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The Kansas City Chiefs Are Good, the NFL Referees Are Bad, And That’s Why the Discourse Is Ugly in 2025
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The NFL playoffs had a dramatic divisional round over the weekend. But instead of celebrating the Kansas City Chiefs knocking on the door of a three-peat Super Bowl appearance, it was the NFL referees who stole the headlines during the Chiefs’ 23-14 win against the Houston Texans after a couple of judgment call penalties went Kansas City’s way.
The ESPN broadcast, led by Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, belabored the officiating throughout the game, which only fueled discussion about it on social media. While the Disney-owned company kept cutting out the live audio that was picking up players swearing, it didn’t stop letting Aikman voice his disgust over the calls, which the NFL still supported a day after the game.
The play in the third quarter where a late slide by Patrick Mahomes led to two Houston defenders colliding helmet to helmet drew a flag on the Texans and the most ire yet from a groaning Aikman and the online mob.
Houston coach DeMeco Ryans stoked the flames even more after the game when he said “We knew going into this game that it was us against everybody” as a reference to the officials without explicitly mentioning them to avoid a fine.
I must have missed the part where Ryans bemoaned his team for missing three kicks, allowing eight sacks, giving up a 63-yard kick return to start the game, never having a lead, and leaving a 35-year-old Travis Kelce wide-open for the longest play of his postseason career.
But Saturday was a gold mine for those who believe that the officials are either purposely helping the Chiefs win games, or the NFL is flat-out rigging it to happen.
The problem with the Kansas City officiating conspiracy is that, like most conspiracies, it lacks verifiable evidence. It also reeks of confirmation bias, stems from fan jealousy of the team’s success, and has only been allowed to grow because of online misinformation and the comfort found in echo chambers filled with like-minded fanatics who all have an axe to grind against the Chiefs.
Meanwhile, one rational person could just spend a little time watching the NFL closely before reaching an obvious conclusion: Kansas City is really good, NFL referees are really bad, and these two truths are leading to some ugly discourse that reached a fever pitch Saturday.
But it could get even worse if the Chiefs win two more games this season for the three-peat. You know, the games everyone will be watching like the AFC Championship Game and Super Bowl LIX, which is just part of the problem here.
Let’s break it all down.
Table of Contents
The Origins of the Kansas City Officiating Conspiracy
Tale as old as time: Fans hate very successful teams who win year after year. Whether it’s the New York Yankees, the Los Angeles Lakers, or your typical NFL dynasty that overstays its welcome (1970s Steelers, 2001-19 Patriots), fans will usually gravitate towards hating the most successful team in the league, and that’s been the Chiefs in the Mahomes era since 2018.
However, the Kansas City officiating conspiracy has only been building up for the last few seasons. It started innocently enough like any other fan-driven agenda against a team that’s beating your favorite team. You might have seen the occasional disgruntled 49ers fan tweet complaints about a lack of holding penalties in Super Bowl LIV, the 31-20 loss that gave the Chiefs their first Super Bowl in the 2019 season. Raiders fans can be something to behold too.
But it didn’t really grow its legs as a conspiracy until the postseason for the 2022 season. That year, the Chiefs won those very high-profile games like the AFC Championship Game and Super Bowl against the Cincinnati Bengals and Philadelphia Eagles on last-second field goals.
Against the Bengals, Mahomes was shoved out of bounds, which drew a 15-yard flag for the late hit, and the Chiefs won 23-20 on a field goal on the next snap. It was a valid call. Two weeks later, they faced the Eagles in Super Bowl LVII and got a very tacky defensive holding call on third down (that may have also been valid by the letter of the law) that gave them a new set of downs, which they used to burn most of the clock before kicking the game-winning field goal in a 38-35 win.
Had the penalty not been called, the Chiefs would have settled for their field goal to go up 38-35, but Jalen Hurts and company would have had nearly a full two minutes to answer with a tying kick or go-ahead touchdown. A classic Super Bowl finish instead was given a neutered ending with the flag.
