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Laiatu Latu (l) tackles Patrick Mahomes (r).
With their playoff hopes on the line, the Kansas City Chiefs erased an 11-point deficit in the fourth quarter against the AFC South-leading Indianapolis Colts Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium, going on to win the game on a Harrison Butker walk-off field goal in overtime.
The defending AFC champions brought their record back up to 6-5, and kept their chances of making the playoffs at 57 percent, at least according to a mathematical program created by The Athletic. The Chiefs remain in 10th place in the AFC, with the five teams directly above them all owning tiebreakers over Kansas City. So the road to the playoffs remains an uphill climb, but at least the Chiefs kept their heads above water by squeaking past Indianapolis.
The Chiefs’ future Hall of Fame quarterback Patrick Mahomes threw for 352 yards on 29 completions out of 46 attempts, but somehow did not manage a touchdown pass, while throwing one interception.
Latu’s Low Hit on Mahomes
The interception was taken by Colts second-year defensive end Laiatu Latu, who tipped Mahomes’ first pass of the game, then caught the deflected ball himself for his third pick of the season — a total only two other defensive linemen have achieved since 1990, according to NFL researcher Dante Koplowitz-Fleming.
But Latu’s fortunes shifted late in the second quarter when he was flagged for a low hit on Mahomes, an offense that appears likely to affect Latu’s bank account when the play is reviewed by the NFL Operations Department.
The call against Latu with 32 seconds remaining in the half was roughing the passer, normally a 15-yard penalty, but because it occurred at the Colts’ 12-yard line, the call took the Chiefs only six yards, half the distance to the goal line.
15 Roughing the Passer Calls This Year
The penalty set up a Butker field goal to make the score 14-9 in favor of Indianapolis at halftime. But perhaps more importantly to Latu, roughing the passer is a penalty that frequently draws a fine from the NFL in addition to any on-field yardage assessment.
Just this Saturday, Joey Bosa of the Buffalo Bills was hit with a $17,389 fine for roughing the passer in a game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The week before that, the NFL slapped three different players with fines in the same amount for roughing the passer penalties.
In total, the NFL Operations Department has handed down 15 fines to 15 different players in 11 weeks for roughing the passer. The total amount of cash extracted for those players — $228,059.
Latu Once Retired From Football
Another $17,389 — the amount mandated for roughing the passer, under the NFL collective bargaining agreement — appears like it may be added to that total when the NFL reviews what officials said was Latu’s low hit on the Kansas City quarterback.
Of course, not every roughing the passer penalty is followed by an NFL fine. In fact, most are not. Through 11 weeks, NFL officials had thrown the flag for roughing the passer penalties 67 times. The 15 fines handed down means that only 22 percent of penalties for the violation, about one in five, has been followed by fines from the league.
Latu was the Colts’ first-round draft pick in 2024, out of UCLA. The 24-year-old started his college career at Washington where he suffered a shoulder injury that actually caused him to retire from football in 2021.
But in 2022 he changed his mind and transferred to UCLA, where he became an All-American the following season.
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Jonathan Vankin JONATHAN VANKIN is an award-winning journalist and writer who now covers baseball and other sports for Heavy.com. He twice won New England Press Association awards for sports feature writing. He was a sports editor and writer at The Daily Yomiuri in Tokyo, Japan, covering Japan Pro Baseball, boxing, sumo and other sports. More about Jonathan Vankin
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