On Friday, the Kansas City Chiefs announced that ‘Hollywood’ Brown would undergo surgery to repair his dislocated SC joint and be placed on injured reserve. The shocking decision was explained during the team’s press conference, which featured Chiefs V.P. of Sports Medicine and Performance Rick Burkholder and head coach Andy Reid.
“He was hurt on August 10th, and he had an injury that we’ve seen before. It was reduced, not surgically reduced, but reduced in Jacksonville. The protocol is that you look at that again in a week to make sure it’s still in place. It was, and then he was doing great in rehab.” said Burkholder. “He was having no pain. We were discussing return-to-play opportunities, but we had one last check of another image to do at three weeks from four weeks from the injury and three weeks from the last MRI, and it looked like the bone had moved.”
Brown was optimistic that he could return sooner rather than later after the initial injury comparisons to former Chiefs wide receiver Tyreek Hill in 2019 also against the Jacksonville Jaguars.
“So we consulted with three or four physicians in the country and then sent him out to Vail to a specialist. And everybody involved felt like it was a little too risky for him to play without having this operated on,” said Burkholder. “So he’ll be fixed on Monday in Vail, Colorado, and then we’ll go from there. There’s obviously no timelines because we don’t, we don’t know yet.”
Chiefs head coach mentioned that Brown was the only injury on the report this week while offering support to the veteran receiver in his recovery process.
“Our thoughts are perfect with Hollywood, great kid,” said Reid. Nobody wanted to do this more than he did, so our hearts go out to him, but he’ll get himself back and ready to go down the road here whenever that time is. We don’t know exactly how long that’ll be, but it takes a pretty extended amount of time.”
Reid says he feels good about the team’s depth at receiver while Brown is unavailable. He jokingly said he probably wouldn’t use any receivers in his next visit to Jacksonville to play the Jaguars.
