Eric Fisher playing hurt early on in KC Chiefs training camp

Sometimes national reporters will go to training camp practice and walk away with an interesting nugget or two. That's what happened here with ESPN's John Clayton and his trip to Kansas City Chiefs training camp sometime this week.

Here's what I learned: Eric Fisher has been playing hurt.

"In his first training camp practice," John Clayton writes, "Fisher badly injured two fingers on his right hand. He stayed in practice and tried to go against defenders mostly left-handed. Within a few days, he did some damage to his left hand. Those injuries have caused him to be a little inconsistent blocking, but Reid isn't concerned."

"Badly injured" and "did some damage" ... this is all new to me. I did not know this. But looking back on it, Andy Reid did address this even so briefly. Asked about Eric Fisher on Friday, Reid said that "his hands are a little beat up" but that he is a "competing son of a gun."

Fisher even spoke with the media after his first practice but did not say anything. Just this week at practice I noticed Fisher getting his fingers taped on the field and I didn't think twice about it.

Perhaps you could have said the same thing about Donald Stephenson, who injured his finger, too. But he needed surgery to correct his and will miss the first preseason game. Can you imagine the disappointment if Fisher did not play in his first preseason game?

As for Fisher's play, the contention that he's been inconsistent blocking, that's fair to say. He has been. But a man of his size, athleticism and mental make-up, Eric Fisher seems bound to succeed in the NFL despite what the tape on his first eight practices say.

Fisher told us that the biggest transition for him was not his hands getting beat up. He said it was re-training the muscles in his body as he went from the left to the right side of the offensive line.

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