As the Kansas City Chiefs and Houston Texans squared off in the divisional round at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium, the ref “voodoo magic” that seems to follow the Chiefs in big moments reared its ugly (or to Chiefs fans, beautiful) head.
In the first half, Will Anderson Jr. looked to have taken down Patrick Mahomes on third down that would have forced Kansas City to punt. The refs threw a flag on Anderson and the Chiefs got the first down and got to continue their drive, which resulted in a field goal, putting them up 6-3.
At the end of the third quarter, Mahomes was scrambling around with the football, slid late and was eventually hit by a Texans defender. A flag was thrown on the defender for unnecessary roughness, once again giving K.C. a fresh set of downs.
As you can expect, people were not happy with the call, and color commentator Troy Aikman was one of those people. He eviscerated the referees on the broadcast, noting that it was the second silly call on the Texans.
Troy Aikman wasn’t pleased with the officiating in Chiefs-Texans divisional round game
For Chiefs fans, they’re going to think these were the correct calls because it happened to their quarterback and their team. For outsiders (and Chiefs fans who can be unbiased), the calls were pretty weak.
The second penalty was especially weak because at that point, Mahomes had become a runner and he was running around trying to make something happen. When runners get hit, there aren’t typically flags thrown unless it’s an egregious hit. This one wasn’t that.
Aikman wasn’t shy about calling out the officials and didn’t hesitate to make comments about Mahomes either. When the quarterback ran to the sideline on 2nd-and-Goal in the fourth quarter, Aikman noted how Mahomes slowed down and said that he was clearly trying to draw a penalty there.
Hey, if you’re a star quarterback and the refs are calling the game in your favor, why not try to take advantage of it? I get Aikman complaining about it since his job is to discuss what he’s seeing but is he really surprised about this?
