Former Patriots star Julian Edelman says Chiefs are facing same criticisms as New England did

Pete Grathoff, The Kansas City Star on Jan 29, 2025

Published in Football

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Perhaps the second-biggest winner of the Chiefs’ recent run of success is the Tom Brady-era New England Patriots.

While the Patriots were in the process of winning six Super Bowl championships under Brady and coach Bill Belichick, NFL fans accused them of cheating and getting preferential treatment from game officials.

This message on X from writer Sarah York in response to a fan who said the Patriots weren’t as “insufferable” as the Chiefs sums things up nicely:

“Imagine Patrick Mahomes doing deflategate, Andy Reid getting busted for sending spies into opponents’ practices, and Travis Kelce getting arrested on murder charges. Recency bias is a hell of a drug.”

Former Patriots wide receiver Julian Edelman was on “The Rich Eisen Show” on Tuesday and was asked if the complaints directed at the Chiefs sound familiar.

“Yeah, it does. It does,” Edelman said. “But it’s apparent when you’re on top, everyone wants to try to bring you down. It’s a bunch of baloney that the league is helping the Kansas City Chiefs. If you got a problem with it, go beat them, OK? The refs aren’t involved when you throw interceptions, when you fumble the ball, when you jump offsides, when you don’t convert ... third and fourth down for short. They can’t control that.

“If you want to beat ‘em, go beat ‘em. Don’t talk about it. Be about it. I’m so sick and tired of hearing people say that about the Chiefs.”

Edelman shared insight on how teams prepare not only for an opponent each week, but also the officiating crew.

“You gotta do business as business is being done with the referees,” Edelman said. “We all have scouting reports on each ref crew on how they like to call the game. You learn about it during that first part of that game. If they’re calling it tight, you tighten back. If they’re not, you just hope that they’re consistent throughout the whole thing, which they usually are.

“And yes, they miss calls, and they do these things, and there’s bad calls here and there. But there’s a handful of roughing the passers for guys that don’t even have a resume that you looked at this year that got the call. If it’s close, leave it alone. ... But these whole graphics about, oh they get the call and they don’t give the call to them, it’s because they’re coached better.”