If the refs aren’t overwhelmingly biased against the Saints, please explain this:

Thanks for the numerous responses.

My original point was just being a highly penalized team doesn't make it a conspiracy if your team is just a team who plays with a style more prone to being penalized.

What other posters pointed out however is the drop in penalties against the opponent. This carries more water.
So it makes you wonder why would teams get called less when playing the Saints than typical? Is it something environmental that affects it?
Conspiracy would be one theory, the other would be perhaps there are certain styles of play where the opponent doesn't have as much of an opportunity to create penalties. (I don't know what that style would be necessarily).

My point on that is say you have a team that never passes the ball. The defense will never get called for pass interference, and probably not defensive holding.
If the other team doesn't sack your QB or get near your QB, they won't get called for late hits as frequently, roughing the passer, etc.
If the running backs don't run with a stiff arm, they won't get called for offensive face masking.

I guess the next step would be to see what type of penalties opponents normally get called for, and which ones drop when they play the Saints. (Maybe there is less offensive holding calls due to less running plays because the teams are passing more to try to catch up if faced with an early deficity.

Not throwing out any accusations here, just trying to interpret possible causes outside of the NFL being biased.
We have two years of remarkably consistent data against a variety of opponents, and also compared against the somewhat varied playoff teams on each season .

There are substantial difference in totals when compared to 2016-2018.

In taking out all the pre-snap penalties (which involve almost zero judgment) from both sides and looking at only flow-of-play penalties (where there is lots of flexibility for a referee), and penalties that grant a first down, it goes from really bad to really worse.

It’s not a dictat from NFL HQ. It’s the refs being butt hurt about being called out after the NFCCG, and also the NFL letting them have their fun because the fans don’t notice and why start any **** with the refs union over something nobody sees?