Ronald Torbert will serve as the lead referee for Super Bowl LVI, the NFL announced Tuesday.
Torbert joined the NFL in 2010 as a side judge and was promoted to referee in 2014. He has been the referee for six playoff games since then, including twice in the wild-card round and four times in the divisional, most recently the San Francisco 49ers‘ 13-10 victory Saturday over the Green Bay Packers.
The NFL’s Super Bowl officiating assignments are merit-based.
Torbert’s regular-season crew averaged 12.3 flags per game — the fourth-lowest among the league’s 17 crews — but he will work with a different group of officials in the Super Bowl, all of whom met the NFL’s evaluation and experience criteria for the game.
The group, listed below, has a total of seven previous Super Bowls between them.
• Umpire: Bryan Neale
• Down judge: Derick Bowers
• Line judge: Carl Johnson
• Field judge: Rick Patterson
• Side judge: Keith Washington
• Back judge: Scott Helverson
• Replay official: Roddy Ames
Source: www.espn.com