KANSAS CITY, Mo. – A Detroit Lions star jumped on social media immediately after the loss to the Chiefs to post 12 times about the officials.
The Lions saw their four-game winning streak come to an end Sunday night with a 30-17 loss to the Chiefs.
READ: Here’s what started postgame brawl between Lions, Chiefs on SNF
There were a few questionable calls by the officials, but the Lions lost because of a few uncharacteristic mistakes -- namely a penalty that negated a touchdown on the opening drive, a dropped fourth-down pass, and a roughing the passer penalty.
Safety Kerby Joseph didn’t seem to think the Lions got a fair shot, though. He was on X within minutes of the game going final, re-tweeting a series of posts about the Chiefs and officials.
Here are the tweets he posted:
- A “heart hands” emoji while re-posting an edited photo of Patrick Mahomes kissing an official.
- Retweeted a post that noted the Chiefs hadn’t yet been called for a penalty and showed an edited photo of an official wearing the Chiefs logo.
- Retweeted a fake jersey swap photo between Mahomes and a referee.
- Retweeted a “Pardon My Take” photo edit of an official wearing a Chiefs-themed referee uniform.
- Retweeted a video showing Travis Kelce holding Amik Robertson without a call that had a caption saying the officials needed to be investigated.
- Retweeted an edited photo of Mahomes hugging an official in place of the infamous Coldplay concert CEO scandal.
- Used a photo of himself looking at a replay on an iPad on the sidelines to re-post a tweet about the “refs striking again” and not calling Chris Jones offsides on a fourth-down play.
- Reposted with a meme about a questionable Kelce catch that was not reviewed. The ball appeared to hit the ground, but the Chiefs got the following snap off quickly, and the Lions didn’t challenge.
- Reposted with a meme about the Aidan Hutchinson roughing the passer penalty.
- Tweeted “Take me thru there” while reposting a photo of Mahomes talking to an officials.
- Reposted with a meme about the Kelce possible holding call again.
- Reposted with a meme about the Sunday Night Football rules analyst saying the Kelce catch would have been upheld on replay.
These were all posted or retweeted by Kerby between 11:24 p.m. and 11:34 p.m.
For what it’s worth, the roughing the passer penalty on Hutchinson certainly seemed warranted, and the Lions definitely used an illegal formation on the first touchdown that was eventually called back.
But the Kelce catch and a few other plays were less definitive. It didn’t help quiet the conspiracy theorists when the Chiefs didn’t get called for a single penalty until the final 2:30 of the game, when it was already over.
Again, the Lions shouldn’t make excuses for this one. They made enough mistakes to shoulder the blame, and that’s likely what Dan Campbell will say.
The loss dropped them to 4-2 on the season. They host the 5-1 Tampa Bay Buccaneers next week on Monday Night Football.