Texans head coach DeMeco Ryans stopped short of directly criticizing a couple of penalties that took a heavy toll on his team during a postgame press conference on Saturday, but he made it pretty clear that he felt the officiating tilted in the Chiefs’ direction.
A pair of penalties called on hits against Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes — roughing the passer on Texans defensive end Will Anderson and a late hit on linebacker Henry To’oTo’o — helped lead to 10 Chiefs points in a 23-14 win by the home team. The late hit flag came after a very late slide by Mahomes and replays showed To’oTo’o making far more contact with a teammate who was also trying to hold up from hitting the quarterback.
Ryans was asked about those calls after the game and he said that the team went into the game expecting such things to favor the back-to-back champs.
“We knew going into this game, man, it was us versus everybody,” Ryans said. “When I say everybody, I mean everybody. The naysayers, the doubt. Everybody we had to go against again today. Going into this game knowing what we were up against, we can’t make the mistakes we made. We had a lot of self-inflicted mistakes.”
Ryans noted missed kicks by Kai’mi Fairbairn, defensive breakdowns and poor pass protection as the self-inflicted mistakes and said it’s an uphill battle for a team when “you marry that with everything else we have to deal with” when facing the Chiefs.
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