Tony Corrente named referee for Broncos vs. Patriots AFC Championship Game

Both Tony Corrente and Gene Steratore were named as the finalists to head an NFL officiating crew for each conference championship. It was revealed yesterday that Tony Corrente would be the head man in charge when the Broncos play the Patriots on Sunday.

If you're curious as to his track record this year, here is a screen shot via Pro Football Reference that details his assignments and general stats (Click to embiggen. Yes - embiggen is a perfectly cromulent word)

- The Home Team won 80% of the time. (Cumulative Home Record for each team last season was 153-103 or 59.7%)

- 81 penalties were called on the home team, 86 on the road team. Evenly split.

- His crews called about one less penalty per game when compared with the league average.

Tony refereed one Broncos game and that was against the San Diego Chargers back in week 10.

In the Corrente reffed game, Broncos 3-28, Chargers 6-40

— Mike G (@Bronco_Mike251) January 15, 2014

I went back and skimmed over some of the calls and I didn't see anything terrible or biased. He has also called two Patriots games. The Pats went 1-1 overall. They were the least flagged team in both instances.

The Patriots are known for physical play in the secondary. It will be interesting to see if their physicality leads to some interesting calls on Sunday. On the Broncos side, I have seen pick routes called offensive pass interference several times now in the playoffs, so fellahs, be smart about it!

If you know more about his officiating style and the performance of his crews, please enlighten us! My very vanilla assessment right now is that Broncos fans can expect a cleanly called game free of bias.

GO BRONCOS!!!