The NFL could soon take action against Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes for supposedly exaggerating the hits that he is receiving during games.
Mahomes found himself at the center of a storm during the divisional-round victory over the Houston Texans recently. Amid the 23-14 win for the Chiefs which sends them to the AFC Championship Game, there was some officiating that certainly divided opinion.
In the fourth quarter, Mahomes seemed to massively exaggerate some contact from Henry To’oTo’o. Having thrown himself to the ground, the quarterback clearly wanted a penalty to be awarded.
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The officials weren’t actually fooled and didn’t flag, but that hasn’t stopped people getting very angry with the theatrics from Mahomes.
Commentator Joe Buck was fairly scathing of Mahomes at the time and analyst Brett Kollmann certainly felt Mahomes was in the wrong.
“Bad roughing calls happen. But this image leaves an unflattering impression of the guy meant to be the face of the sport. The league has to make flopping a foul or guys will just keep doing it. It’s not fair to defenders that QBs can have their cake and eat it too,” he wrote on X.
Some want a rule change
The fact that this keeps happening has led to calls for rule changes that would see players like Mahomes penalized for this sort of flopping.
In the first quarter, Texans defender Will Anderson Jr. was flagged for what referee Clay Martin described as “forcible contact to the face mask area.”
In the third quarter, officials penalized To’oTo’o for hitting Mahomes after he slid. Martin defended this call in the postgame press conference, saying:
“When [Mahomes] slides, he is considered defenseless. The onus is on the defender. I had forcible contact there to the hairline, to the helmet.”