Chiefs seemingly got away with a critical penalty before game-winning TD vs. Bucs

Despite being down their top three wide receivers and a starting cornerback, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers dragged the undefeated Kansas City Chiefs into overtime and to the brink of defeat. Some questionable calls ended up altering the course of the game, but not all of them came from head coach Todd Bowles.

While Bowles is getting eviscerated by a furious fanbase over his debatable decision not to go for two points after scoring a game-tying touchdown with 30 seconds left, officials piled on with a missed call in overtime.

On the play before Kareem Hunt scored a game-winning touchdown, it seemed like offensive lineman Jawaan Taylor might have gotten an early start before the ball was snapped. That is to say, Bucs fans accusing the Chiefs of getting away with a false start penalty that would have backed them off the doorstep of a game-winning touchdown were justified in their rage.

Replays showed that Taylor indeed started early but a flag wasn't thrown. It's hard to see these things in real time, but it's not the first time Taylor has gotten off early yet officials seemingly aren't watching him for it despite having precedent to do so.

Officials seemingly missed a critical false start penalty in Buccaneers overtime loss to Chiefs

It's incredibly lame to blame officials when your team loses, but so is having the outcome of a game potentially impacted by referees. This is the third time this season the Bucs have been on he wrong side of a bad officiating situation, and all three times the Bucs ended up losing the game.

In both games against Atlanta the Bucs were seemingly screwed over by missed calls. Back in Week 6, officials missed an obvious facemask on Bucky Irving that would have extended a drive where the Bucs could have run out the clock. Two weeks later the lack of a pylon cam prevented a down-the-line angle that probably would have taken a Kyle Pitts touchdown off the board in a game Tampa Bay lost by five.

Now we have this, which is the least egregious of the bunch but is still up there. It's less that it was blatantly obvious and more about the track record of Taylor not being considered. This is something that goes back to Week 1 of last season when he was getting Zapruder filmed doing this stuff, and here we are over a year later and his pre-snap movement isn't on the radar of officials or the league office.

Had a flag been thrown, the Chiefs might have still scored a game-winning touchdown but they'd have needed to go more than two yards to get into the endzone. Plenty of things went wrong for the Bucs to put them in that situation, but it doesn't help when these sorts of things also work against a team.

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