Chris Russo was ticked off watching the end of CBS’ broadcast of the AFC Championship game between the Chiefs and Bills on Sunday.
During his weekly appearance Wednesday on ESPN’s “First Take,” Russo ranted about the “atrocious job” CBS did at the end of the Chiefs’ win, blasting them for failing to show a quality replay of Bills тιԍнт end Dalton Kincaid’s drop on Buffalo’s final offensive play in a timely fashion, and for telling the roughly 57 million people watching there was a flag on the failed fourth-down attempt.
“They did not show the replay properly of the [drop] by Kincaid. They [showed] it from the side, so you really couldn’t see how bad the drop was,” Russo began. “If you see it now, how do you know how bad the drop is? It is so horrific about not showing you the proper replay. … You can’t tell how bad it is. There’s bodies in front. That is ridiculous, terrible.”
Russo then went off on the network for having Jim Nantz say there was a flag on the play, with the yellow flag graphic appearing next to the score bug, despite the fact a penalty wasn’t called.
“And then — and it’s not Nantz’s fault — they spend 20 minutes telling us there was a flag on the field! They had the yellow flag on the field! So if you’re a Buffalo fan, you think there’s a penalty and so you might get the automatic first down on the last drive of the year for your team because they put the penalty flag up,” Russo said.
“And Jimmy for 10 minutes told us, ‘Hold on now, let’s see if there’s a flag. We think there’s a flag,’ and we didn’t even know that there was no flag because they got our hopes up. And finally, five minutes later, ohh, they finally showed us the right replay of Kincaid, and that is when [Tony] Romo jumped in and said, ‘Boy, you’ve got to catch that.’ It wasn’t until the Kansas City drive where you saw the fact that Kincaid had the ball in his hands and he dropped it.”
About 10 seconds after Nantz declared “there is a flag,” Romo chimed in to say he didn’t see a flag thrown, Nantz said, “I’m told there’s a flag.”
A few seconds later, CBS dropped the flag pop-up next to the score bug, and Nantz very briefly interrupted Romo’s analysis of the play to say “no flag.”
Kincaid’s drop came on a fourth-and-5 from the Buffalo 47-yard line with 1:54 left, and Kansas City was able to run out the clock to secure a 32-29 victory.
The Chiefs will face the Eagles in Super Bowl 2025 on Feb. 9 as they look to become the first team to win three consecutive Super Bowls.
Kevin Burkhardt and Tom Brady will call the game for Fox.
