Things got extremely heated in the final seconds of the Kansas City Chiefs’ win over the Detroit Lions on Sunday night.
As the two teams took the field at Arrowhead Stadium to shake hands with the final seconds ticking off the clock, Lions safety Brian Branch reached out and hit Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster in his facemask after blowing past Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who looked like he was trying to shake his hand though Branch ignored him.
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That sent Smith-Schuster down to the ground. He jumped back up and went after Branch with a few others as the scuffle escalated. The fracas took officials and coaches a few minutes to sort out.
Things eventually calmed down and both teams left the field without further issue. Smith-Schuster walked off the field holding a towel to his face, and Chiefs head coach Andy Reid said that there is “pretty good damage” to his nose.
The scuffle is sure to lead to fines from the league, at a minimum, in the coming days.
“I did a little childish thing, but I’m tired of people doing stuff in between the play and refs don’t catch it,” Branch said after the game, via The Athletic’s Colton Pouncy. “They be trying to bully me out there.
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“I should’ve never did it. It was childish.”
Branch said that Smith-Schuster specifically hit him in the back at one point in the game while trying to make a block, and that it wasn’t called for a penalty.
“I got blocked in the back illegally, and it was in front of the ref,” Branch said. “The ref didn’t do anything. Just stuff like that. I could’ve got hurt off of that, but I still should not have done that.”
That hit in question came near the end of the fourth quarter, where Branch seemed to be blindsided by Smith-Schuster and knocked to the ground.
Lions head coach Dan Campbell called out Branch after the game, too.
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“I love Brian Branch,” Campbell said, “but what he did is inexcusable. It’s not going to be accepted here. It’s not what we do, it’s not what we’re about. I apologized to [head] coach [Andy] Reid and the Chiefs and Schuster. That’s not OK. That’s not what we do here and it’s not going be OK. He knows it and our team knows it. “
The outburst came after the Chiefs surged ahead in the second half to beat the Lions, 30-17, on Sunday night. They took a three-point lead into the locker room at halftime, and then Hollywood Brown scored his first of two second-half touchdowns on KC’s first drive of the third quarter to take all momentum away from the Lions.
Mahomes went 22-of-30 passing for 257 yards with three touchdowns and ran for another score in the win for the Chiefs, who now sit at 3-3. Isaiah Pacheco had 51 yards on 12 carries, and Travis Kelce had 78 yards on six catches. Smith-Schuster had 57 yards on three catches.
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Jared Goff completed 23 of 29 for 203 yards with two touchdowns for the Lions, who had won four straight games entering Sunday. Jahmyr Gibbs had 65 yards on 17 carries, and Jameson Williams had 66 yards and a score on six catches.
Branch, now in his third season in the league, had seven total tackles.
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