This year’s edition of the annual shuffling of the Pro Bowl rosters includes a change at offensive tackle in the AFC.
Ravens left tackle Ronnie Stanley will be going to the multi-day event in Orlando. He will replace Texans left tackle Laremy Tunsil, who has withdrawn from the games.
Stanley moves the total number of Ravens headed to the Pro Bowl festivities to 10. Wide receiver Zay Flowers pulled out due to his knee injury while edge rusher Kyle Van Noy has also been added to the squad.
Stanley missed multiple games in each of the last four seasons, but he made every start for the Ravens in 2024. It is his second Pro Bowl appearance.
Texans defensive end Danielle Hunter and Ravens linebacker Kyle Van Noy have been added to the AFC Pro Bowl roster.
Hunter will replace injured Raiders star Maxx Crosby after a successful first season in Houston. Hunter posted 46 tackles, 17 tackles for loss, 12 sacks, 23 quarterback hits, and a forced fumble for the AFC South champs.
It’s the fifth time that Hunter has been named to a Pro Bowl. He’s the fifth Texan now slated to take part in the festivities in Orlando.
Van Noy set a career-high with 12.5 sacks this season. He’s been named a Pro Bowler for the first time and the Ravens have a league-high 10 players on the AFC roster.
Many are saying the officials help the Chiefs. Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes is not one of the many.
“I don’t feel that way,’' Mahomes told reporters on Wednesday, via Adam Teicher of ESPN.com. “At the end of the day, the referees are doing their best to call the game as fair and as proper as they possibly can. And all you can do is go out there and play the game that you love as hard as you can and live with the results. . . . I think that’s what we preach here in Kansas City.
“You get new referees every year, you get new circumstances, and you never can really tell because every play’s different and that’s what makes the NFL so special. I feel like I’ve just continued to play the game, and I just try to win, and whatever happens kind of happens.’'
With all due respect to those who routinely coat their craniums with aluminum, the NFL is not scripted or rigged. It would be impossible to pull it off, and to keep it secret.
That said, subconscious biases potentially impact the behavior of officials. During the 2022 season, NFL executive V.P. of football operations Troy Vincent defended the protection of quarterbacks by pointing out that the NFL becomes a less popular product on TV if the best quarterbacks can’t play due to injury. While the 2023 season, which featured a rash of quarterback injuries, might have debunked that, the blurring of the line between football business and football integrity potentially plants a seed in the minds of officials who realize that it’s good for business if a team like the Chiefs are winning football games.
Decisions to throw or not call a penalty happen in an instant. Many factors influence the formulation of the message the brain does, or doesn’t, send to the hand that is poised to remove the yellow flag and throw it.
When the officials hear the executive ultimately in charge of football is defending penalty enforcement based on business considerations, business considerations necessarily creep into the stew that ultimately drives the analysis of when and where a flag is thrown.
The question now becomes whether the backlash against the officiating — coupled with a growing sense of Chiefs fatigue — will push the needle in the other direction. If that happens, advantage Bills.
The NFL has taken a mulligan.
After issuing a $25,000 fine to Texans running back Joe Mixon for something he didn’t say about the officiating in Saturday’s playoff game against the Chiefs, the NFL has re-issued the fine with his actual words in its place.
The new fine disciplines Mixon for saying this: “Everybody knows how it is playing up here. You can never leave it in the refs’ hands. The whole world see, man.”
That quote wasn’t mentioned in the initial fine letter, which relied on words not from Mixon but from former Bengals receiver T.J. Houshmandzadeh. The line from Houshmandzadeh was this: “Why play the game if every 50/50 call goes with Chiefs. These officials are trash and bias.”
The relevant rule prohibits any public criticism of officiating “because it calls into question the integrity of, and public confidence in, our game.”
And, of course, by imposing fines on players and coaches, the NFL shines a brighter light on the issue — that there were calls in the game worthy of criticism. Like the criticism expressed by ESPN’s Troy Aikman during a broadcast watched by more than 30 million people, after a late slide from Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes drew a foul for unnecessary roughness.
“Come on,” Aikman said. “He’s a runner, and I could not disagree with that one more. He barely gets hit. That’s the second penalty now that’s been called against the Texans.”
The NFL can’t fine Aikman (since he doesn’t own part of a team). But they can, and likely have, complained to Aikman’s bosses about it.
Aikman’s words have now been superseded by the Keystone Cops effort to take money out of Mixon’s pocket, first by fining him for something he didn’t say and now by fining him for the less controversial comment he actually made.
Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes drew two questionable 15-yard penalties during Saturday’s win over the Texans, but his attempt to draw a third by slowing down near the sideline and then falling to the ground as soon as he was touched was not successful.
Mahomes acknowledged in an interview with Carrington Harrison of 96.5 The Fan that the officials were correct not to throw a flag on that play, and he shouldn’t have attempted to draw a penalty in that way.
“I would say the only one I felt like I probably did too much was the one on the sideline where I didn’t get the flag,” Mahomes said. “The refs saw it and it didn’t get a flag. I understood it immediately and know that I probably shouldn’t have done that.”
Still, Mahomes says complaints about the officiating are overblown.
“I’ve learned that no matter what happens during the game, something is going to come out about it if you win, if you continue to win,” Mahomes said. “I don’t really pay attention to it. Obviously, I’ve been on both sides of it as far as how I’ve felt that calls were made. But at the end of the day, those guys are doing their best to make the best calls and keep it to where the players are making the plays in the game and that’s what decides the outcome. Obviously, there was a call here and there that people didn’t agree with, but at the same time I think there were a lot of other plays that decided the outcome of that football game.”
There’s a perception among many NFL fans that Mahomes and the Chiefs get favorable treatment from the officials, and that will make the officiating closely scrutinized when the Chiefs meet the Bills on Sunday, with a trip to the Super Bowl on the line.
