Mahomes, Reid criticize offside call that negated Kelce lateral TD

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – For a second straight week, Patrick Mahomes and the frustrated Chiefs had to “talk to the refs,” this time after an offsides penalty on wide receiver Kadarius Toney negated what would have been an epic finish against the Buffalo Bills on Sunday.

The penalty erased a 49-yard touchdown run featuring a cross lateral from tight end Travis Kelce to Toney. The play would have given the Chiefs the lead with just over a minute to play.

Instead, they ended up turning the ball over after the penalty and lost 20-17 for their second straight loss.

Mahomes said a receiver is usually warned before receiving an offsides penalty. He said Toney was never warned.

“I played for seven years [and] never was an offensive offside called,” Mahomes said. “It's elementary school [stuff] we speak. There were no warnings during the entire match. So you wait until there's a minute left in the game to make a decision like that? It's hard. At a loss for words. It's hard. It doesn't matter if we win or lose, it's just the end of another match and we're talking about the referees. This is simply not what we want for the NFL and for football.

“What you want as a competitor is to practice all week to go out there and try to win, and you want to make it about your team and this team and see what happens. You don't want to talk about that stuff after the game. I don't care if there was a flag on the next player or whatever, not a flag. I want to go out there and play and then see what happens go to the end, see what the score is, and then I can live with the results.

Mahomes had heated visibility on the sideline, yelling at the officials about the call as the Bills ran down the clock after getting the ball back. He said he asked three different officials about the call and never received a response.

In a pool report, referee Carl Cheffers said judge Mike Carr saw Toney lined up offside.

“Ultimately, they are responsible for where they line up,” Cheffers said. “No warning is required, especially if they are lined up so far away that they block the view of the ball.

“We would give them a warning if it was close, but this one in particular is beyond a warning.”

Chiefs coach Andy Reid, also noting that neither he nor any of the Chiefs receivers had been warned about any of their players being offside, said the penalty call was “a little embarrassing in the National Football League to make this happen.”

Officiating was also a topic in the Chiefs locker room following last week's 27-19 loss to the Green Bay Packers, as an apparent pass interference penalty on a defender covering Kansas City wide receiver Marquez Valdes- Scantling, in the final moments of the match, was not called. .

“For a guy like Travis to make a play like that…who knows if we win, but I know as fans you want to see the guys on the field decide the game, and that's why the Last week I didn't say anything about the flag,” Reid said Sunday. “They didn't call Marquez. They are human. They make mistakes. But every week we talk about something.”

Still, Mahomes called the play Kelce made a “legendary moment.”

“It’s something that only a few people in this world would think of doing,” he said. “For him to make that play in that moment, make the catch, make a couple guys miss and throw the ball across the field to another guy and score a touchdown in that moment, hopefully they'll still show it every time he goes into the Hall of Fame, because it's a legendary moment that we haven't really had the opportunity to witness.