Kansas City coach Andy Reid was miffed the officials didn’t give him a warning. Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes was mad the flag was thrown at all.

But referee Carl Cheffers said officials had no choice but to penalize Kansas City wide receiver Kadarius Toney for being offside on what looked like the NFL’s Play of the Year when it happened.

“I’ve been in the league a long time,” Reid said, “and I haven’t had one like that.”

The Chiefs trailed the Buffalo Bills 20-17 with 1:25 to play when Mahomes connected with tight end Travis Kelce on a second-and-10 throw from the Buffalo 49-yard line. Still more than 20 yards from the end zone and with Bills defenders converging on him in the middle of the field, Kelce made a backward pass to Toney, and the former Blount High School quarterback raced down the sideline to put Kansas City in front with 1:12 remaining.

Except the down judge had dropped a flag as soon as the football had been snapped, and the play was nullified by offensive offside.

“It was a heck of a football game down to the end,” Reid said. “I’m very disappointed it ended the way it did. I never use any of this as excuses, but normally I get a warning before something like that happens in a big game. A bit embarrassing in the National Football League for that to take place. …

“Normally, if it’s even close, you get a warning. The head coach gets a warning normally, so I don’t know. I didn’t have a protractor out there, but it’s a bit embarrassing.”

Cheffers said Toney was so far offside, though, that it left no fudge room.

“If they look for alignment advice, certainly we are going to give it to them,” Cheffers said. “But, ultimately, they are responsible for wherever they line up. And certainly no warning is required, especially if they are lined up so far offsides where they’re actually blocking our view of the ball, so we would give them sort of a warning if it was anywhere close, but this particular one is beyond warning. …

“If it’s egregious enough, it would be beyond a warning, so really regardless of whether or not he was warned at other times during the day, if it was an egregious alignment to where he was over the ball, whether he had warnings or not, it would still be a foul.”

After the penalty against Toney had been marked off, Mahomes threw three consecutive incompletions, and the Bills kneeled out the final 55 seconds on a victory that recharged their playoff hopes.

“I saw the picture,” Mahomes said. “He probably is barely offsides. But for him to take the game into his hands over a call like that that doesn’t affect the play at all – at all. Didn’t affect anything. It’s tough. That’s a Hall of Fame tight end making a Hall of Fame play that won’t be shown because we threw a flag for offensive offsides, so it takes away from not only this game and this season, but from a legendary career that Travis has had, and that hurts me because I know how hard he works for it.”

Kansas City won Super Bowl LVII to cap the 2022 season. But with their third loss in four games, the Chiefs are 8-5 in 2023.

Kansas City lost to the Philadelphia Eagles 21-17 on Nov. 30 after Mahomes was called for intentional grounding, leaving the Chiefs facing a fourth-and-25 snap with 1:35 remaining.

In their previous game on Dec. 3, the Chiefs lost to the Green Bay Packers 27-19 when defensive pass interference might have kept Kansas City wide receiver Marquez Valdez-Scantling from catching a pass near the goal line with 14 seconds left.

“It’s obviously tough to swallow, not only for me, but for football in general,” Mahomes said after Sunday’s game. “To take away greatness like that, for a guy like Travis to make a play like that. And who knows if we win? But I know as fans, you want to see the guys on the field decide the game. That’s why last week I didn’t say anything about the flag that didn’t get called against Marquez. They’re human. They make mistakes. But every week we’re talking about something. …

“It’s the call, man. Just in that moment. It’s not even for myself or me. It’s just I know how much everybody puts into this game, and for it to happen on a flag, change the outcome of a game in that moment – I’ve played seven years and never had offensive offsides called. I mean, that’s elementary school. You point to the ref, do all that different type of stuff and it doesn’t get called. And if it does, they warn you. There was no warning throughout the entire game. And then you wait until there’s a minute left in the game to make a call like that? It’s tough, man. I mean, lost for words, man, because it’s tough. Regardless of if we win or lose, man, just for it to end with another game and we’re talking about the refs, not what we want for the NFL and for football.”

Toney was an All-State quarterback at Blount High School in Prichard, and he won the Alabama Sports Writers Association’s Class 6A Back of the Year Award for the 2016 season. In his final two seasons at Blount, Toney threw for 6,498 yards and 69 touchdowns and ran for 1,790 yards and 31 touchdowns.

Toney made the conversion to wide receiver at Florida, where he caught 70 passes for 984 yards and 10 touchdowns, ran for 161 yards and one touchdown on 19 carries and returned 11 punts for an average of 12.6 yards and one TD as a senior.

The New York Giants used the 20th selection in the 2021 NFL Draft on Toney. He had 39 receptions for 420 yards and 6 yards on three rushing attempts during his rookie season, when he missed seven games.

The Giants traded him to the Chiefs on Oct. 27, 2022, for third- and sixth-round selections in the 2023 NFL Draft.

The trade paid off for Kansas City in a 38-35 victory over Philadelphia in Super Bowl LVII. Toney caught a 5-yard touchdown pass with 12:04 left to play as the Chiefs took a 28-27 lead, then broke the longest punt-return in Super Bowl history – a 65-yarder to the Eagles 5-yard line – to set up another touchdown with 9:22 remaining.

This season, Toney has 25 receptions for 164 yards and one touchdown, 11 rushing attempts for 31 yards and six punt returns for a 9.7-yard average in 12 games.

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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.