In the waning seconds of the Kansas City Chiefs loss to the Buffalo Bills in Week 14, Mahomes could be found on the home team’s sideline ranting and throwing his helmet in a clear display of anger—the sort of emotional outburst and rage that Chiefs Kingdom has rarely seen from their franchise quarterback.
Not only was it another loss in the books for the Chiefs, who have lost four of their last six games to fall to 8-5 in the standings, but it was a heartbreaker that disappeared from the Chiefs’ grasp on the final drive.
In fact, they came oh-so-close to celebrating a come-from-behind win over the Bills after being down 20-17 thanks to a 49-yard pass from Mahomes to tight end Travis Kelce (to wide receiver Kadarius Toney).
But then it was called back.
On the magical play that ended up not counting, Kelce hit Toney with a lateral to take the pass from Mahomes the rest of the way to the end zone on a score that would have put the Chiefs up by 4 points. Instead, the Chiefs had the play called back thanks to an offensive offsides call. Yeah, offensive offsides. Here was Mahomes’s response:
After the game, Mahomes gave Josh Allen a quick idea of what he thought of that series.
If you’re wondering how all of this happened, you’re not alone. After the game, figures like Mahomes and head coach Andy Reid, whose press conferences are typically filled with boring coach-speak or player-speak taking all the blame and saying “we’ll do better” after each loss was suddenly flooded with emotion and criticism.
Mahomes said, “It’s tough to swallow. Not only from me, and football in general, to take away greatness like that, for a guy like Travis to make a play like that, you want to see the guys on the field decide the game. They’re human.
They make mistakes. But every week, we’re talking about something… It’s the call. Just in that moment. Not for myself. To have a flag change the outcome of the game. I’ve never had offensive offsides called. If it does, they warn you.
There wasn’t a warning the entire game. And then you make a call like that in the final minute? Another game, we’re talking about the refs. It’s not what we want for the NFL. It’s not what we want for football.”
