Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce said referee Carl Cheffers wasn’t worthy of employment at Foot Locker after the holding flag he threw negated Kansas City’s game-tying two-point conversion attempt late in Sunday night’s playoff loss to the Steelers.

The NFL apparently disagrees.

Ben Austro of Football Zebras reported Wednesday the NFL tabbed Cheffers to be the referee at Super Bowl LI on Feb. 5. It will be the first Super Bowl for Cheffers, who’s in his 17th season as an NFL official and ninth as a referee.

On Sunday, Cheffers flagged Chiefs tackle Eric Fisher for holding on the two-point conversion attempt after Kansas City cut Pittsburgh’s lead to 18-16 on a touchdown with 2:43 left. Moved back 10 yards, the Chiefs’ subsequent attempt fell incomplete and the Steelers ran out the clock. After the game, Kelce said Cheffers “shouldn’t be able to wear a zebra jersey ever again. He shouldn’t even be able to work at [expletive] Foot Locker.”

As laid out by Austro, the NFL uses a season-long grading process for selecting postseason officials, who are placed into one of three tiers based on the accuracy of their calls plus intangibles such as leadership, decisiveness and managing the pace of the game. Officials for the conference championship games and the Super Bowl are selected from the top tier, and Super Bowl referees also must meet three minimum requirements: at least five years of NFL experience, at least three years as a referee and at least one postseason game as a referee in a previous season. Officials also are not allowed to work consecutive Super Bowls, and high-ranking officials who have never worked a Super Bowl get preference.

Cheffers’s crew has been in the middle of a few controversies of late (though the same can be said for many groups of officials).

On Thanksgiving, the Vikings were upset with Cheffers and his crew after their 16-13 loss to the Lions because a last-minute interception by Detroit’s Darius Slay was not reviewed (Slay appeared to lose control of the ball as he went down). The Lions kicked a game-winning field goal as the clock ran out after the pick, and Cheffers explained later that any call for a replay at that point in the game had to come from the booth upstairs, adding that the replay official did not need to see the play again to determine that Slay was down before he lost the ball.

Two of the recent instances seemed to benefit the Green Bay Packers, who will be playing in this year’s Super Bowl should they beat the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday.

In December 2015, Cheffers was one of two officials who flagged the Lions’ Devin Taylor for a face-mask penalty on the final play of regulation against the Packers. Given an untimed down, Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers threw the longest Hail Mary touchdown pass in NFL history to give the Packers a 27-23 victory.

“I think it was an illegal tackle,” Cheffers said when asked about the call in August. “Horse-collar, face mask, I think it was an illegal tackle. I’m very comfortable with it.” NFL director of officials Dean Blandino agreed, saying he had no issue with the call even though it was “really close.”

Then, after Green Bay’s season-opening 27-23 win over Jacksonville in September, league sources told ESPN’s Adam Schefter that Cheffers’s crew missed a high number of calls that went against the Jaguars, including an un-flagged defensive holding penalty by Packers defensive back Micah Hyde that would have given the Jaguars a first and goal from the Green Bay 9-yard line with less than a minute left. Jacksonville failed to convert on the ensuing fourth and one, giving the Packers the win.

It should be noted that the Super Bowl crew includes the top-graded officials from throughout the league and will not simply be Cheffers and the officials he has worked with all season.

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