Ahead of the AFC Championship game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Buffalo Bills, a popular hashtag has resurfaced on social media: “#NFLRigged.”

In recent years, the Chiefs have typically become the primary subject of this conspiracy theory — which involves the NFL using their referees to rig games in favor of the most popular teams that make the league the most money, like Kansas City.

This week — after the Chiefs defeated the Houston Texans in the Divisional Round and both players and broadcasters openly questioned the officiating — the outside noise has gotten so loud that a KC reporter actually asked quarterback Patrick Mahomes if he feels he’s received “protection” and unfair penalty flags from referees.

“I don’t feel that way,” Mahomes responded on January 22. “I just try to play football 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,” the Chiefs QB continued. “And all you can do is play the game that you love as hard as you can and live with the results.”

“And so, for me it’s to go out there, play hard, try to do whatever I can to win the football game, and then live with the results based off my effort and the way that we played the game,” he concluded. “So, I think that’s what we preach here in Kansas City.”

After a follow-up question on if Mahomes has noticed any officiating changes as he’s risen into a veteran role, the two-time NFL MVP replied that he has not “felt any different.”

“You get new referees every year, you get new circumstances, and you never can really tell because every play is different,” Mahomes explained. “That’s what makes the NFL so special.”

FOX Sports One host and diehard Chiefs supporter Nick Wright also took to X on January 22 to address the latest theories about the NFL rigging games for KC.

“It’s just exhausting,” Wright began what turned into an epic rant.

“@JoshDubowAP has outlined every imaginable scenario to show the Chiefs are league average (or worse!) over Mahomes career AND just the last 3 years in any penalty margin/ref category,” the host went on. “Folks don’t care. We ALL saw the refs blow a HUGE DPI/OPI [defensive and offensive pass interference] call in BUF/BAL that basically put 7 points on the board for [the Bills], we just move on because [expletive] happens & refereeing is hard. Folks don’t care.”

“But because the refs got ONE call wrong in KC-HOU (the first call, despite [Troy] Aikman’s protests, was correct AND was reviewed by New York & upheld), it’s 4 days of hysteria,” Wright questioned. “Ignoring that if the call hadn’t happened, KC would’ve had the devastating situation of… 2nd & 6 AND ignoring that Houston SCORED ONE TOUCHDOWN & PLAYED TERRIBLY!”

Needless to say, Wright and many other Chiefs fans have heard enough of this conspiracy theory.

Unfortunately, this is a lose-lose situation for the Chiefs in the AFC Championship game. If Mahomes and Kansas City pull off the victory over Josh Allen and the Bills, opposing fans will surely complain that the NFL is rigged — with KC returning to the Super Bowl once again.

If they lose, perhaps fans let up a bit, but then the Chiefs fail to make NFL history as their three-peat bid would be extinguished.

With that in mind, when it comes to this debate, there is no winning for Kansas City.

In every game, there’s always going to be a holding penalty or a pass interference that the referees could have flagged but didn’t, or did flag when they could have let teams play on. It’s just the nature of the sport, and these razor-thin decisions occur in just about every pro football outing — especially the competitive ones between two talented teams.

At the end of the day, the Chiefs can’t focus on all of this “#NFLRigged” noise. All that matters now is making it back to another Super Bowl, no matter what social media has to say about it after the fact. Nothing else is important.