Houston Texans star Will Anderson Jr and coach DeMeco Ryans took aim at NFL referees after their controversial playoff loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.
The Texans suffered a 23-14 divisional loss at Arrowhead, albeit in a game marred by a series of controversial officiating decisions.
Fans were left fuming on social media when Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes benefited from two big calls that night, with Barstool founder Dave Portnoy calling one of them “disgusting.”
And after the game, Texans defensive end Anderson, whose roughing the passer penalty for a tackle on Mahomes sparked outrage, said they were facing the referees and back-to-back Super Bowl champions.
“We knew it was going to be us against the referees before this game,” he told reporters.
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.