TOEING THE LINE: CHIEFS WIN AGAIN AS POOR LAMAR JACKSON BLAMES THE REFEREE

If Kansas City becomes the first team to win three straight titles in the Super Bowl era, don’t forget when Jackson’s late pass was caught by Isaiah Likely — whose black toe was barely out of bounds

     A black toe hit the white endline by the size of a millimeter. Only the flawed eyelids of Lamar Jackson were smaller. The freaky play might live forever, too, if the Kansas City Chiefs become the first NFL team to win back-to-back-to-back titles in the Super Bowl era. The one team capable of challenging the champion, the Baltimore Ravens, couldn’t survive opening night without a tight end allowing his big digit to step out of bounds on the game’s final play.

     “You could see his cleat. You have to wear white cleats next time,” Patrick Mahomes said. “That’s my advice for him.”

     One tactic Jackson shouldn’t have taken was doubting referee Shawn Hochuli, who was deemed correct in TV replays watched by millions. “The runner's toe hit out of bounds,” he announced. “It's an incomplete pass. The game is over. Kansas City has won.” This was a stunning 27-20 victory for the Chiefs, who overcame a maddening offseason and apparently will keep winning when someone simply toes a line. Rather than describe the call as another speckle of “kryptonite” in a rivalry dominated by the Chiefs, Jackson decided to pass blame.

     “I thought it was a touchdown. I still think it’s a touchdown,” he said.

     The receiver, Isaiah Likely, agreed. “The referee looked at me, I look at the ref, and when he signaled touchdown, I thought it was what it was,” he said. “Then, obviously we were going to win the game.”

     Instead, what we had Thursday night was a jubilant Taylor Swift leaving Arrowhead Stadium with Travis Kelce, hand in hand, while the rest of us believe Mahomes and the Chiefs are headed toward history. There is no way Jackson lost another when he was magical, throwing for 273 yards and a touchdown and running for 122 yards. He rallied the Ravens from their own 13, with 1:50 left and no timeouts, and still had 19 seconds remaining at the Chiefs 10. The first indication that evil was upon him was a missed pass on second down to Zay Flowers, who was open in the end zone. On the last play, Jackson maneuvered on a scramble and waited for Likely to make a play.

     He did. John Harbaugh, the Ravens coach, motioned for his offense to try a two-point conversion and win on the road. Then came Hochuli. “I believe everyone in our program — coaches, trainers, equipment guys, cafeteria women and men, and definitely the players,” Jackson said. “For us to lose to those guys in how we lost, even though I don’t want to do it, I can’t be mad at my guys. I felt that we did a great job, but you know, just coming down and the red zone, 10-yard line — whatever.”

     Whatever … no longer works. The Chiefs were vulnerable, bludgeoned by bad news that started days after they beat San Francisco. At a downtown parade in Kansas City, gunshots were fired and one person was killed as 22 were injured. Rashee Rice, the gifted receiver, approached 120 miles per hour in a Dallas drag race and caused a vehicle collision. Then came placekicker Harrison Butker, who attended a graduation ceremony and said Pride Month brought “deadly sins.” In the training room, defensive end B.J. Thompson had a seizure and won’t return until November. How did voting go for stadium renovations? Fifty-eight percent of Jackson County said no. A superfan named Xavier Babudar — he calls himself a ChiefsAholic — was sentenced to 17 1/2 years without parole after a series of armed robberies.

     And Kelce? He was so busy following Swift all summer, imagine the consequences if he dropped her on stage as he wore a black top hat at Wembley Stadium? As she made her way to her usual stadium suite, you wondered how Swift — who once tweeted to Donald Trump that “we will vote you out” — would handle Mahomes’ wife, Brittany, who liked a recent Instagram post from the former president. “Thank you to the beautiful Brittany Mahomes for so strongly defending me,” he said Wednesday, “and the fact that MAGA is the greatest and most powerful political movement in the history of our now failing country.” We have the corrosive Chiefs. We have attempts by the Philadelphia Eagles to swing presidential votes for Kamala Harris. And we have Aaron Rodgers’ thoughts of serving Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a vice president, before he said no.

     Swift came to the opener nonetheless, wearing blue denim shorts to go with Kelce’s new haircut and mustache. So did Mahomes, who posted a morning hype video that mentions the Chiefs as “a dynasty.” Said the narrator: “To win three in a row, there’s a reason no one has done it.” Of course, in the end, there was head coach Andy Reid, who somehow keeps the organization in sync.

     “When they say it’s a game of inches, might be shorter than that,” he said of Likely.

     Said Mahomes, mentioning the lack of internal crises: “He’s the best. Obviously, he’s one of the best coaches of all time.”

     Shelve the cries that Tyreek Hill is still missed. Mahomes now has rookie Xavier Worthy, the fastest sprinter in NFL combine history, who scored on a 21-yard reverse and caught a 35-yard score in the fourth quarter. With Worthy and Hollywood Brown, the quarterback has his best set of weapons. In a morning walkthrough, Worthy told offensive coordinator Matt Nagy that he would score on a run. “He's so cool, calm and collected all the time," Mahomes said. “You never even see the excitement on him, but he goes out there and makes plays. Just having him out there, it just opens up stuff. And that's what's so great about this offense — we're able to do all of that, and that's when we're at our best.”

     “I feel like nerves aren't really a thing for me,” Worthy said. “I feel like I come in, and it's just like being a kid again, playing in the backyard.”

     Yikes.

     At season’s end, when the Chiefs wind up with home-field advantage because of one Sept. 5 victory, we will remember The Toe. “At this point, you just have to live with the call,” Likely said. "You have to watch the film, see where we can get better to not put ourselves in a situation to leave it in the refs' hands.”

     Maybe try a different point in time. Don’t play the Chiefs. Against any other team, in any other era, the digit is in the green.

     Or, check out white cleats.

     ###

     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.