The Kansas City Chiefs had several games with mini blowups about the officiating during the 2023 season. The most notable in the regular season was at home against the Buffalo Bills, in which offensive offside was called on Kadarius Toney, leading to postgame criticism from Patrick Mahomes and head coach Andy Reid.
One Chiefs fan who knows about criticizing officials is former NBA star Rasheed Wallace. Chiefs Wire Ed Easton Jr. spoke to Wallace about the Chiefs’ fines for calling out the officiating and his predictions for the 2024 season.
“You always have to do that because you just have to call out what’s not right,” Wallace said. “If you see something that’s not right, then, hey, call it out. The league doesn’t like you to do that. But as players, we have to do that because we’re under such scrutiny from the media and fans.
“It’s like, look, all right, we all know we can see this, what’s happening and so forth. Why do we say the majority is mostly still on a player, because we go out there and execute things, right? It’s so much video out here now. Especially in football, it’s hard to do some real cheat stuff. Like in basketball, you can because there are so many possessions.”
The Chiefs handled the fines throughout the season, similar to Wallace, who never held back his opinions during his 16-year NBA career. A longtime fan of the team, he gave his assessment of the roster heading into the new season.
“We have the best quarterback in the game, the Kansas City Cannon, and the best tight end in the game right now,” Wallace said. “I think we got the best ends in the game. We got the best D-lineman with CJ (Chris Jones), and we must keep putting it all together. Everybody wants to come to the Chiefs now. It’s sort of that same mantra when Brady was in New England — everybody wanted to play in New England because they knew that they were the best chance for me to get a Super Bowl to play with the best quarterback.”
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Training camp is only weeks away, and Wallace has early predictions for the Chiefs and their new schedule.
“I know we’re not going to go undefeated; just throw those talks out the window because the guys are too good in the NFL,” Wallace continued. “If a team goes undefeated, then it’s like, man, you have to have an offer for every position defense to go undefeated now, but I can see it going 12-4 (13-4) going into the playoffs. We definitely got to have home-field. Last year, we didn’t even have a No. 1 receiver, and we still got the job done. Now, imagine that some of the receivers we picked up and drafted are ready to come to play.”
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