of offensive holdings called.
Now, if you want to be nervous, the home team has a won 61% of the time where he was the head official. Home teams this year were 9-5 with Allen on the call which isn’t the worst but something to monitor none the less. The Bills specifically has had Allen officiate three playoff games and one all three but they were at home. We shall see if this crew let the teams battle amongst themselves.
