Sauce Gardner and Jets Fans Frustrated by Taylor Swift Drama During NFL Sunday Night Football Game

Welcome to New York, the NFL’s been waiting for you. The league has embraced pop star Taylor Swift’s journey into football fandom, and it’s hard to blame it considering the financial boost she’s provided by simply showing up to NFL stadiums.

But now the league is experiencing some backlash with its handling of the whole Swift phenomenon — especially among New York Jets fans after Sunday night’s game against the Kansas City Chiefs, where Swift made an appearance alongside a host of other celebrities to watch Travis Kelce.

The game ended in controversy. Late in the fourth quarter, Jets cornerback Michael Carter II caught what appeared to be quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ third interception of the game. But the play was called back on a delayed penalty, as Jets cornerback Sauce Gardner was flagged for defensive holding. Many disagreed with the call, especially Jets coach Robert Saleh, who stormed up and down the sideline and was called for unsportsmanlike conduct for screaming at an official.

Saleh, immediately after the game and on Monday, declined to comment on the penalty, though he was clearly unhappy. “It was a bizarre last drive, a series of unfortunate events,” Saleh said Monday. “It was a seven-and-a-half-minute drive that was aided by non-calls, calls, it just was bizarre. I don’t know if I’ve ever been part of a drive like that to end a football game, especially a game like that on national television. Unfortunate. I’m still trying to understand what we could’ve done better and we’re still trying to figure out how we can coach things better. I’ll get clarification on the Gardner penalty and we’ll go from there.”

So what does this have to do with Swift? Well, for Jets fans who already think referees are out to get them, the league’s approach to welcoming Swift into the fold has acted as a sort of confirmation of their theory — that the league wanted the Chiefs to win, for Taylor.

Gardner did his part to feed into that, posting (and then deleting) on X, formerly known as Twitter: “maybe if I was a swiftie, the ref wouldn’t of threw the flag.” His tweet was in response to a post about the NFL’s official Instagram account, which earlier Monday had “chiefs are 2-0 as swifties” in its bio.

Here’s how Gardner explained the penalty after the game: “The receiver ran into me, it was a collision, the same thing that was happening all game, they didn’t throw any flags. (Mahomes) threw the ball outside of the receiver, (Carter) was there, he made the play and then the ref threw the flag… I just can’t believe that. That was just crazy. I don’t even know what to say.”

Monday night, Gardner tweeted video evidence to show why he believed he should not have been called for defensive holding.

NBC Sports said Monday that Chiefs-Jets averaged approximately 27 million viewers, ranking as the most-watched Sunday show since Super Bowl LVII on Fox in February.

After a swift backlash from Jets fans, the NFL updated its Instagram bio — but a photo of Swift from Monday’s game and a play on one of her song lyrics remained as its X bio as of late Monday afternoon.