The Kansas City Chiefs defeated the Houston Texans 42-34 on Sunday Night Football, but it was not without injury.
After all but confirming that Chris Conley had been lost for the season with an Achilles injury, head coach Andy Reid addressed the concussion to tight end Travis Kelce.
“He’s just getting in now,” Reid said in a conference call with the Kansas City media early Monday afternoon. “We’ll know more later today, so we’ll let you know how it goes. He’s obviously got to follow the [NFL’s concussion protocol] that’s put out there. All of that will take place here with Rick (Burkholder) and our docs.”
Here’s a deeper look from SB Nation at the concussion protocol and what it entails. Reid explained how it works on his end.
“Our trainers and docs are [in contact with the league],” Reid said. “There’s a whole protocol set up that they go through and so that’s what took place last night, and they reported he was good to go and so we went from there and guys keep me abreast of it.”
Kelce actually remained in the game late in the second quarter after the hit, then upon second evaluation in the halftime locker room, came out of the game for good.
“We continue to check on the guys,” Reid added. “These guys want to play, but at the same time, we’re looking out for their best interest. They know they can communicate and talk to us. If something comes up, just let us know. We’ll take care of you here. That’s the part that kind of gets missed in this whole deal is there’s a communication that goes on and they have full trust in our trainers and docs to actually let us know that, ‘Yeah you know what? I’m not feeling so good,’ and then we take care of it right there. It’s done. It’s over.”
Kelce officially entered the NFL’s concussion protocol at halftime.
“What’s most important here is the well being of the player,” Reid said. “ Whatever route you go to to get to it, that’s what we try to do, and nothing less than that. We explain that to him right from the beginning, that we’ve got a lot of good football players on this team, and our personnel department does a nice job of bringing in football players, so if something happens where you’re hurt, you let us know and let’s get the other guys in and you get yourself ready. Until then, the other guys will pick up the slack and go.”
If the Chiefs are without Kelce this week, Reid said he’s very comfortable in the team turning to Demetrius Harris and Ross Travis, but he was sure to stress there’s been no decision made on Kelce quite yet.
The Kansas City Star’s Sam Mellinger had an interesting take on the problems with the NFL’s concussion protocol Sunday night. It certainly still isn’t perfect, but the Chiefs seemed to have followed it with Kelce in this case.