https://sports.yahoo.com/patrick-mahomes-doesnt-believe-chiefs-142851062.html
Many are saying the officials help the Chiefs. Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes is not one of the many.
“I don’t feel that way,” Mahomes told reporters on Wednesday, via Adam Teicher of ESPN.com. “At the end of the day, the referees are doing their best to call the game as fair and as proper as they possibly can. And all you can do is go out there and play the game that you love as hard as you can and live with the results. . . . I think that’s what we preach here in Kansas City.
“You get new referees every year, you get new circumstances, and you never can really tell because every play’s different and that’s what makes the NFL so special. I feel like I’ve just continued to play the game, and I just try to win, and whatever happens kind of happens.”
With all due respect to those who routinely coat their craniums with aluminum, the NFL is not scripted or rigged. It would be impossible to pull it off, and to keep it secret.
That said, subconscious biases potentially impact the behavior of officials. During the 2022 season, NFL executive V.P. of football operations Troy Vincent defended the protection of quarterbacks by pointing out that the NFL becomes a less popular product on TV if the best quarterbacks can’t play due to injury. While the 2023 season, which featured a rash of quarterback injuries, might have debunked that, the blurring of the line between football business and football integrity potentially plants a seed in the minds of officials who realize that it’s good for business if a team like the Chiefs are winning football games.
Decisions to throw or not call a penalty happen in an instant. Many factors influence the formulation of the message the brain does, or doesn’t, send to the hand that is poised to remove the yellow flag and throw it.
When the officials hear the executive ultimately in charge of football is defending penalty enforcement based on business considerations, business considerations necessarily creep into the stew that ultimately drives the analysis of when and where a flag is thrown.
The question now becomes whether the backlash against the officiating — coupled with a growing sense of Chiefs fatigue — will push the needle in the other direction. If that happens, advantage Bills.
https://sports.yahoo.com/patrick-mahomes-doesnt-believe-chiefs-142851062.html
