Ahead of Sunday afternoon’s AFC Championship game between the Baltimore Ravens and the Kansas City Chiefs, there was a small altercation between Ravens kicker Justin Tucker and Chiefs stars Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce during warmups when Kelce threw Tucker’s helmet and kicking tee, believing he was infringing on Mahomes’ warmup space. And now, Mahomes is opening up about the situation.
During a press conference this week, Patrick Mahomes was asked about the altercation with Justin Tucker and he called out the Ravens’ kicker a bit, claiming that he can only think of “three occasions” when a kicker didn’t move when asked, and all three of them were Tucker. He said that he thinks Tucker does it on purpose.
“He does that little stuff, I think to try to get under our skin,” Mahomes said according to Pro Football Talk. “I asked him to move his stuff. He got up and moved it, I think, two inches but didn’t move it out of the way. I was gonna let it slide, but Travis got in and moved it for me. And after that, I wasn’t gonna let him put it back down. I have a lot of respect for him as a player, one of the best kickers of all time, probably the best kicker of all time. But at the same time, you’ve got to have respect for each team, and we all share the field, and we try to do that in a respectful way.”
Mahomes did say that a “bigger deal” has been made of the incident than it really was, but it certainly caused a stir on social media leading up to the game.
