The cynics who think the NFL is doing the Kansas City Chiefs favors week after week are having a field day during the Divisional Round game with the Houston Texans.
There was a roughing the passer penalty questioned in the first half. And in the fourth quarter a personal foul was widely debated as to why a flag was thrown.
The drive continued and Patrick Mahomes was falling to the turf as he threw a pass that ended in the hands of the great Travis Kelce for a touchdown.
After the PAT, the Super Bowl champs led 20-12.
Troy Aikman on the ESPN broadcast disagreed with the penalty call.
Troy Aikman incensed at Patrick Mahomes roughing call, DeMeco Ryans says Texans were against ‘everybody’
Texans’ Will Anderson Jr.: ‘We knew it was going to be us versus the refs’
It has become a pastime for NFL fans to complain that the Kansas City Chiefs get all the calls. And NFL officials keep giving them reasons to complain.
On Saturday it wasn’t just disgruntled non-Chiefs fans sounding off. ESPN’s Troy Aikman was not happy at all over an unnecessary roughness call on Patrick Mahomes that cost the Houston Texans 15 yards in an AFC divisional-round game at Arrowhead Stadium.
Mahomes was running around and slid at the last possible second. Two Texans defenders collided, Mahomes was barely hit, but the penalty was against Houston.
It wasn’t the only time the Chiefs had the benefit of a call in their 23-14 victory that put them in the AFC championship game for the seventh straight season.
There was a roughing the passer penalty on Will Anderson Jr. in the first half in which Anderson barely hit Mahomes. A hip-drop tackle on the Chiefs wasn’t penalized, though officials have rarely called that all season. The call when Mahomes ducked down and barely got hit was enough to infuriate Aikman.
“Oh, come on,” Aikman said on the broadcast as the call was being made.
“He’s a runner. I could not disagree with that one more and he barely gets hit,” Aikman said. “That’s the second penalty now that’s been called against the Texans.”
It’s worth noting that Aikman is a former quarterback. They usually stick together, but the call on Houston was so bad that Aikman had to stand up for the defensive players.
ESPN rules analyst Russell Yurk also said it was a bad call.
“Troy I agree with you. There’s no forcible contact to the head and neck area of him,” Yurk said. “The two Houston players hit each other and that should not have been a foul.”
The Chiefs kept moving the ball downfield after that call and Mahomes hit Travis Kelce for a touchdown and a 20-12 lead. Right before that TD pass, Aikman continued his disdain for the rules protecting QBs on a play where Mahomes was shoved out of bounds. This time, no penalty was called.
Texans head coach DeMeco Ryans was asked about the calls that went against the Texans and he said he knew his team would be going against “everybody,” and that can be left to interpretation what he meant.
“We knew going into this game man, it was us vs. everybody,” Ryans said in his postgame media conference. “When I say everybody, it’s everybody. All the whatever, everybody. The naysayers, the doubt, right? Everybody, we had to go against today. With that, knowing going into this game knowing what we were going up against, we can’t make the mistakes we made.”
Texans defensive end Will Anderson Jr. put it bluntly during his postgame assessment of the loss.
“We knew it was going to be us against the refs going into this game,” Anderson said, via Will Kunkel of the Houston Fox affiliate.
The Chiefs are a great dynasty. On Saturday, most of the discussion had to do with how many calls they get from the officials. That’s probably not the look the league wants.
The Houston Texans had an eventful start to their divisional round game against the Kansas City Chiefs. It’s tough to have a total breakdown on a play, a dumb penalty and a shove from a player to coach all within the first 13 seconds of the game.
The Chiefs got off to a good start Saturday with a nice 63-yard kickoff return from Nikko Remigio. Texans cornerback Kris Boyd eventually tackled him, forcing a fumble that the Chiefs recovered. Then Boyd lost his mind.
Boyd threw his helmet as he was exiting the field, which was a 15-yard penalty on Houston. Then he gave a big shove to Texans special teams coordinator Frank Ross as he got to the sideline.
All of it is a bad look for Boyd. That’s not a tiny little shove as he was trying to get by Ross to the bench.
The Texans’ defense helped the situation from getting worse. They held the Chiefs to a field goal after the kickoff return and penalty. That helped the opening sequence from being a total disaster.
But it was certainly not the first 13 seconds that the Texans hoped for in their quest for upsetting the back-to-back champs.
Their attempt ultimately came up short as the Texans lost, 23-14.
Taylor Swift had a special guest at Arrowhead Stadium on Saturday: Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark.
