After working Saturday’s Wild Card game between the Tennessee Titans and the Kansas City Chiefs, NFL referee Jeff Triplette has reportedly decided to retire, per Kevin Seifert of ESPN.

Confirmed: NFL referee Jeff Triplette is retiring, as the NFL Network reported. Triplette has been a referee since 1999 and certainly had an eventful final game.

If it was indeed Triplette’s last game as a referee, Triplette will not walk away from the job for good without controversy, as NFL officiating chief Mike Pereira openly criticized the way Triplette officiated the Titans-Chiefs game. Pereira even took to Twitter to express his displeasure at the way Triplette and his crew worked the game.

Among the officiating mistakes that drew the ire of the Chiefs and Pereira was when Titans quarterback Marcus Mariota was sacked by Chiefs linebacker Derrick Johnson in the second quarter.

Mariota fumbled the ball, and though the Chiefs seemed to have the recovery, Triplette ruled that the signal-caller’s forward motion was stopped. That said, replays clearly showed that Mariota legitimately fumbled the football.

Triplette started a career in the NFL in 1996 as a field judge. He would become a back judge in 1998 before transitioning to referee in 1999.

Looking back, it could be argued that Triplette should not have even worked the aforementioned Wild Card contest given that he already had the intent to retire. In addition, it had been years prior to yesterday since Triplette last refereed in the playoffs, per Will Brinson of CBS Sports.

Here's my question: did the NFL know Triplette was retiring before this game? And did Triplette get a playoff game BECAUSE he was retiring? Triplette had not been assigned a playoff game since the 2013 season, according to Pro-Football-Reference.