Former NFL head of officiating and FOX Sports’ NFL and college football rules analyst Dean Blandino poured cold water on the red-hot narrative that NFL officials favor the Kansas City Chiefs.
“Do teams get breaks at times? They do. And not every call is right. And sometimes that happens,” Blandino told TMZ Sports on January 28. “I think it evens out over time. But me watching it, I don’t see these games and say, ‘Oh god, the Chiefs are getting all these calls.’ These are close, close plays and they happened to go in the Chiefs’ favor on Sunday.”
In terms of there being a script that the NFL writes ahead of the season, Blandino said if there were scripts written he would know about it.
“If there’s a room somewhere in the NFL offices where they were writing the script, they never invited me — and I was the head of officiating,” Blandino said. “I feel like I’d be a pretty important contributor to that.”
The Chiefs Aren’t Favored; They Are Just Better Than Your Favorite Team
The reality is this: NFL officiating, no matter the game, needs to be more consistent.
The only reason the Chiefs are constantly put under the microscope when it comes to officiating is because they are one of the few NFL teams consistently put in the national spotlight, especially this time of the year. It’s a similar issue to what the New England Patriots dealt with during their success in the 2000s and 2010s, but back then social media wasn’t what it is now.
The two-time defending Super Bowl champions are not favored by the officials. The Chiefs are a well-disciplined team that reduces their negative plays when the playoffs begin. On top of that, through play calling on both sides of the football Kansas City puts a lot of pressure on its opponents, which can force mistakes. Because of that, oftentimes the Chiefs will have fewer penalties than their opponents.
X Users React to Chiefs Being Favored by Referees Narrative
Users on X, formerly Twitter, react to the narrative that the Chiefs are being favored by the referees.
“If the Chiefs had ten calls go against them and their opponents had one call go against them in EVERY game, there would still be one schmuck that would say, “Yeah, but when was that one call made? Huh?!” one person wrote.
“The NFL keeps enacting penalties that are judgment calls, so every game has questionable calls–but the Chiefs are on national tv regularly –and they’re tired of the winning. I get it, I used to feel the same about NE when [Tom] Brady was QB,” another person wrote.
“It’s all lazy nonsense that actually prevents the other teams from taking accountability for their mistakes,” another person wrote. “Bills tushpushs were awful, they took points off the board to get a 2pt conversion which they didn’t get, their corners weren’t great & they underused James Cook.”
“The NFL has a real problem on their hands,” another person wrote. “Social media and the league’s partnership with gambling has created a vacuum of derangement that threatens their product way more than they realize. Grown adults think it is similar to WWE and that should be a huge concern.”
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