Officiating mistakes mar final drive of Packers’ win over Chiefs on ‘Sunday Night Football’
The Green Bay Packers defeated the Kansas City Chiefs 27-19 on Sunday night. The focus should be on the play on both sides of the ball, but instead, much of the postgame discussion once again revolves around the problems the NFL has. That’s great. In the second half of the game, there were mistakes by the referees, and to be honest, there were some very obvious mistakes and you can say that each of them had a huge impact on the game. . Let’s start with the “late hit” that Jonathan Owens called for against Patrick Mahomes. Mahomes avoided the pressure and scrambled for the first down. Owens hit him clear down the field but was still flagged for 15 yards and penalized.
As former NFL referee Terry McAulay pointed out, it clearly wasn’t a personal foul. But he was called one.
On the next snap, Mahomes connected with rookie Rashee Rice for a 10-yard gain. The ball slipped out of Rice’s hands late in the play and the officials allowed it to be returned 68 yards to Corey Ballentine, but Rice was clearly down before the ball was cleared. Meanwhile, Chiefs Isaiah Pacheco was ejected after the game for sliding Packers DB KaySean Nixon. The ejection was correct, but the officials did not call 10 seconds after the penalty kick, even though the timeout had expired. On the next play (again), the refs had Carrington Valentine display one of the most blatant examples of pass interference I’ve ever seen. He tackled Marquez Valdes-Scantling until the ball arrived. A few plays later, Mahomes completed a 9-yard pass to MVS, who was trying to get out of bounds. But he clearly fell back as he left the field and the clock should have run. Instead, the officials determined he had advanced and stopped the clock.
First, there are 19 seconds left
On the final play, Owens had another apparent pass interception as he tackled Travis Kelce as Kelce tried to catch Mahomes’ last-minute Hail Mary attempt. Both teams had poor ratings from the referees.
But is there an entirely different Hail Mary rule that the referees in this game use?
Again, McAuley thought it would be better to call it pass interference. But that didn’t happen.
All in one trip! It was really bad. Coach Andy Reid said he didn’t get an explanation for the unexpected pass interference, and Patrick Mahomes said he likes it when the refs give their players the go-ahead, but he liked the play as well as Kansas City’s. A fatal error that cannot happen at a critical moment.
The reason we keep saying the league has an officiating problem is because the league has an officiating problem. And it needs to be fixed.
