‘That was on me.’ Patrick Mahomes on strange intentional-grounding penalty

That was a confusing end to the first half of the Chiefs’ game Sunday against the Browns at FirstEnergy Stadium, right?

The Chiefs were driving in the waning seconds in the hopes of getting a score before halftime.

After a long pass, the clock stopped when the Browns were called for being offsides. There were 9 seconds to play in the quarter. Thinking that the clock would start when the ball was snapped*, Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes spiked the ball.

*Isn’t that what usually happens?

Instead, Mahomes was called for intentional grounding:

The referees penalized the Chiefs 10 yards for the intentional grounding, then tried to run off the final 10 seconds despite the fact the Chiefs had a timeout.

“Yeah we’ve been over that situation,” Mahomes said after the game. “That was on me. The penalty, no matter if we accept or decline, the clock stops. So technically, me spiking the ball like that’s almost an intentional grounding penalty.

“At the same time, the refs said they hadn’t seen that happen in 40 years.

“(Mitchell) Schwartz actually told me you can’t do that (spike the ball after a penalty), but I just though we could get away with it, and we didn’t.”

While Mahomes was penalized because the clock had stopped, this wasn’t a text book case of intentional grounding.

The NFL rulebook defines intentional grounding as this: “It is a foul for intentional grounding if a passer, facing an imminent loss of yardage because of pressure from the defense, throws a forward pass without a realistic chance of completion. A realistic chance of completion is defined as a pass that is thrown in the direction of and lands in the vicinity of an originally eligible receiver.”

I’m not sure that anyone could say Mahomes was facing an imminent loss of yardage, but he was flagged anyway.

Fans were baffled:

This story was originally published November 4, 2018 at 1:40 PM.