Even then, this was a terminally online conspiracy at best. It needed some kind of figurehead to bring it into the mainstream.
Enter Taylor Swift in 2023, the year she was the most popular woman on the planet. With Swift dating Travis Kelce, the Chiefs had a new wave of fans and interest in their team and games.
Swift was in attendance for a Week 4 game against the Jets on Sunday Night Football. The NBC broadcast showed her several times, and late in the fourth quarter of a 23-20 game, a Mahomes interception on 3rd-and-20 was negated by defensive holding on Sauce Gardner, a questionable call.
Never mind that the Jets were only still in the game because of a bogus penalty that resulted in a safety, or that the Chiefs were penalized multiple times on third-and-long conversions on the very same drive before that play happened with Garnder. But that one penalty in a high-profile game with a lot of people watching was enough to get the “NFL is rigged for Swift and the Chiefs” conspiracy going.
Even without any other major officiating controversies for the rest of the season involving the Chiefs, the idea that the league would rig it to have them in the Super Bowl again for the Swifties was an overriding theme through the end of the year when the Chiefs did win another dramatic Super Bowl in overtime against the 49ers.
That wouldn’t stop the disinformation campaign, including tweets like this that go viral and trick people with false data:
Then in the 2024 season, just go right to Week 2 to kick off a new level of the conspiracy when the Chiefs defeated Cincinnati, 26-25 on a last-second field goal, after a controversial call on 4th-and-16 for defensive pass interference against the Bengals.
But what exactly was the controversy other than it helped the Chiefs win the game? The defender was there early, he made contact with the receiver before the ball got there, and it was a textbook call. Never mind the fact the Chiefs were facing 4th-and-16 after they were penalized for converting a big play on 4th-and-6 for illegal use of hands.
If the refs were rigging the game for the Chiefs, or if the Chiefs get all the calls, then why would they ever call that penalty and deny them a conversion to the Cincinnati 34? The pass interference penalty put the ball at the Cincinnati 36 and the rest is history.
But since so many people watched that ending, it fit their narrative that the Chiefs get all the calls. Then as the Chiefs continued winning games by slim margins, this only fueled the conspiracy that they have the refs on their side, creating controversies even where none existed like the end of the Black Friday game against the Las Vegas Raiders.
The Raiders prematurely snapped the ball while they were trying to set up a game-winning field goal. The Chiefs recovered the fumble, which ended the game. There was a penalty for an illegal shift on the Raiders that was declined. But that didn’t stop the memes from pretending there was a false start call that was only changed to an illegal shift to help the Chiefs, which didn’t happen.
When you build this stuff up for years and it gets amplified by some of the worst accounts on NFL Twitter, it spreads easily. It carries over onto the TV shows and podcasts, and when someone like Aikman is throwing a multi-quarter tantrum over the officiating in front of the largest audience ever for an NFL game on ESPN (32.7 million), there’s no turning back.
When people are complaining about another play that didn’t even draw any penalty, there’s not much hope for thoughtful discourse. You either just laugh it off, ignore it, or ask someone for proof of a conspiracy.
The other thing you could do is just watch another NFL game and see that the officials are quite bad across the board. Always has been this way too. There’s just more people watching to notice it now and better technology to capture and share it with millions of people.
The Officiating Errors from the 2024 NFL Divisional Round
The funny thing about this Texans-Chiefs game is that the NFL still supported both calls that created the controversy Saturday. The NFL has admitted mistakes in the past but not this time.
But the roughing of the passer was upheld, noting the rule that contact was made to the face of Mahomes from the defender, and referees are instructed to throw the flag. It’s debatable how forcible the contact was, but there was contact, so it couldn’t have been reversed by replay assist where the video would have to show there was no contact. The ESPN broadcast not showing the side view more and close up only aided in the conspiracy as the view from the back doesn’t look like much.
