The Houston Texans did not have to wait very long to find themselves on the wrong end of an officiating goof in their divisional round matchup against Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs. Will Anderson was called for a roughing the passer call that only people in the state of Missouri believe was called correctly.
Anderson's roughing the passer penalty, which came in spite of the fact his momentum was going to carry him into Mahomes no matter what he did and ignored Anderson not directly making contact with Mahomes' helmet, helped turn a third-down stop into a first-down for Kansas City.
While the Chiefs were unable to punch it into the end zone and had to settle for a field goal that made the score 6-3, the incorrectly called roughing play only added more fuel to the fire stoked by those who claim the Chiefs get a few softballs thrown their way by the officials. Even the fine folks at LASIK were willing to start mocking these refs.
LASIK posted a tweet from their official account, jokingly offering to provide free eye surgery for any NFL referees. Based on how they call plays like this, it would seem that more officials may need to book an appointment. This one wasn't even close.
Replay shows how bad Will Anderson's roughing the passer call on Patrick Mahomes was
The Texans are still very much in this game, but they didn't start off in an ideal fashion. After fumbling the opening kickoff (and then compounding the mistake after cornerback Kris Boyd shoved special teams coach Frank Ross), Houston should feel lucky to only trail 6-3.
With Houston's dynamic duo of Anderson and Danielle Hunter going up against a Chiefs offensive line that has a guard in Joe Thuney playing left tackle and the inconsistent Jawaan Taylor at right tackle, those two need to keep up their strong recent performances if Houston wants a shot at pulling the upset here.
Beating the Chiefs is hard enough. Being them at Arrowhead Stadium is even more difficult. Beating them on the road in temperatures that are close to freezing, with the officials making huge mistakes like this, might be too much for this team to overcome.