All has been quiet on the Chiefs front the last couple of weeks. The team has made a couple of minor signings, including one intriguing signing of a former discus thrower who’s never played football before (Tautvydas Kieras); outside of that however, there hasn’t been a lot of news coming out of 1 Arrowhead Drive. The last 24 hours however, have been much more eventful as the Chiefs officially filed their appeal on the Tampering penalties put forth by the NFL back on March 9th. Chiefs owner Clark Hunt told the Kansas City Star that the team was following through on the promise to appeal the ruling, but couldn’t say much more than that publicly because the case was still open. The team is definitely hopeful that this is resolved before the Draft on April 28th, in the punishment the Chiefs were stripped of a 3rd round draft pick this year and a 6th round draft pick next year in addition to fines totally $350,000 to the Organization, GM, and Head Coach. If the appeal process doesn’t play out before the draft begins, then there’s no chance of them getting this year’s 3rd rounder back. You can read more about the appeal and the tampering situation here.
The huge breaking news of today though is about the Chiefs all world Pass Rusher Justin Houston. NFL writer Kevin Patra broke the news at NFL.com about 9:30 this morning, but that ‘minor’ little scope that Justin Houston had to “clean up” his knee at the end of February seems to be anything but ‘minor’. Apparently the surgery was to repair a dysfunctional (not torn) but injured ACL, and per Chiefs Trainer Rick Buckholder and NFL.com “Houston will have a 6 to 12 MONTH recovery”. You read that correctly, not 6 to 12 weeks, MONTHS. Which means the earliest hope for Houston to return would be mid-August. This likely means Houston will, at minimum, start the season on the PUP (Physically Unable to Perform) list and worst case scenario the linebacker’s entire 2016 Season could be in doubt. So what does that mean for the Chiefs? Well it means that Dee Ford is finally going to be forced to play like a first round pick. Ford was drafted in the first round in 2014 to be the heir apparent to an aging Tamba Hali at the OLB spot opposite Justin Houston. Ford has been to this point an absolute bust of a pick, yes many will point out that he got 3 sacks in a game against the Chargers this season and point to that as “hope” for his productivity; but the fact remains Dee Ford was a first round pick who has been at best a bad rotational player who had 1 good game against a severely depleted offensive line for the opposition. The Chiefs did a great job retaining players on their defense this offseason, only losing Sean Smith when there were 5 key contributors set to hit free agency. However, Justin Houston is the engine that makes the defense tick, not having him would be a crippling blow to what projects to be one of the top defenses in the NFL. Kansas City must now look for a way, either in the Draft or Free Agency, to fill the void left by this injury. Terrible news for the Chiefs, here’s hoping for better news in the near future. Read the original story from NFL.com here.
As always you can connect with me directly at twitter, @m_c_luckie
Go Chiefs,
McLuckie
