NFL Referees Issue A Statement Calling Allegations Of Chiefs Bias “Insulting & Preposterous” But Nobody Believes Them

Aaron Ryan·
CULTURESPORTS
·
Patrick Mahomes Kansas City Chiefs
Brent Gudenschwager/ZUMA Press Wire via Alamy

The numbers don’t lie…

It’s Super Bowl week, with the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles facing off in New Orleans this weekend in Super Bowl LIX. And no matter how hard they try, it seems the NFL and the Chiefs can’t get away from the narrative that the referees helped the Chiefs get there.

Of course the allegations aren’t new, and have popped up in the past couple of seasons as the Chiefs have won the last two Super Bowls. But it seems like this year, it’s been an even bigger story.

And there are a couple of reasons for that. First, the Chiefs just haven’t looked as good this year as they have in years past. They won 10 games this season by one score or less en route to a 16-2 record and the top seed in the AFC.

Along the way, there were plenty of calls from the referees that helped the Chiefs, whether they were questionable penalties on their opponents, the Chiefs getting away with something that should have been flagged, or just head-scratching calls from officials.

But things really got out of control in the playoffs when the Chiefs faced the Houston Texans in the AFC Divisional Round game and the Texans were hit with a couple of penalties that left even the announcers calling out the officiating.

The first was a phantom roughing the passer call on defensive end Will Anderson Jr. after this unbelievably soft hit on Patrick Mahomes:

While announcers Troy Aikman and Joe Buck initially agreed with the call, they brought in rules analyst Russell Yurk for the replay, who explained that he didn’t see enough contact to throw the flag:

“Based on what you saw, it looked like he did come up high with the helmet but it looked like that first contact was to the upper chest area. I didn’t see anything there that supported a foul.”

But it didn’t get any better from there. During the third quarter, the Chiefs botched a snap and Mahomes quickly picked up the loose ball and took off running. And while sliding down, two Texans defenders went for the tackle at the same time, colliding with each other as the QB was sliding.

It looked like the defenders took the brunt of the hit, with incidental contact to Mahomes at best. But once again the flag came out, this time for unnecessary roughness on the tackle. And Aikman couldn’t hold back and longer:

“Oh, come on! I mean, he’s a runner. I could not disagree with that one more. And he barely gets hit. That’s the second penalty now that’s been called against the Texans.”

Yurk agreed with Aikman that the penalty was bullshit, and Aikman called on the NFL to address the issue in the offseason:

“They’ve got to address it in the offseason. You can’t as a quarterback run around and play games with defenders and then be able to draw a penalty.”

The Chiefs ended up winning the game by 9 points, and went on to the AFC Championship Game against the Buffalo Bills no doubt hoping to avoid any officiating controversy and prove that they don’t need help from the refs to get to the Super Bowl.

Spoiler alert: That didn’t happen.

During the championship game, Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen appeared to have a critical first down late in the game – but the refs ruled him short, allowing the Chiefs to get the ball back and go on to take the lead and punch their ticket to the Super Bowl.

Needless to say, the accusations of bias have plagued the NFL and the Chiefs this week, with everybody doing their best to dismiss them and focus on the game. But yesterday, the NFL Referees Association released a statement directly addressing what they called “conspiracy theories,” claiming that the allegations the refs favor or help out the Kansas City Chiefs “insulting and preposterous.”

“Officiating crews do not work the same team more than twice each regular season. It is insulting and preposterous to hear conspiracy theories that somehow 17 crews consisting of 138 officials are somehow colluding to assist one team.” 

Well that settles it, right? The referees denied it so there’s no way they favor the Chiefs.

Not exactly. After releasing the statement, people began to pull out the statistics that would seem to indicate a clear trend:

Hey, just looking at the numbers here.

Of course a lot of people think the fact that the NFL and the Referees Association even addressed the matter makes them sound even more guilty. But at this point, there’s not really anything they can do to convince people otherwise until something changes with the officiating.

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