The Houston Texans believe they were up against both the Kansas City Chiefs and NFL referees on Saturday night after fuming about their controversial playoff defeat at Arrowhead.
DeMeco Ryans’ men were beaten 23-14 by Kansas City in a game marred by a number of contentious decisions that went in the home team’s favor.
Fans were left seething when Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes benefited from two huge calls on the night, including when Texans defensive end Will Anderson Jr was penalized for tackling him a split-second after he released the ball.
Referees also flagged two Houston defenders for unnecessary roughness after they made contact with Mahomes when he slid to the ground at the end of an offensive play, a decision Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy branded ‘disgusting’.
And having seen some controversial calls go against them, Anderson suggested after the game that the Texans were expecting to have their work cut out at Arrowhead.
‘We knew it was going to be us against the refs going into this game,’ he told reporters.
The Texans were on the wrong end of some controversial calls in their defeat to the Chiefs
Ryans echoed that sentiment in his postgame press conference, saying about the controversial decisions in Kansas City’s favor: ‘We knew going into this game, man, it was us vs everybody. When I say everybody, it’s everybody.’
He then added: ‘With that, knowing going into this game what we were up against, we can’t make the mistakes that we made. We had a lot of self-inflicted mistakes that happened.
‘Whether it’s special teams not converting our kicks, defensively not being where we’re supposed to be on coverage, offensively not protecting our quarterback and keeping him clean… you marry that on top of everything else that we had to deal with, it’s gonna be a really tough uphill battle.’
More to follow.
