Fans at Arrowhead Stadium credited with giving Chiefs a boost and rattling officials

Pete Grathoff
·3 min read
114
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.

The roughing-the-passer penalty on Chiefs defensive lineman Chris Jones seemed to be a huge boost for the Raiders in Monday night’s game, but it turned out to be an edge for Kansas City.

Had the flag not been thrown, the Chiefs would have had the ball at the Las Vegas 40-yard line, while trailing by 10 points late in the first half. Instead the Raiders kept possession and kicked a field goal.

So how did the play end up giving the Chiefs an edge?

Referee Carl Cheffers and his crew drew the ire of Chiefs fans, who loudly booed the decision. This wasn’t a brief show of emotion. Fans kept it up until Matthew Wright made a 59-yard field goal for the Chiefs to end the first half.

Chiefs fans turned the boos to cheers in the second half with one notable exception: when the officials were involved.

Did the fans rattle the officials? CBS Sports’ Will Brinson seemed to think so.

Many others agreed with Brinson, including more national pundits, and Chiefs fans in particular loved it. Here is a very small sample of what was being said.

Chiefs get a boost

Peter Schrager, who also works for Fox Sports and was with “Inside the NFL,” mentioned the crowd’s impact on “Good Morning Football.”

“I think the catalyst might have been the penalty and the way the crowd reacted,” Schrager said Tuesday morning. “So if you’re watching right now and you’re saying, ‘I didn’t see the game,’ this was an egregious call. And the reaction from the Arrowhead crowd was vitriol and we’re talking 10 straight minutes of booing to the point where I felt like a switch was flipped for the Chiefs as a whole and it was almost like the catalyst needed to wake them out of their slumber. ...

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen (Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes) as mad. I don’t know if it’s because all the chipping back and forth. Andy Reid seemed mad. There was a different energy. I almost feel like in this game the story is the roughing the passer but it’s also the way the Chiefs responded and the way the Arrowhead crowd lifted them. Very rarely am I the one to be like well the crowd won us that game. The crowd really was a factor. There was offense, defense, special teams and the Arrowhead crowd that actually aided this victory.”