Chris Jones rests, Simmons' back still has no timetable
Chris Jones takes a veteran's rest day, Josh Simmons' back is still unresolved 10 days before Denver, and the Diego Pounds trade looks more urgent by the week.
Jones gets a veteran's rest day, but Simmons' back still has no timetable
Chris Jones sat out Wednesday's practice with a back injury that reads exactly like what it sounds like — a four-time All-Pro getting a maintenance day 10 days before it counts. "Chris Jones out of practice with back injury, Chiefs expect he'll be fine," was how Pro Football Talk framed it, and Andy Reid didn't push back: "His back was bothering him, so we kept him out. He'll be alright, though." Nobody around the building is treating it as more than that.
Left tackle is the one that will not resolve on a coach's say-so. Josh Simmons hasn't practiced since the final week of training camp, and Reid's own description of the injury — "a spot in there that flared up, and now you've got to sit here and wait until that thing comes down" — is still the newest information Kansas City has more than a week later; Arrowhead Pride's read this week is that his status remains genuinely unclear with the opener closing in. That's exactly why the Diego Pounds trade landed the way it did: Pounds allowed zero pressures across 26 pass-blocking snaps at left tackle for Baltimore this preseason, per a scouting breakdown from AtoZ Sports, and Kansas City now needs that insurance policy to be more than the emergency option it was bought to be.
R Mason Thomas joined the list Thursday, sitting out with a hamstring issue, according to Pete Sweeney of The Kansas City Star — one more name on a defensive line that was supposed to be the offseason's headline addition, not its newest question mark. None of it, on its own, is a crisis. All of it together, with Denver on Monday night, is the kind of injury report a team wants cleared up by kickoff, not still being assembled.
Last time out: the preseason ended the way it started — nobody won
Kansas City's exhibition slate closed the way the whole month had gone: nobody won it. The Chiefs and Seahawks finished 9-9 at Arrowhead on August 29, saved from overtime only when Seattle's Jason Myers missed a 52-yard field goal as time expired, and the preseason record closes at 0-2-1. Garrett Nussmeier played all four quarters at quarterback and went 22 of 34 for 198 yards with no touchdowns and an interception — a rookie's line, propped up by whatever the offense could scrape together underneath him.
Seahawks9-9
Buccaneers15-16
Rams12-20The backfield gave the best of it. Emmett Johnson rushed seven times for 39 yards and caught both his targets for 15 more, while Tyquan Thornton (11 yards) and Cyrus Allen (12 yards) both turned short looks into real gains and Travis Kelce hauled in his only target for eight yards. Xavier Worthy, still working through the shoulder that's bothered him since early August, was targeted once and came away empty, and Noah Gray and Rashee Rice barely factored — Rice logged 10 snaps and didn't draw a single target. None of it will show up in a season record, but it's the last look anybody got at this group before it counts.
The Pounds trade set off a churn at the bottom of the roster that still hasn't stopped
A week after sending a conditional 2028 sixth-round pick to Baltimore for tackle Diego Pounds, Kansas City is still working the wire underneath him. The team signed defensive tackle Marcus Harris to the practice squad and terminated Cole Brevard's contract, then finalized injury settlements with three players let go in the roster crunch — C.J. Hanson, Chris Oladokun and E.J. Smith — according to Aaron Wilson. That's the unglamorous back half of cutdown week: closing out business with the men who didn't make it before turning to who might still help.
#Chiefs worked out former #Titans #Patriots tight end Thomas Odukoya, an international player from The Netherlands, per a league source
The Chiefs spent this week on the other side of that ledger, working out 10 free agents, Wilson reported, tight end Thomas Odukoya among them — a former Titans and Patriots practice-squad piece who played his college ball in the Netherlands. None of it is a roster move yet. But with Simmons's back unresolved and the defensive line still shuffling bodies around R Mason Thomas's injury, a front office this active in September is one that knows exactly how thin its margin for error actually is.
Bo Nix and a division title arrive at Arrowhead on Monday night
Monday night vs. the Broncos is the real season opener, and it arrives carrying more than a normal Week 1 usually does — Denver won the AFC West for the first time since 2015 last year and shows up defending it, with Bo Nix sitting on a 2-1 career record against Mahomes heading into their fourth meeting. Sean Payton has reportedly been piping Arrowhead crowd noise into practice to get his team ready for the environment, and when asked about Mahomes coming back from the knee, Payton didn't hedge: "You've seen enough things where he's going to be at his best, and we're preparing for him at his best." Mahomes himself is on track to start, per Ian Rapoport of NFL Network — the one piece of clean injury news in a week that hasn't had much of it.
Kansas City opened as 2.5-point favorites at home, with the total set at 42.5 — a number that reads low for a Mahomes offense, and about right for a Denver defense that spent last season making nights like this one difficult. Whatever the health report looks like by kickoff, this is the game that decides who actually owns the division, not just who won it last.