NFL chooses familiar face to referee Seahawks-Rams conference title game

Clay Martin will act as crew chief for the NFC Conference Championship game between the Seattle Seahawks and Los Angeles Rams at 6:30 p.m. ET on Sunday.

Sunday's game will be Martin's sixth postseason assignment, having worked three Wild Card games and two Divisional Round games since being promoted from umpire to referee in 2018. This will be his first time leading the officiating crew in a conference championship.

Officiating trends

In Martin's playoff refereeing career, four out of five home teams were favored to win their games at varying probabilities, for an expected 3.5 home wins. All five home teams won their games, including the one underdog.

In the 2025 regular season, Martin refereed 16 games, including nine teams favored at home. Six of the nine home favorites won their games. A full breakdown of these stats in Martin's 2025 games is summarized below:

Game type	Expected win %	Actual win %	Difference
Home favorites	77%	67%	-10%
Home underdogs	42%	67%	+25%
Home teams	63%	63%	+0%
Favorites	69%	53%	-16%

In Martin's 2025 games, the biggest outlier is an over-performance of home underdogs. Luckily for Seattle, they are favored at home on Sunday. However, home favorites have also underperformed slightly under Martin's refereeing this year. On the other hand, Martin has called 0.38 fewer penalties per game on home teams than league average, and home teams are undefeated in the playoffs when Martin is the referee.

You may read elsewhere that Martin has a bias one way or the other, but the reality is that the sample size is too small to say definitively. One can fashion an argument in either direction by cherry picking one or more of these stats. The full picture provided by the data does not support this.

Seahawks history

Clay Martin was referee in a Seahawks game most recently in Week 6 this season, when Seattle defeated the Jaguars in Jacksonville. The Seahawks were flagged 10 times for 76 yards; the Jaguars were flagged 7 times for 56 yards.

Martin also has some experience with the Seahawks-Rams rivalry. He was the referee for a game between them in the 2024 season in which the Rams defeated the Seahawks in an overtime, in Seattle. There were 178 combined penalty yards in that game, the 8th-most of any game that season. Across all seasons, the Seahawks are 4-3 in games with Martin as the referee.

Rams wide receiver Demarcus Robinson, left, catches a touchdown pass against Seattle Seahawks cornerback Riq Woolen during overtime of an NFL football game in Seattle, Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024. | (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

The upcoming conference championship will be the fourth game refereed by Clay Martin for the Mike Macdonald-led Seahawks. The last time Macdonald and Martin met in the playoffs, Macdonald was in his first year as defensive coordinator for the Ravens when they lost to the Bengals in the wild card round.

Officiating trends

Seahawks history

More Seahawks on SI stories