Joe Mixon was recently fined $25,000 for comments that the NFL thought he made after the Houston Texans’ loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in the Divisional Round.
“Everybody knows how it is playing up here. You can never leave it into the refs’ hands,” Mixon said. “The whole world sees, man, what it is. When it comes down to it, you can never leave it into the refs’ hands. It’s all good, though.”
What happened was that Sports Illustrated attributed him to saying something that Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver T.J. Houshmandzadeh said in agreement with Mixon.
“Why play the game if every 50/50 call goes with the Chiefs. These officials are [trash] & bias,” Houshmandzaeh said.
The league fined Mixon for those comments instead, and his agent said he was going to appeal the fine. Now it seems like the league is still going to go through with the fine for the actual thing that Mixon said after the game. Mixon had been tweeting about the NFL all day, and after getting reissued the fine, he had more to say.
“So let me get this straight NFL fines me 25k for something I didn’t even say,” Mixon wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Call them out for it, and their response was fine me AGAIN for something that’s not even a violation without even rescinding the first one. Where’s the accountability? Just respect the players.”
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Joe Mixon, Texans call out officials after playoff loss
Joe Mixon was not the only person from the Texans who called out the officials after their loss to the Chiefs. Will Anderson, who was called for a roughing the passer penalty on Patrick Mahomes, spoke about the call. When looking at the film, most would say that the hit was incidental.
“We knew it was going to be us against the refs going into this game,” Anderson said. “I talked to you guys earlier this week, and I was just saying, like, man, we gotta go out there, and we’ve got to do us better. And, you know, in some instances we didn’t do that. In some instances, we did. We’ve just gotta keep going, man. Next offseason, we get the guys together, and everybody just coming together and keep building that team chemistry to get passed this hump.”
Kansas City is always a tough place to play, and it seems like many people around the league share the same sentiment.