The unnecessary roughness penalty that put the Kansas City Chiefs in position to kick a game-winning field goal in the AFC Championship Game will undoubtedly go down in Cincinnati Bengals lore for all the wrong reasons, which is probably why some have engaged in a bit of revisionist history in the days since.
Mahomes was hit late by Joseph Ossai while going out of bounds during the final minute of the Chiefs’ 23-20 win over the Bengals in Sunday’s AFC Championship. The 15-yard penalty put the Chiefs firmly in range for a game-winning field goal, which is why some Bengals fans tried to accuse Mahomes of exaggerating the contact in order to draw a flag.
Mahomes was asked about this on Thursday and pretty much laughed off the accusations, adding that his injured ankle prevented him from stopping quickly.
“The most pain I had was stopping. So once he pushed me, it would have been hard to put my foot in the ground and try to stop. So I rolled through it,” Mahomes said, via Jesse Newell of the Kansas City Star. “You get over there with the heaters and the benches and people, that’s where a lot of times, people get hurt. I think that’s the reason why there’s a flag for getting pushed out of bounds like that late.
“I mean, I was pretty far out of bounds. It was probably the furthest I’ve been out of bounds before I’ve been hit. So I rolled through it.”
Few argued at the time that the play was not a penalty. Even Ossai himself seemed to know as much.
If Bengals fans want to be mad about something on the play in question, they would probably be better served focusing on one particular non-call as opposed to the flag that was actually thrown.
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