The Kansas City Chiefs suffered a few key injuries during their Week 1 game against the Arizona Cardinals.
Speaking to reporters ahead of practice on Tuesday, Chiefs HC Andy Reid explained that two players would be sitting out of practice as the team prepares on a short week for the Los Angeles Chargers.
“Injury-wise, Harrison Butker has an ankle sprain,” Reid said. “We’re just going to see, he’s got a little swelling in there. We’ll just see how that goes. (He’s) day-to-day. And (Trent) McDuffie has a hamstring. We’re treating it and we’re going to see where that goes. He’s going to struggle to make it to the game (on Thursday).”
Outside of McDuffie and Butker, everyone else will practice in some capacity on Tuesday.
“Other than that, everyone is up and rolling,” Reid said.
That includes QB Patrick Mahomes who injured his left wrist early in the game on Sunday and played through it.
“Yeah, he’s full-go,” Reid said of Mahomes.
Mahomes also confirmed that the wrist shouldn’t be a problem.
#Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes on his left wrist: "It feels great today."
— Charles Goldman (@goldmctNFL) September 13, 2022
While McDuffie seems unlikely to play in Week 2, there remains a chance that Butker could tough things out. It’s all about getting the swelling in his ankle to subside enough for him to function at a high level.
“Yeah, I think if it was just a pain thing, I think he’d bear through that,” Reid said. “But he’s got some swelling in there. So, I think it’s a matter of him being functional enough to do it. He’s a tough kid, we’ll just see how it works out.”
The Chiefs are preparing for all possibilities at the kicker position. That might include Justin Reid being involved in some way, possibly only working on kickoffs, where he was able to hit several touchbacks in Week 1.
“We’ve got plan B and we’re working on it,” Reid said.
One plan B appears to be former Jets kicker Matt Ammendola, who NFL Network reports is signing to the Chiefs’ practice squad.
“We’ll see if that is where we go with it,” Reid said. “We’re kind of in that process of looking at guys, just to make sure we’ve got things covered. We’ll see where all that goes. We went through this last year and it worked out pretty good on relatively short notice. I think that time that they have together is important, but we did have success with it last year. We’ll just see where all of this goes.”
