Detroit Lions safety Brian Branch sparked postgame chaos Sunday night after striking Kansas City wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster in the face, moments after the Chiefs sealed a 30-17 home victory.
The scuffle erupted near midfield when Branch brushed off Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ offer for a postgame high-five.
Smith-Schuster approached Branch, exchanged a few heated words, and was met with an open-handed shot to the facemask that sent him sprawling to the turf.
As Smith-Schuster sprang up and charged toward Branch, Chiefs running back Isiah Pacheco tried to intervene.
But before order could be restored, Branch ripped off Smith-Schuster’s helmet and wrestled him back to the ground, prompting players from both teams to swarm in and break up the brawl.
Branch later apologized for the skirmish and explained why he was upset with Smith-Schuster.
“I did a real childish thing,” Branch, 23, told reporters. “I’m tired of people doing stuff in between plays and refs don’t catch it. They be trying to bully me out there. I shouldn’t have did it – it was childish.”
He cited a play late in the fourth quarter when Smith-Schuster hit him in the back away from the action.
“I got blocked in the back illegally,” Branch said, “and it was in front of the ref and the ref didn’t do anything. It’s just stuff like that. I could’ve gotten hurt off that, but I still shouldn’t have done [the postgame fight], though.”
Smith-Schuster called Branch a great player who is important to the Lions and said he was expecting a handshake and a “good game.”
“But he threw a punch,” said Smith-Schuster, 28, who thought Branch was frustrated during the game by “me just blocking him.”
“I’m just doing my job,” Smith-Schuster said. “I play between the whistles.”
Mahomes touched on that theme earlier when he was interviewed after the game on NBC.
“I mean, we play the game in between the whistles,” Mahomes said. “They can do all the extracurricular stuff they want to do, but we play in between the whistles.”
Chiefs coach Andy Reid said Branch hit Smith-Schuster “for what looked like no reason” and noted his receiver got his nose bloodied. “That’s tough, and he did pretty good damage on JuJu’s nose.”
Lions coach Dan Campbell said Branch was in the wrong.
“I love Brian Branch, but what he did is inexcusable, and it’s not going to be accepted here,” Campbell said. “It’s not what we do; it’s not what we’re about. I apologized to Coach Reid, the Chiefs, and Smith-Schuster. That’s not OK. That’s not what we do here, and it’s not going to be OK. He knows it. Our team knows it. That’s not who we are.”
Branch, a second-round draft pick in 2023 and a Pro Bowl selection in 2024, has been fined a total of $34,784 this season for an unsportsmanlike conduct infraction in Week 1 against the Green Bay Packers and two unnecessary roughness violations – taunting the Packers and a low block in Week 3 against the Baltimore Ravens – NFL.com reported.
Smith-Schuster, a second-round pick by the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2017, has played for the Steelers (2017–21), Kansas City Chiefs (2022, 2024–present), and New England Patriots (2023). He was selected to the Pro Bowl in 2018.
