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Patrick Mahomes has been the most unstoppable football player on the planet for at least the past two weeks, as the Kansas City Chiefs quarterback has led his team to pretty sizable comebacks in the NFL playoffs, which, ultimately, has taken them to Super Bowl 54 to play against the San Francisco 49ers. It’s a tasty matchup that pits one of the league’s most explosive offenses (Chiefs) against one of its most dominant defenses (49ers), so it’ll be mano a mano come Super Sunday.
As dominant as Patrick Mahomes has been, though, there’s probably never been discussion about targeting him with the sole purpose of knocking him out of the game. But that’s what Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio actually suggested to Peter King recently while talking about what the Niners might do to slow down the potent Kansas City offense. Take a look at the pretty shocking statement from Florio below.
“If you can hit him, even if it’s close to the sideline, even if he’s maybe started into his slide, when the championship is riding on it, I think it’s a different analysis. And yeah, we may give up 15 yards or half the distance to the goal line.“
Now it’s important to add that Florio doesn’t want anything to happen to Mahomes, so it’s not as if he’s suggesting they do try something fishy, but this has a pretty bad tone to it. The entire video clip can be seen below.
https://twitter.com/AB_3127/status/1220164256156483584?s=20
Clearly this is poor judgement from Florio, who’s much better than this garbage. Obviously, San Francisco’s defense will do what it can to slow down Patrick Mahomes, but crossing the line by hitting him late or illegally probably isn’t the way their coaches will tell them to do so. And, considering the extreme suggestion from Mike Florio, people on Twitter couldn’t help but rip into him.
Maybe someone should risk punching you in the face https://t.co/fTykqaefwD
— Cookie Expert (@JeffAllen71) January 23, 2020
No one in their right mind should be advocating this to any player of any team.
— Dcabel (@Dcabel2) January 23, 2020
So the same guy that didn't think Tyreek should be playing because of alleged domestic violence is now encouraging late and borderline hits on Mahomes?!?! LMAOO WOW
— Christopher Moltisanti (@AbstractBravo) January 23, 2020
https://twitter.com/deezylowe/status/1220194440096206848?s=20
Someone needs to call this guy out. @ShannonSharpe
— Creator Of Hotsauce (@Cliff_Johnson02) January 23, 2020
Let’s all hope Super Bowl 54 is played clean and doesn’t resort to WWE-style hits, because football fans deserve to see Patrick Mahomes go against a dominant defense for an epic game. All the extracurricular stuff should just be left out.