As a Chiefs fan, I've seen games where it looked pretty obvious to me that the refs let one team get by with more than the other. Sometimes that team is the Chiefs, sometimes it's their opponents, and it's not always obvious whether it's just poor officiating or something more sinister.
In Sunday night's game against the Chiefs, the Lions got robbed of a touchdown on the basis of an obscure rule that I'd never heard of (and that the Lions apparently just didn't know about either):
They ran a trick play in which quarterback Jared Goff took the ball from under center (as opposed to e.g. shotgun formation) ... but really didn't. Instead, he turned to his left, started running, and the center snapped the ball to running back David Montgomery, who passed it to Goff for a touchdown.
The touchdown was invalidated because, per that obscure rule, Goff was supposed to take a step back and pause for some unknown amount of time before he could run and be eligible to be thrown the ball.
OK, look: The rules are the rules, but can we all admit that in addition to being obscure, that's one idiotic rule? Is there a rule that a safety is only allowed to make an interception if he has tied his shoes in the last 30 seconds? Or that in order to throw a challenge flag, a coach must first don a tutu and dance a minimum of one minute of Swan Lake?
And I have to admit it's kind of odd that the Chiefs got flagged 13 times last week, and not a single time this week. Usually Jawaan Taylor alone racks up several "false start" or "illegal formation" fouls because he can't seem to figure out how to line up next to the other players. If Patrick Mahomes had run the same play with Isaiah Pacheco that Goff ran with Montgomery, would the refs have so much as blinked?
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