NFL Fines Joe Mixon Over A Quote Criticizing Refs For Bias Towards The Chiefs – Except He Didn’t Even Say It

Not helping their reputation of doing whatever they can to protect the Chiefs... The NFL has taken a lot of heat lately for being biased towards the Kansas City Chiefs. And it's pretty clear why the league would want the Chiefs to succeed: They're two-time defending Super Bowl champions, and their star tight end Travis Kelce is dating Taylor Swift, who brings a whole new set of eyeballs to the team whether she's even at the game or not. But the perception is that the referees are doing too much to help the Chiefs and quarterback Patrick Mahomes - and even broadcaster Troy Aikman seemed to be getting frustrated with flags that were called on Kansas City's opponent this past weekend. During a divisional round playoff game against the Houston Texans, refs threw a flag on Texans defensive end Will Anderson Jr. for roughing the passer after delivering the softest possible hit on Patrick Mahomes. https://twitter.com/espn/status/1880736730912817254 And it didn't get any better from there, with even the broadcast booth expressing their frustration at the flags. During the third quarter, the Chiefs botched a snap and Mahomes quickly picked up the loose ball and took off running. And while sliding down, two Texans defenders went for the tackle at the same time, colliding with each other as the QB was sliding. It looked like the defenders took the brunt of the hit, with incidental contact to Mahomes at best. But once again the flag came out, this time for unnecessary roughness on the tackle. And Aikman couldn't hold back and longer: "Oh, come on! I mean, he's a runner. I could not disagree with that one more. And he barely gets hit. That's the second penalty now that's been called against the Texans." Rules analyst Russell Yurk agreed with Aikman that the penalty was bullshit, with Aikman even calling on the NFL to address the issue in the offseason: "They've got to address it in the offseason. You can't as a quarterback run around and play games with defenders and then be able to draw a penalty." https://twitter.com/awfulannouncing/status/1880762104728445017 Whether it's true or not, the perception among fans is that the NFL and referees are going out of their way to protect the Kansas City Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes in a bid to get them back to the Super Bowl for the third year in a row. And their latest boneheaded move isn't going to do anything to quiet the criticism... Today, the NFL issued a fine to Texans running back Joe Mixon for criticizing the referees after the game in Kansas City this weekend: “Why play the game if every 50/50 call goes with Chiefs. These officials are trash and bias.” The only problem? He didn't say it. The quote actually came from retired Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver TJ Houshmandzadeh, who was quoted in an SI article about Mixon's ACTUAL comments. For reference, here's what Mixon actually said, as you can clearly see from the video of his postgame interview: "Everybody know how it is playing up here. You can never leave it into the refs hands. The whole world see, man." https://twitter.com/WillKunkelFOX/status/1880805273956229381 As you can imagine, Mixon wasn't exactly happy about getting fined for something he didn't say: https://twitter.com/Joe_MainMixon/status/1882125597897613561 His agent said they planned to appeal the fine. But instead of just taking the L and admitting they screwed up, the NFL decided to revise their letter to Mixon and re-issue the fine for his own quote instead, which was clearly much less derogatory than the quote they cited in their original letter. But hey, the NFL has to protect the Chiefs, and they can't have players calling them out for it - despite the whole world already seeing it anyway.