Bills Wildcard Official Has Odd History With Both Teams

The officiating crews have been set for this upcoming weekend of NFL games.  What will it mean for the Bills?

The Bills managed to get home-field advantage for the first couple of rounds of the playoffs.  It's great news.  However, they can't control who the officiating crew is.  That's entirely up to the NFL.  They know who the head official is and depending on how you look at it, there could be good news and bad news.

First, the good news

The Bills will have Bill Vinovich as their lead official for Sunday's game against the Broncos.  17 officiating crews in the NFL cover every game.  In the 2024 season, Vinovich's crew threw the fewest number of flags of any crew.  You can look at that a couple of different ways.  That could be good in the sense that you hopefully won't get a big play called back on a stupid holding call on the opposite side of the field.  However, you might not get that pivotal pass interference call either.

Essentially, when refs aren't throwing flags, they're just letting the players play which is something that most people want to see.

But wait...there's more to it

Don't get too excited though.  The playoffs are a different animal than the regular season for NFL referees.  During the regular season, they work as a crew.  The same crew works together every week.  When the playoffs come around, the crews are mixed.  They reward the highest-rated officials with extra games at the end of the year, so even though Vinovich's crew threw the fewest flags during the regular season it doesn't mean they won't get refs who have been on other crews and tend to throw more.

Vinovich has a past with Bronco's coach Sean Payton

Sometimes it's bad when there's no call at all.  Bill Vinovich's crew was the subject of a lot of criticism a few years ago when he was the lead official in 2019 for the NFC Championship Game.  They had what was being called one of the most "egregious missed calls in the history of football."  The Saints had the ball and were driving in the Rams' end of the field when what looked like one of the worst cases of pass interference wasn't called.  The Saints (who were being coached by Sean Payton at the time) had their season end and they were out of the playoffs.

Is this history between Payton and Vinovich going to play in his favor this time?  Will he get a huge makeup call a few years later? We will see on Sunday.  You should hope that it wouldn't be that close and that the referees wouldn't have that big of an impact on the game.

Vinovich also has history with the Bills

You may also remember Vinovich from the 2021 AFC Championship Game where the Bills played the Chiefs in Kansas City and a huge scrum broke out.

He was the ref in the famous Bills vs. Patriots wind game that was played on a very cold Monday night.  He was also the ref who asked fans to stop throwing snowballs in 2022 or he would throw a flag for a personal foul against the Bills.