Patriots: Patrick Mahomes flopping on Monday night was bizarre and frustrating
Patrick Mahomes flew hard to the ground after barely being touched by Patriots defenders.
The New England Patriots losing to the Kansas City Chiefs was enough. They were without Cam Newton after being on standby for a good portion of the weekend, waiting to see if they’d even travel to Kansas City after the QB’s COVID-19 diagnosis. The last thing they needed was …
… Patrick Mahomes flopping? Did we even know this was a possibility? Look, we know you have to get creative against Bill Belichick — after all, the Pats defense did a tremendous job of keeping KC in check — but pulling these kinds of stunts in a primetime game? Come on.
New England already got screwed when the refs decided not to give them a clear fumble on a Mahomes sack, so these flops just made everything worse.
Devin McCourty hitting Mahomes late out of bounds, and literally trying to hold him up from hitting the ground because he realized what he did is pure comedy.😆#Patriots #Chiefs #NFL pic.twitter.com/y2CzGBjOQW
— Logi B 513 (@Logi513) October 5, 2020
That first one didn’t have any impact on the game, but you can hear Mahomes yell “come on man!” to Devin McCourty, who aggressively touched him in order to ensure the QB wouldn’t deke him along the sidelines. On top of that, McCourty tried to hang onto him so he wouldn’t fall, and then helped him up!
In what universe is that any sort of unnecessary roughness? We see Mahomes tip-toe along the sidelines and make unreal plays every week. Putting your hands on him to prevent such a scenario seems reasonable.
And then came this one, which, could perhaps be up for interpretation. You could argue Deatrich Wise Jr. probably shouldn’t have grabbed his jersey, but again, it was a situation where Mahomes was seemingly turning the corner and had a small opening to go up the sideline, at least when you saw it during game speed.
Mahomes wins Oscars, too pic.twitter.com/VG1YSupAv0
— Mark Powell (@mp2_pgh) October 6, 2020
That grab likely gave the refs all the evidence they needed, but upon review you can see Wise’s hand certainly did not cause Mahomes’ head and neck to jerk in one direction while his body violently flew in the other. If anything, he slipped on the different surface on the sideline.
This was just another frustrating layer to the Patriots’ loss. All the disadvantages they faced before the game felt like sufficient ammo to hand KC the free win. Then came Brian Hoyer and Jarrett Stidham giving the ball away on command. The missed fumble call. Mahomes flopping. We couldn’t think of a more frustrating 72 hours.