On the late slide by Mahomes, that’s arguably the easier call to make. You had two defenders leading with their helmets in pursuit of a sliding Mahomes. One makes contact with his helmet to Mahomes’ helmet, and the only thing preventing it from being a bigger collision is that his own teammate comes in and blows him up helmet to helmet. That’s going to be a foul every time, especially against a defense that took out Trevor Lawrence recently with a nasty concussion hit on a slide play.
But that’s another play where a replay assist is not going to change anything. They can consider looking into whether a quarterback should lose their defenseless protection on scrambles down the field, but when you have two players head-hunting like the Texans did, that’s likely still going to be a penalty with helmet contact like that. Remember, a sliding player doesn’t need to touch down. He gave himself up and they still led with their helmets in that spot.
If the officiating in Texans-Chiefs had you riled up, then how about the rest of the weekend? The Commanders-Lions game on Saturday night featured a bogus facemask penalty on the Commanders, but the real controversy came on Jared Goff’s interception returned for a touchdown. During the return, Goff was blasted in the face on a cheap shot that momentarily knocked him out of the game and no flag was thrown.
Is there a Washington conspiracy to help get this team in the Super Bowl after decades of irrelevancy, or did the referees just miss another one because they’re generally bad at their job? The play should have been a penalty, the touchdown should have come off the board, and Washington would have retained the ball and had to score on offense.
In Sunday’s Ravens-Bills game, there were big complaints about a holding penalty on Buffalo’s offense early that shortcut a drive. Then the big one was the sketchy defensive pass interference penalty on Baltimore before halftime that helped extend a Buffalo drive. It looked closer to offensive interference than defensive, and it would have been best left as a non-call as former head of officiating Gene Steratore said on the CBS broadcast:
Welcome to the NFL where things like this happen weekly and in most games. But surely if the Chiefs were getting special treatment from the officials, some data would exist to show this, right? After all, penalties are recorded events with statistics available.
The Penalty Data Fails to Show a Conspiracy Involving the Chiefs
In the NFL since 2018, teams can expect to be penalized on average just over 100 times for around 850 yards in a full regular season. That’s basically six penalties per game for just over 50 yards on average.
The 2024 Chiefs are enjoying their best penalty season yet in the last seven years, but before you go thinking that’s proof of a rigged conspiracy, you aren’t going to like any of the data we’re about to share.
The Chiefs this year have been penalized 94 times for 829 yards. Their opponents have been penalized 107 times for 849 yards. That’s 13 more penalties on the opponent, but that’s also just for 20 more yards than the Chiefs. That’s 20 yards in 17 games, a minuscule difference that ranks as the 16th-best differential this year.
However, that +20 differential is the first time in the last seven years the Chiefs have had less penalty yardage than their opponents. The truth is the Chiefs are one of the more heavily penalized teams in the NFL since 2018.
The following table shows a variety of splits for 2018-24 for where the Chiefs rank in penalty yardage differential per game. The lower the rank, the more the Chiefs were penalized relative to their opponents relative to the rest of the NFL.
| Split | KC Games | PenYds DIFF/Game | Rk |
| All Games | 135 | -5.13 | 26 |
| Wins | 106 | -2.51 | 27 |
| Losses | 29 | -14.72 | 32 |
| Favored | 116 | -3.57 | 23 |
| Underdog | 19 | -14.68 | 32 |
| Playoffs | 19 | 13.74 | 6 |
| Reg. Season | 116 | -8.22 | 31 |
| One-Score Games | 77 | -9.23 | 30 |
| Wins by 9+ Points | 51 | 3.00 | 19 |
| Losses by 9+ Points | 7 | -19.29 | 32 |
| 2018 Chiefs | 16 | -16.94 | 31 |
| 2019 Chiefs | 16 | -11.56 | 27 |
| 2020 Chiefs | 16 | -9.94 | 27 |
| 2021 Chiefs | 17 | -0.82 | 17 |
| 2022 Chiefs | 17 | -6.12 | 25 |
| 2023 Chiefs | 17 | -14.18 | 31 |
| 2024 Chiefs | 17 | 1.18 | 16 |
In all games played, the Chiefs are 26th in penalty differential per game since 2018. Another way to read that is that they are the seventh worst with penalties.
