Ron Torbert before Buffalo

Ron Torbert will be on the microphone Thursday night when Detroit visits Buffalo for the first regular-season game at New Highmark Stadium.

The assignment puts one of the NFL’s most experienced referees on the league’s Week 2 showcase. Torbert is in his 17th NFL season and 13th as a referee. He has worked two Super Bowls in the white hat. Week 2 assignment; Lions schedule; 2026 crew roster.

His 2025 penalty total does not offer much of a headline. Games assigned to Torbert landed almost exactly on the league average.

The categories underneath that total are more useful. Defensive pass interference and roughing the passer appeared less often in Torbert’s games than in any other referee group. Holding and unnecessary roughness moved the other way.

For Detroit, the name also carries a recent memory: Torbert handled last Thanksgiving’s loss to Green Bay, when a replay-confirmed touchdown and a timeout granted before an apparent false start both drew questions.

That is the Week 2 file. The overall count was ordinary. The places where the flags appeared—and the way consequential decisions were administered—were not.

The total was ordinary. The categories were not.

Torbert’s 16 regular-season assignments in 2025 produced 205 accepted penalties for 1,567 yards, or 12.813 accepted penalties per game. The 17 referee groups combined for 3,467 accepted penalties across 272 games, or 12.746 per game.

Torbert’s rate was about one-half of one percent above the league. It tied Clete Blakeman for ninth-fewest among the 17 groups.

The public Torbert page displays 17 games and 211 accepted penalties because it includes the Chargers–Patriots Wild Card game on January 11, 2026. Removing that postseason game removes six accepted penalties and 55 yards. The January 4 Falcons–Saints game remains because it was Week 18 of the regular season.

The detailed logs add 35 declined and 15 offsetting foul entries. Counting those produces 255 recorded foul entries, or 15.938 per game. That still does not measure missed calls, accuracy or how many opportunities the crew had to make a particular call. Torbert weekly record; complete penalty log.

These are crew records filed under the assigned referee. Torbert did not personally throw every flag in the table, and the other six on-field positions can change from week to week.

Pass interference and roughing were the outliers

The useful part of Torbert’s 2025 profile sits below the total.

His games had the league’s lowest accepted rates for defensive pass interference and roughing the passer. Offensive holding, defensive holding and unnecessary roughness all finished above their league rates.

Only one of Torbert’s 16 regular-season games contained an accepted roughing-the-passer foul. Eight contained no accepted defensive pass interference. Offensive holding appeared in every assignment, 43 times in all.

That is a specific profile, not evidence that Torbert’s crew simply lets contact go. Defensive holding and unnecessary roughness were both above league rates. False starts were close to average. Illegal contact was only modestly lower.

The denominator remains games, not pass attempts, pressured throws, routes or blocks. Thursday supplies new teams, a partly changed crew and a new set of opportunities. The chart describes one completed season; it does not predict the next flag.

Detroit’s Torbert file is short—and mostly losing

A review of the same 205 original Detroit gamebooks used for the Week 1 referee report found Torbert six times from the 2016 preseason through 2025. Every appearance lists him as referee.

Five were competitive games. Detroit went 1–4.

The additional assignment was Cincinnati at Detroit in the 2016 preseason, a 30–14 Lions loss. Detroit had eight penalties for 64 yards and Cincinnati seven for 50. Preseason gamebook.

The record is not an officiating result. In Detroit’s four competitive losses, the Lions were assessed 20 accepted penalties to their opponents’ 16—and fewer penalty yards, 102 to 105. Different seasons, rosters and coaching staffs make 1–4 a piece of chronology, not a causal finding.

The January 2025 playoff loss supplies the clearest example. Washington faced fourth-and-2 at the Detroit 5 with 14:15 left. Detroit was penalized for too many men on the field. Brian Robinson scored two snaps later.

The penalty extended a touchdown drive in a season-ending loss. It was also an objective substitution failure in the gamebook, not a disputed judgment that explains Washington’s 45 points. Gamebook, PDF p. 14; contemporary game account.

Thanksgiving is the recent memory

Torbert’s most recent Lions assignment produced only eight accepted penalties for 42 yards. It also produced the two decisions most likely to follow his name into Thursday night.

Dontayvion Wicks’s 22-yard touchdown. Green Bay faced fourth-and-3 from the Detroit 22 early in the second quarter. Jordan Love’s pass to Wicks was ruled a touchdown. Replay confirmed the score after reviewing whether Wicks maintained control through the catch.

Torbert announced the result. The replay rules placed the determination with the league’s senior officiating authority or designee, consulting with the replay official and referee. The gamebook preserves the touchdown but not a written league explanation of the control analysis. Gamebook, PDF p. 11; contemporary replay analysis; 2025 Rule 15.

The timeout before the apparent false start. Later in the quarter, Green Bay faced fourth-and-1 from the Detroit 2. Broadcast video showed Matt LaFleur moving down the sideline as an apparent false start occurred. Officials awarded the Packers a timeout instead of enforcing the foul. Love threw a two-yard touchdown to Romeo Doubs on the next snap.

The final gamebook records the timeout at 2:16 and the touchdown, not the erased false-start sequence. Torbert told the pool reporter the crew recognized the timeout before the false start. NFL officiating analyst Walt Anderson later explained that officials are taught to grant a timeout when in doubt because a coach may request one verbally or by signal. The public record does not identify which sideline official recognized it or provide synchronized audio. Lions’ official observations; league explanation reported by NBC; gamebook, PDF pp. 11–12.

The two plays ask different questions. One was a replay-confirmed catch ruling. The other was a game-administration judgment about when a timeout request was recognized. Torbert’s microphone connected him publicly to both outcomes. It did not give him sole ownership of either underlying decision.

What the numbers mean Thursday

Torbert’s 2025 games were not broadly low-flag or high-flag. They were almost exactly average. The useful distinctions were category-specific: fewer accepted pass-interference and roughing-the-passer calls, with more holding and unnecessary roughness than the league rates.

The published 2026 crew also changed at down judge and line judge. That makes last season’s group results even less transferable to one night in Buffalo.

The secondary-contact categories are still worth tracking. So is quarterback contact, if only because one accepted roughing-the-passer foul across 16 assignments was the most extreme number in the table. If replay or clock administration becomes consequential, the record should separate the on-field ruling, Torbert’s announcement and the league authority that actually resolved it.

That is as far as the pregame file can go. Torbert’s name supplies context. Thursday’s game will have to supply the evidence.

Research checked September 15, 2026. Assignment and schedule were current at that time; weekly substitutions remain possible. The 2025 statistics group games by assigned referee and do not measure missed calls, accuracy, advantage or bias. NFLPenalties identifies nflfastR as its 2020–2025 upstream source family, so they are not independent confirmations. The Detroit personnel census is bounded to 2016–2026 and establishes listed gamebook assignments, not a career-wide history. This remains a Comparative note with Finding No assessment offered, Disposition No action, and no SF-2026 entry.