The Houston Texans are furious because they confronted NFL referees and the Kansas City Chiefs in their controversial playoff loss at Arrowhead.
DeMeco Ryans' men were defeated 23-14 by Kansas City in a game marred by a series of controversial calls favoring the home team on Saturday night.
Fans were left furious when Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes benefited from two big calls that night, including when Texans defensive end Will Anderson Jr. was penalized for tackling him a split second after he released the ball.
Referees also called two Houston defenders for unnecessary roughness after they made contact with Mahomes when he slid to the ground at the end of an offensive play, a decision Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy called “disgusting.”
And having seen some controversial calls go against him, Anderson suggested after the game that the Texans expected to have their work cut out for them at Arrowhead.
“We knew it was going to be us against the referees before this game,” he told reporters.
The Texans were on the wrong end of some controversial calls in their loss to the Chiefs.
Head coach DeMeco Ryans echoed that sentiment in his postgame press conference, saying of the controversial calls in Kansas City's favor: “We knew coming into this game, it was us against everyone.” When I say everyone, it's everyone.'
He then added: “With that, knowing what we're up against in this game, we can't make the mistakes we made.” We had a lot of self-inflicted mistakes that happened.
“Whether it's special teams not converting our kicks, defensively we're not where we're supposed to be in coverage, offensively they're not protecting our quarterback and keeping him clean… that's on top of everything else with what we had to deal with. “It’s going to be a really tough uphill battle.”
More to follow.