Denny Medley-Imagn Images
Fans have been claiming for several years now that the Kansas City Chiefs receive favorable calls from NFL officials. Many have even gone so far as to suggest that Chiefs’ games are often rigged in Kansas City’s favor.
Of course, it doesn’t help that many fans also hate all the publicity the team gets thanks to Taylor Swift, the fact that the Chiefs are ridiculously successful, how insufferable the Mahomes family has been, and since Patrick’s flopping started.
It happened again this past weekend during the Chiefs’ win over the Texans in the AFC playoffs. This time, however, it seemed to be even more egregious than normal.
On Monday, while discussing the Chiefs’ game against the Texans on First Take, Stephen A. Smith made a comment sure to mobilize a squadron of Taylor Swift fans.
“Here’s where the controversy comes in and it’s uncomfortable but we’ll say it because it’s First Take,” Smith said. “We’ll bring up the fact that Patrick Mahomes has box office appeal. We’ll bring up the fact that Taylor Swift being a Chiefs fan doesn’t hurt. That doesn’t mean the officials go out there and intentionally do this stuff, but it ain’t like the audience doesn’t have a reason to say, ‘What the hell is going on here?'”
That questioning of the legitimacy of some of the calls that go Kansas City’s way isn’t limited to just bitter NFL fans anymore. Troy Aikman pretty openly showed his disgust with it while calling Sunday’s game.
After the game, Houston Texans linebacker Will Anderson Jr. also expressed his suspicions, saying, “We knew it was going to be us versus the refs going into this game.”
Will Anderson: “We knew it was going to be us versus the refs going into this game.” pic.twitter.com/FReVbYspl5
— Will Kunkel (@WillKunkelFOX) January 19, 2025
Houston Texans head coach DeMeco Ryans also made some insinuations, telling the media, “We knew coming into this game, it was us versus everybody. When I say everybody, it’s everybody, all of – everybody, whatever, the naysayers, the doubt, everybody we had to go against today.”
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who Ryans was talking about when he referred to “everybody.”