The Green Bay Packers pulled off a 27-19 upset victory over the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday night. The focus should be on their play on both sides of the ball, but instead, once again, much of the postgame discussion is centered on how the NFL has an officiating problem on its hands.
And deservingly so. On the final drive of the game, the referees made several egregious -- and if we're being up-front about it, extremely obvious -- mistakes, and they each individually could be argued to have had a significant impact on the game.
Let's start with the "late hit out of bounds" that was called on Packers safety Jonathan Owens against Patrick Mahomes. Mahomes scrambled away from pressure and took off for the first-down marker. Owens hit him, clearly within the field of play, but was nonetheless flagged and penalized 15 yards.
As former NFL referee Terry McAulay noted on the broadcast, this is very obviously not a personal foul. And yet, it was called one.
On the next snap, Mahomes connected with rookie wideout Rashee Rice for a 10-yard gain. The ball popped out of Rice's hands at the end of the play, and the officials allowed Corey Ballentine to return it 68 yards for a touchdown ... but Rice was pretty clearly down before the ball came out.
In addition to that, Chiefs running back Isiah Pacheco was ejected following the play because he took a swing at Packers DB KeiSean Nixon. The ejection was deserved, but the officials did not take a 10-second run-off following the penalty despite the fact that the Chiefs had no timeouts left.
On the very next play (again), the officials let Carrington Valentine get away with one of the more blatantly obvious instances of pass interference that you will ever see. He pretty much just tackled Marquez Valdes-Scantling just before the ball arrived.
A few players after that, Mahomes completed a 9-yard pass to MVS, who tried to fight his way out of bounds. But he was clearly moving backward at the time he exited the field, and the clock should have kept running. Instead, the officials ruled that he was moving forward and stopped the clock.
And on the final play of the game, there was another pretty clear pass interference as Owens shoved Travis Kelce forward as Kelce tried to catch Mahomes' last-second Hail Mary attempt.
Again, McAulay felt this clearly should have been called pass interference. And yet, it wasn't.
This all happened on one drive! It was really, really bad. Chiefs coach Andy Reid said he was not given an explanation about either uncalled pass interference and Patrick Mahomes said he liked that the officials let the players play through it, but those plays -- as well as the ones that went in Kansas City's favor -- are critical errors at critical moments that simply cannot happen.
The reason we have to keep talking about how the league has an officiating problem is that the league has an officiating problem. And it needs to be fixed.