Week 12 Officiating: Meet Craig Wrolstad and Crew (Again)

Name: Craig Wrolstad

Age: 60

Promoted To Referee: 2014

Graphic Courtesy of Football Zebras

Last Game: Week 11 2025 LAC @ JAX

Last Lions Game: Week 6 2025 – DET 17 @ KC 30

• The Detroit Lions committed 4 penalties for 38 yards. They were flagged a total of 6 times.

• The Kansas City Chiefs committed 0 penalties for 0 yards. They were flagged a total of 1 times.

• Together there were 4 penalties for 38 yards. There were 7 total flags in this game.

Notable

Lovely. For the first time this year, the Lions will be getting a crew that officiated a previous Lion's game. Unfortunately, it is the Craig Wrolstad Crew, who officiated the Lions debacle at KC earlier this year, where they threw ZERO flags on the Chiefs and letting multiple instances of blatant issues go unflagged on both teams. The officiating in this game led to the Branch suspension, as they did not flag JuJu Smith-Schuster for his illegal block that led to the altercation as time expired. This was also notable, as the crew went against every tendency, they have had in 2025 with the way the game was officiated, so let's hope they get back to expected norms and don't take it out on the Lions for their own buffoonery.

As far as Wrolstad’s penalty tendencies, they once again align with the what the NY Giants are known for committing, with the Giants having all five of Wrolstead's tendencies being what they get called for. Expect to see DPI, False Starts and Offensive Holding called a bit, as the Lions also commit those, but nowhere the rate of the Giants. The Lions will have two of their best going against the Top 2 penalty offenders in Dru Phillips (Nickle vs St Brown) and Jermaine Eluemunor (RT vs Hutch), so maybe this is the week that the Lions actually have a DPI called on the opponent and Hutch gets back into Double-Digit sack production.