If you only look at regular-season games since 2018, the Chiefs have the second-worst differential in penalty yards. It started poorly in 2018 when they were 31st, and they were 27th in their first Super Bowl season and 27th again in defending it in 2020. They were 17th in 2021 before a younger team fell to 25th in 2022, then back to 31st in 2023 (the initial Swift year) before finishing 16th this year.
You can also see that the Chiefs are 27th in penalties in their wins and dead last in games they lost, were an underdog, or lost by multiple scores.
The only split where they come out looking good is the playoffs, but that’s also the least reliable column in the table because of sample size issues. Three teams haven’t played a playoff game since 2018, and several have only played in one or a couple. The Chiefs are 16-3 in the playoffs in that time, so they have way more games than most teams and those numbers aren’t very comparable because of the sample sizes.
Meanwhile, take a wild guess which franchise has had the best penalty yardage advantage since 2018. Yep, it’s the Bengals (+8.47 yards/game), a fan base that has pushed the Chiefs’ officiating conspiracy as much as anyone.
People just simply haven’t dug into the numbers or aren’t aware of how penalty-prone the Chiefs have been over the years in a variety of ways. Sure, they’ll be aware that Mahomes has the most interceptions negated by penalty since 2018 by a wide margin, but that’s because he’s very good at drawing teams offsides for free plays or at spotting holding to the receiver he targets. He also had the most touchdowns negated by penalty in 2018-23:
Even in the last two years, the Chiefs have really struggled with offensive holding penalties, especially with right tackle Jawaan Taylor, the NFL’s most penalized player since 2023 (35 penalties).
- The 2024 Chiefs have 31 offensive holding penalties, tied with Miami for the most in the league.
- The Chiefs had a league-high 30 offensive holding penalties during last year’s Super Bowl run, which lasted 21 games, but the Chiefs still ranked No. 2 in penalties per game.
- The 2020 Chiefs also led the NFL with 1.37 offensive holding penalties per game (26 total).
When you show people the penalty numbers like this, their instinct is to change the argument to judgment calls like Saturday’s roughing of the passer, which helped lead to a field goal for the Chiefs. Okay.
Mahomes has drawn a roughing of the passer penalty 31 times in his career. That’s 0.237 calls per career game, which ranks 15th among quarterbacks since 2009. But that’s also directly behind Jimmy Garoppolo (0.238) and well behind his backup, Carson Wentz (0.309), who ranks No. 4.
Mahomes has a career-high six roughing-the-passer penalties in 2024, but he’s never led the league in that statistic. Josh Allen has twice in 2020 (11) and 2023 (7), and he ranks No. 3 with 0.311 such calls per game in his career. Allen also gets 31.6% of his roughing penalties on third down, which is higher than Mahomes (29.0%). Quarterbacks like Aaron Rodgers and Drew Brees had just over 40% of their roughing calls come on third down, so Mahomes ranks relatively low there too on high-leverage calls to extend drives.
Before you know it, people get desperate and cling to the idea that it’s not about total penalties or an offsides call in the first quarter. What about the huge judgment call like 4th-and-16 against the Bengals in Week 2? It must be that kind of play that the Chiefs are constantly getting away with, right?
Well, first of all, that call was correct. But let’s just go with it. Mahomes has led 29 game-winning drives already in his career. I looked at all 29 to see what the penalty count was. It’s +5 for the Chiefs with 14 calls for and 9 calls against. That’s not a very compelling case for 29 games.
