Well, the dust has settled a little bit. The Kansas City Chiefs are currently not in playoff position and we're about halfway through the season. Imagine predicting that at the beginning of the year. How many would believe you?
Before we move on completely from their Week 9 loss to the Buffalo Bills, though, let's look back at the infamous intentional grounding call on Patrick Mahomes in this one. Clearly, the officials got this one wrong, but on the live broadcast, some might have missed this: even ex-NFL official Gene Steratore thought it was the flat-out wrong call.
"I've been around for almost 30 years in this business. This is the first time that I have seen a play like that. My question would be though, if you were throwing the ball in an area of a player and a tipped football changed that, I would like it to be reviewable if it's not at this point," he said.
Now, if you know Steratore, you know that he'll try to be as respectful as possible when chiming in on live broadcasts. After all, like he said, he's been around this business for 30 years. But, you could hear the disappointment in his voice as he tried to figure out just what was going on here.
Gene Steratore said the quiet part out loud about the blown call against the Chiefs
He knew, in his heart of hearts, that this was blown by the refs. It was a complete miss, and the replay made it obvious. That ball was tipped. There is no question about it.
"We know that you can review a pass interference; not if the ball is tipped. In this scenario, Hoecht definitely touches that pass. And we see a receiver breaking to an area Patrick Mahomes is throwing to.
"Where this football lands is related directly to the fact that the ball got tipped," Steratore explained.
There it is. As if it was not blatant enough for everyone watching the countless replays at home, Steratore confirmed it. That ball was tipped.
Sadly, in the end, it didn't quite matter that much. There were plenty of other reasons why the Chiefs lost this football game.
Whether we're talking about bad play calls, big plays being allowed on defense (hello, linebackers being exposed), the inability to convert third downs or any other pain point from Week 9's showing, there were indeed many reasons why Kansas City lost this game.
It's a low-hanging fruit for opposing teams to take against the Chiefs, of course. The "refs love the Chiefs" conversation will probably never go away, unless we see multiple calls made like this one over the course of time. And, let's be honest, we probably won't.
Nevertheless, time for the Chiefs to put this one in the rear view, do some serious work on the bye and get ready for a Week 11 divisional matchup in Denver.