Kansas City Chiefs have a checkered past with referee Carl Cheffers, who will officiate Week 1 vs. the Los Angeles Chargers in Brazil

18-year NFL referee Carl Cheffers and his crew are set to officiate the Kansas City Chiefs’ Week 1 matchup against the Los Angeles Chargers in São Paulo, Brazil.

Cheffers has a somewhat checkered past when it comes to officiating Chiefs games during the Andy Reid era. It all started in the 2016 postseason, during Kansas City's divisional round matchup with the Pittsburgh Steelers. A controversial holding penalty on left tackle Eric Fisher wiped out what would’ve been a game-tying two-point conversion attempt by the Chiefs. They’d go on to lose that game by those two points, 18-16.

Travis Kelce laid into Cheffers afterward with an iconic rant. 

“It’s ignorance, the ref, No. 51 (Carl Cheffers), should never be allowed to wear a Zebra jersey again,” Kelce said. “He shouldn’t even be able to work at *expletive* Foot Locker.”

The NFL fined Kelce nearly $10K for his comments, but that was only the tip of the iceberg for Cheffers and Kansas City.

A rundown of Carl Cheffers' recent history with the Kansas City Chiefs

• In Super Bowl LV against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Cheffers was the official in charge. Kansas City was penalized 11 times for 120 yards, while Tampa Bay was only penalized four times for 39 yards. Cheffers and his crew set a Super Bowl record for first-half penalties in that game.
• Cheffers officiated Week 5 against the Las Vegas Raiders in 2022, where his crew called a controversial roughing the passer penalty on Chiefs DT Chris Jones. It eliminated a sack fumble and sparked league-wide outrage over the inconsistencies of the roughing-the-passer rule. Cheffers was visibly shaken by the crowd's response in Arrowhead Stadium in this instance.
• In 2022's Week 15 game against the Houston Texans, Cheffers and his crew called a season-high 10 penalties against Kansas City for 102 yards.
• Cheffers also officiated the Chiefs' win over the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LVII. Still, the holding penalty on Eagles CB James Bradberry against Chiefs WR Juju Smith-Schuster was the talk of the town in Philadelphia after the game. Some of their players were still bitter about it heading into the 2023 NFL season. 
• In 2023, Cheffers' crew officiated the Week 14 loss to the Buffalo Bills, during which WR Kadarius Toney was called for a controversial offside penalty. Toney lined up offside throughout the game. He was not warned about lining up incorrectly, which is standard practice. He was also not penalized until it erased a go-ahead touchdown. Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes were both fined by the NFL for postgame comments made about the penalty.
• Last season, Cheffers only officiated the team's Week 16 game against the Texans. He called two holding penalties on Trey Smith (one was declined) and a special teams holding penalty on Deon Bush. He penalized Houston six times for 45 yards.

How did Carl Cheffers' crew rank among NFL officials in 2024?

Cheffers actually had one of the NFL's best referee crews during the 2024 NFL season. In 17 games officiated, his crew tied for the second-fewest total penalties with 186 and averaged the lowest per-game penalty count in the league. They had the second-least amount of penalty yards (1501). They tied for the sixth-most dismissed penalties (43). They also had an 81-105 penalty split between the home and away opponents. Maybe Cheffers and his crew are turning a corner. Either way, Chiefs fans will be relieved to get this one out of the way early, as there's still a reasonably high probability of something controversial taking place.