MIKE BURKE
Allegany Communications Sports
Either Mark Twain or Charles Dudley Warner, depending on who you talk to, was to have said, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”
Kind of like NFL officiating, particularly when it comes to the Kansas City Chiefs and their quarterback Patrick Mahomes.
Oh, we’ve been down this road before with the New England Patriots and quarterback Tom Brady, a guy they even created a rule for, but all that we’re seeing for and from the Chiefs and Mahomes has been gnawing at the nerves of nearly every football fan outside of Kansas City.
Add Hall of Fame quarterback Troy Aikman to the list. Aikman was the game analyst for ESPN during last Saturday’s 23-14 Chiefs playoff victory over the Houston Texans, and he sounded a bit fed up over an unnecessary roughness call allegedly perpetrated toward Mahomes that cost the Texans 15 yards on what would become a Chiefs touchdown drive.
The Kansas City quarterback was running outside of the pocket and slid at the last possible second before Texans defenders collided, barely hitting Mahomes.
There was also a roughing the passer penalty in the first half on which Will Anderson Jr. barely hit Mahomes. There was also a hip-drop tackle, which the NFL banned last March, by the Chiefs that was not called, but the call when Mahomes ducked and the Texans collided is what got Aikman started.
“Oh, come on,” Aikman said on the broadcast. “He’s a runner. I could not disagree with that one more and he barely gets hit. That’s the second penalty now that’s been called against the Texans.”
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.”
Just before an ensuing Chiefs touchdown made it 20-12, Mahomes tried to draw another penalty by dusting off his Frank Costanza “stop short” ploy as he was running out of bounds. When he stopped just short of the line, as he often does, a Texans defender pushed him out of bounds and Mahomes performed a flop that would have made a soccer player proud.
There was no penalty this time, even though Mahomes has gotten calls on the ploy in the past.
“He’s trying to draw the penalty,” Aikman said. “Rather than just run out of bounds, he slows down. And that’s been the frustration and I get it. I understand it. That’s been the frustration for these defensive players around the league.”
Not to mention Texans head coach DeMeco Ryans, who said after the game, “We knew going into this game, man, it was us vs. everybody. When I say everybody, it’s everybody.”
Quite a contrast, as it always is, to the so-called protecting the quarterback rules the following night in the Baltimore Ravens’ 27-25 loss to the Buffalo Bills.
Where was the flag when Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson was tackled over three feet out of bounds, and not only tackled, but tackled with a hip-drop tackle, which is when a defender wraps up the ball carrier and then rotates his hips and drops onto the ball carrier’s legs and, again, was banned in March 2024.
Jackson is the least-protected NFL quarterback since Ben Roethlisberger, which might sound funny considering how big Roethlisberger is. But, man, the former Steelers quarterback was beaten like he owed the NFL money, and it was permitted to take place with very few calls, even though the protect-the-QB rules were supposedly in effect.
I was in Baltimore for the game when Roethlisberger had to leave the field with a broken nose. And he not only came back to play, but he did so without a penalty being called on the play. Think about that: For someone to break his nose, someone would have had to get his fist inside of Roethlisberger’s facemask, which is what that someone successfully did.
Some QBs get all the calls – real or imagined – such as Brady and Mahomes. Some QBs get none of the calls – broken noses or being hip-dropped three feet out of bounds — such as Roethlisberger and Jackson.
The NFL preaches one thing and turns its back on its own sermon, depending who it is and what team it is. We saw it with the Brady Patriots and now with the Mahomes Chiefs, and football fans outside of Kansas City have long grown tired of it.
And you know it’s not your imagination when you hear a Hall of Famer like Troy Aikman, a fellow quarterback, no less, tell us he’s grown tired of it, too.
Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on X @MikeBurkeMDT