The Kansas City Chiefs’ victory over the New York Jets brought about some controversy following a late-game penalty. The defensive hold called on Jets defensive back Sauce Gardner has received the most media attention and its effect on the rest of the game.
Speaking to Carrington Harrison on 610 Sports Radio show “The Drive” during his weekly check-in, Mahomes opened up about the infamous play and his strategy for drawing the call.
“Yeah, I mean, I was looking at him,” Mahomes explained. “At the end of the day, you get your hands around the guy’s neck, like 15 yards downfield, they’re gonna call it something if it’s gonna be holding or illegal contact is not allowed. So I was trying to; once I saw him grab him, I threw it up there to get Marquez (Valdes-Scantling) a chance, kind of knowing that the flag was gonna come.
“So I mean, you can see it. You can see it from my from my position. And I mean, I understand. People want to let teams play and stuff like that. But you can’t, you can’t get your hands around guy’s necks like that.”
The penalty on Gardner gave the Chiefs a first down during a critical third and twenty play. Mahomes went after the young cornerback to Valdes-Scantling and informed him of a similar scenario of holding during the game.
“I think I saw throughout the game we ran a couple routes like that,” Mahomes continues. “There were a couple of times where he kind of wrapped them up out there at the outside. And Marquez (Valdes-Scantling) was telling me to give him a shot. So I trusted my guys to go out there and make plays. So once I gave him the shot there at the end, and we got the flag and moved the chains at that point. And then we were able to kind of put the game away.”
The Chiefs finished the drive by running out the clock with a steady dose of running plays, including Mahomes’ slide-inbounds.