The Kansas City Chiefs definitely missed Mansoor Delane last night his situation and that of Josh Simmons is iffy.
The Kansas City Chiefs have been struggling with some early injuries, and coach Andy Reid made an effort to clarify the injury situation of two key players, cornerback Mansoor Delane and left tackle Josh Simmons.
“Clarified” takes on multiple meanings when it comes to Reid doing this sort of thing. He often does updates that seem to take things in reverse, then forward, and that was the case to some extent with both Delane and Simmons in a piece from Jesse Newell of The Athletic.
Delane dressed but didn’t play, but he could have, accoridng to Reid. The team took a cautious approach to his injury status this week, with Reid noting that his shoulder injury wasn’t “coming around” as fast as the Chief wanted.
As a result, the play-or-sit situation could have gone either way. In other words, Delane was right on the border of being a full go or trying to get the injury to calm down a little so he can be a play a full game on Sunday against the Miami Dolphins.
Confused yet? It gets better, sort of. Reid described Delane’s situation as a “tweener” position to be in, although if you’re keeping score and second guessing here it would have been more helpful to have the cornerback against quarterback Daniel Jones and the Indianapolis Colts than the Dolphins going forward.
The more significant part of this is what it means for the Chiefs secondary going forward. Nohl Williams had a strong game at the opposite corner with plenty of physical play, but Kristian Fulton and L’Jarius Sneed both had some shaky moments replacing Delane.
As for Simmons, he’s something of a ‘tweener, too, albeit in a completely different way. He came into minicamp at about 285 pounds, and he looked like he’d been training for a body building competition.
But the Chiefs had him gain about 20 pounds to be at his playing weight, and now he’s out with a back issue. Sense a connection? It’s a fair question to ask if Simmons’ weight gain is related to his injury, although all Reid would say about this is that the tackle is “working his tail off” to get back in the lineup.
Reid is soft-peddling Simmons’ injury, but this is starting to resemble what happened with the left tackle last year. He wound up missing a fair amount of time, and right tackle Jaylon Moore also got banged up in the win over the Colts. It’s definitely a situation to monitor as the Chiefs try to stay undefeated heading to Miami.