Clark joined the singer in her suite as the Kansas City Chiefs defeated the Houston Texans in the divisional round of the playoffs. Clark and Swift sat in a box along with the family and friends of Swift and her boyfriend, Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.
Taylor Swift and Caitlin Clark were spotted in the same box at Arrowhead Stadium during Saturday’s AFC divisional playoff between the Chiefs and Texans. (Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)
Clark, a lifelong Chiefs fan, is also a noted fan of Swift’s music: In her 2024 Athlete of the Year profile in Time, she spoke about attending back-to-back Eras Tour shows at Lucas Oil Stadium, where she met Swift’s mother and Kelce. Swift gave Clark merchandise and invited her to join her for a Chiefs game.
Clark spoke about her Chiefs fandom on Kelce’s “New Heights” podcast earlier this month, telling Travis and Jason Kelce that she had been a Kansas City fan all her life.
“I’m a Midwest kid,” she said, explaining that her hometown of Des Moines, Iowa, is three hours from Kansas City, Missouri, and that she also had family there. “My dad was a big Chiefs fan growing up. People think I’m a bandwagon Chiefs fan, I’m like, ‘No, I was there before Patrick [Mahomes] and Travis [Kelce]. We were ride or die.”
Kansas City won, 23-14, with Mahomes now heading to his seventh consecutive AFC championship game. Kelce finished with 117 yards receiving and a touchdown.
Texans have a bad start
The Texans needed to play their best to beat the Chiefs. On the first play, they gave up a 63-yard kickoff return, cornerback Kris Boyd took a 15-yard penalty for throwing his helmet after the play and he shoved special teams coordinator Frank Ross when he got to the sideline. Not exactly the perfect start Houston needed.
The Chiefs only got a field goal out of that big return. Kansas City didn’t get off to a great start offensively, but the Texans didn’t take advantage of it. The Chiefs’ defense had a very good first half, buying time for the big play from the Chiefs’ offense that would inevitably come.
And it did. Travis Kelce got open in the middle of the field and Mahomes found him. He rumbled 49 yards to the Houston 6-yard line. A few plays later, Kareem Hunt scored to give the Chiefs a 13-3 lead. It was the first time all season Kelce had a play with more than 20 yards after the catch, according to Next Gen Stats. Last season, Kelce came alive in the playoffs, and he started this postseason with seven catches for 117 yards and a touchdown.
It was a fairly typical Chiefs game this season. They hadn’t played particularly well on offense. They had just 123 yards at halftime, and 49 of it came on Kelce’s catch-and-run. But they also didn’t make any critical mistakes, and their defense played well. And despite some lethargic offense, Kansas City led 13-6 at the half.
Chiefs extend their lead
The Texans had an impressive drive to start the second half. They had to gain 101 yards on offense to offset 19 yards of penalties on the drive. It lasted 15 plays and 10:24 on the clock and ended with a Joe Mixon touchdown. That gave the Texans some momentum, which was quickly wiped away when Ka’imi Fairbairn missed the extra point wide right. Still, Houston trailed 13-12 and seemed very much in the game. But the Chiefs are hard to beat.
At that point Houston was outgaining Kansas City 275-123. The Texans had outplayed the Chiefs but were still trailing. It feels hopeless to those rooting against the Chiefs when they don’t play well and they move on in the playoffs.
Kansas City Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes celebrates during a win over the Houston Texans on Saturdat in Kansas City, Missouri. (Photo by Aaron M. Sprecher/Getty Images)
Kansas City started to put it away after that. There was the questionable call on a hit against Mahomes, and the Kelce touchdown. The Texans made a mistake on fourth-and-10, being indecisive before going for it and then rushing a play that led to a sack. A bad punt led to good field position and a Chiefs drive that ended in a field goal and an 11-point lead.
The Texans had a shot at a field goal inside the two-minute warning to cut Kansas City’s lead to eight points, after the Chiefs’ eighth sack of the game, but it was blocked and that sealed the win.
The Chiefs are two wins from making history. No team has ever won three straight Super Bowls. Kansas City went 15-2 this season, including one loss in which they rested all their key players, and have a spot in the NFL’s final four again. At some point it doesn’t matter how it looks or if they’re playing their best. In all but a few rare cases in the Mahomes era, they’ve always been good enough to win the biggest games.
Fans who don’t root for the Chiefs might not like it, but they get to spend another conference championship weekend watching Mahomes try to make it back to another Super Bowl.