If we limit it to only judgment calls and ignore things that are fairly binary like an offsides or false start, then it’s +3 for the Chiefs (8 for, 5 against). Again, not a frequent thing and none of them were ever as significant as 4th-and-16 in Week 2 against the Bengals, a call itself that only came after the Chiefs’ 4th-and-6 conversion was negated by illegal use of hands on the offensive line.
As shown in our table above, even in games decided by one score, the Chiefs rank 30th in penalty-yardage differential per game. That’s not good. That’s the third-worst mark in the league.
Others have dug into this look at penalties in tight moments and using a win probability metric. Nothing suggests any conspiracy to help the Chiefs with significant calls.
Finally, there’s the last resort where you just argue it’s the “no calls” that the Chiefs get away with where the refs don’t penalize them for holding or whatever. It’s a dead argument since no one can really quantify the impact of “no calls” as you’d have to dig through every play with a fine-tooth comb, looking for penalties at all angles and thinking you know how to apply them better than every crew. It’s a fool’s errand to even think you could try quantifying that for all 32 teams.
But if anyone can provide verifiable data that shows the Chiefs have a significant advantage with penalties, I’d love to see it, because so far there is nothing there. All the data shows is that the Chiefs are the best team at overcoming their penalties and winning games in a variety of ways.
Conspiracy Solved: The Chiefs Are Victims of Their Own Success
If the most egregious penalty in the NFL happens in the third quarter of a 1:00 PM game in Jacksonville that’s decided by 30 points, does anyone care? Does anyone see it or meme it? No, and that’s really the whole explanation behind the Kansas City conspiracy.
Whether it’s Saturday’s playoff game against Houston or Week 2 against the Bengals, the Chiefs draw ratings better than any NFL team. Their games are important, they are often close at the end, and a lot of eyeballs are on them to scrutinize every little thing. When you combine those elements along with a team that wins such games at a historic rate, you are going to get conspiracy theories like this in sports. It’s inevitable in this era.
It only feels like the Chiefs get more calls in key spots in big games because you’ve watched them play in more big games that have key spots than you have for teams like the Patriots, Giants, and Titans in recent years. Seriously, ask yourself how many Raiders games you’ve watched from start to finish the last five years that weren’t against the Chiefs?
It’s the nationally-televised games that paint just about every narrative in the NFL, including when the referees screw up:
- It took the Fail Mary in Seattle on Monday Night Football in 2012 to finally get rid of the replacement refs.
- The most egregious no-call in playoff history, the defensive pass interference by the Rams in New Orleans in the 2018 NFC Championship Game, was so widely hated that it actually got the league to let coaches challenge those calls for one season in 2019.
- A missed facemask against Sam Darnold against the Rams on Thursday Night Football was so bad this season that the NFL might look into adding that penalty into replay assist or a coach’s challenge.
If it doesn’t happen in an island game, it might as well not have happened at all in this league. But tens of millions of people frequently watch the Chiefs, and that team wins almost every game it plays these days. That’s had a disastrous impact on the psyche of so many NFL fans.
The Chiefs have broken many records and hearts already. Now they are breaking brains as people continue to push this referee conspiracy without any evidence. Even Aikman sounded ready to say it during Saturday’s broadcast. But would there be any personal reason why Aikman might be tired of seeing the Chiefs win so much?
At the end of the day, everyone’s still a fan too, and it’s natural to feel jealousy and fatigue over one team winning all the time. But to credit the referees for Kansas City’s dynasty? Please, this team’s path was forged by the Dee Ford offsides call in the 2018 AFC Championship Game, which allowed the New England dynasty to officially end and launch the Chiefs on their own run.
Love it, hate it, but don’t chalk it up to the refs who mess up these games every week for the whole league. Now can we get back to some reasonable three-peat discourse while we still can? The zebras aren’t changing their stripes anytime soon – not until they’re replaced by robots who can do a better job.
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