Its the end of the season. The players are banged up, but hopefully the officials are all in peak form. The crew communication and synergy is unlikely to ever get better. So how good were Shawn Hochuli and his crew?
End of Season Officiating
Week 18 always has interesting dynamics. A lot of teams are resting starters, other teams have meaningless games, and a few teams have intense, playoff-impacting games. The NFL does not assign the best crews to the biggest games in-season. Even if they wanted to, all crews have newer and weaker officials rotate on periodically between seasons, so its not obvious what the NFL would look for when trying to put together the best in-season crew (the highest rated official average, the highest weakest official, the highest rated referee etc).