The idea that the Kansas City Chiefs receive favorable treatment from NFL game officials has been around for a while. Is it true? That remains difficult to say. A 2025 study at the University of Texas appeared to back up the belief that refs favor the Chiefs with data, at least from the postseason. Nonetheless, the theory remains controversial, to say the least.
NFL league office officials, however, saw at least one violation that was not flagged in the Chiefs’ Week 12 game against the Indianapolis Colts, and they have now taken action to correct the situation, hitting the two-time All-Pro player involved with a financial punishment this time.
In the Chiefsâ next game, on Thanksgiving Day, according to some observers, the situation went the other way.
“The Cowboys and Chiefsâ game was marked by numerous penalties and calls that drew criticism from the NFL world. Whenever the Chiefs are playing, expect the referees to be under scrutiny,” wrote the site Pro Football Network on Thursday. “That is precisely what happened, but this time, fans called out the refs for consistently making calls in favor of the Cowboys.”
Fine For Violation Not Called on Field
That was not necessarily the case just four days earlier, when the Chiefs hosted the AFC South leading Indianapolis Colts, a game Kansas City won 23-20 in overtime, seemingly reviving their season at the time. Kansas City was called for only eight penalties in that game, and one was declined, giving up just 57 yards.
But the Chiefs got away with at least one potential penalty that was not called. That came with less than five minutes elapsed in the first quarter when cornerback Trent McDuffie tackled Colts rookie tight end Tyler Warren on the Indianapolis 37-yard line, after a 12-yard reception on a pass from Indianapolis quarterback Daniel Jones.
The officials on the field saw nothing out of the ordinary with McDuffie’s tackle of the Colts’ first-round draft pick out of Penn State, but when league officials in the NFL Operations Department reviewed the play, they determined that McDuffie had illegally made contact with his opponent’s face mask, which should have been flagged as an unnecessary roughness penalty.
McDuffie Hit With Fine
Instead, the league announced on Saturday when the NFL released its weekly Gameday Accountability report, that McDuffie, who is playing the final season of his $14 million, four-yer rookie contract, was hit with a fine totaling $11,593 on the play.
The fine was the first of McDuffie’s four-year career. The Chiefs’ 2022 first-round pick out of Washington has committed, or at least been called for, only five penalties all season, four of them for defensive pass interference, a violation commonly called on cornerbacks.
In his career, McDuffie â a 2023 first-team All-Pro â has been flagged 14 times for defensive pass interference.
Largest Fine of Week Hits Lions Safety
According to the NFL’s statistics released by the league operations department, NFL teams ran a total of 2,265 plays in Week 12, with only 13 resulting in offenses deemed worthy of fines by the league office. In other words, slightly more than one-half of one percent of all plays ended up getting players fined.
The largest fine levied on any player in Week 12 was a $23,186 assessment against the Detroit Lions safety Brian Branch for a hit on a defenseless player. The smallest fine went to the Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Andre Baccellia who was fined $5,722 for unnecessary roughness away from the play.
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