Chiefs release Kevin Boss with 'Failed Physical' and 'Failure to Disclose Physical Condition' designations

The Kansas City Chiefs signed tight end Kevin Boss to a three-year, $9 million deal last March. Boss started just two games before going down with a Week 2 concussion that would ultimately land him on injured reserve. It was unknown whether Boss would be back but it was just three weeks ago that he said this to Herbie Teope of Pro Football Weekly:

"Unfortunately, we weren't able to play a lot together last year, but I'm hoping to get back this year and get back on the field again," Boss continued. "With the addition of Coach Reid and the great staff that he put together, I think these are exciting times now for the Chiefs."

So it sounds like he planned on playing.

Except Boss wasn't healthy. At least according to the way the Chiefs recorded the transaction. Next to Boss's name on the transactions list, the Chiefs list "Failure to Disclose Physical Condition" and "Failed Physical".

A "Failed Physical" is what it sounds like and it would be referring to the concussion that ended his season. That designation doesn't always mean that a player's health is in serious danger. Eric Winston, for example, was cut from the Texans with the "Failed Physical" designation because of offseason surgery. But he was fine, obviously. You see players cut with this designation all the time. Bart Scott, for example, was cut on Tuesday with this designation.

The "Failure to Disclose Physical Condition" tag was instituted last year, and it's an interesting and lesser used one. It gained a little bit of fame when the Patriots cut defensive lineman Jonathan Fanene in August, a few months after paying him nearly $4 million in a signing bonus. This is what the Patriots' Jonathan Kraft said about the "Failure to Disclose Physical Condition" tag back then:

"So the idea is you need to disclose everything that is going on with your personal situation and then you sign it, and it's a legal document. And if somebody isn't completely up front with everything that's going on there and eventually that leads to them not being able to perform, you have a situation where it's probably best to part ways.

And the NFL, just in the last week or two, created a new designation which is released I think is failure to disclose, or failure to disclose conditions, something like that. And I think this situation falls into that category. And it's one thing if a player comes in, performs as he asked to do and develops a serious injury in the line of duty, that happens all the time, and you see your obligation through.

But in cases where somebody may not have been completely accurate up front, I think it leads to a different situation, and this probably falls into that category more than the other one."

So ... I don't know what that means in relation to Boss. Concussions are a scary and tricky business. I could guess what happened but we'd be getting too far off into speculation land.