Kansas City Chiefs’ spike in COVID issues threatens to derail surging AFC leaders
With seven straight wins and a grasp on the AFC No. 1 seed, the Chiefs have been the hottest team in the NFL entering their game against Pittsburgh on Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium.
Since a disconcerting 3-4 start marked by uncharacteristic blunders, porous defense and even bad fortune, they’ve engineered a remarkable about-face that makes them once more appear to be what everyone figured before the season: the team to beat as the Chiefs seek a third straight Super Bowl berth.
But it turns out that COVID still holds the trump card, one that attaches an asterisk to just about anything and everything … even in the NFL.
As it is, we know parity is real and momentum can be fleeting and fickle. But now anything you think you know comes with another warning label affixed to it, because of the Chiefs’ spike in COVID-19 cases that mirrors the broader, rapid spread of the Omicron variant.
That borderline chaotic fallout around the NFL lurks over and, alas, within the Chiefs, for whom now nothing is certain even amid their surge. Numerous players might have to miss at least this week’s game.
Bringing to 13 the number of Chiefs unavailable to the team as of Tuesday, seven players were added to the NFL’s reserve/COVID-19 list. Such a designation at least temporarily sidelines players because of either positive tests or close contact with someone known to have contracted the coronavirus.
The latest group of Chiefs features wide receiver Tyreek Hill, linebacker Nick Bolton, cornerback Rashad Fenton, offensive tackle Lucas Niang, tight end Blake Bell, safety Armani Watts and guard Kyle Long.
That came a day after tight end Travis Kelce, cornerback Charvarius Ward and kicker Harrison Butker were placed on the list … and days after defensive end Chris Jones, linebacker Willie Gay Jr. and receiver Josh Gordon were stranded there and missed the Chiefs’ overtime victory at Los Angeles.
The Chiefs got some good news Wednesday, when two of the 13 — Gay and Gordon — returned to practice. Eleven remained listed Wednesday afternoon, however, and the status of each is murky pending the results of a new system implemented last week by the NFL and NFL Players Association.
Put simply, vaccinated players who test positive will be tested daily afterward and can be released from their league-mandated 10-day quarantine if they’re asymptomatic for at least 24 hours and they meet other criteria, including the measure of their “cycle threshold” (CT).
While coach Andy Reid has said that close to 100% of the team is vaccinated, and some on the list (such as Kelce and Gordon) have publicly stated they are vaccinated, anyone who isn’t faces the ongoing standard of isolating for 10 days away from the club facility before they can re-enter the process.
The Chiefs had no media access on Tuesday, but on Monday Reid was asked about how Jones, Gay and Gordon were progressing through the protocol.
“I’m hoping that they’re going to be (available Sunday), but we’ve just got to see how it goes,” he said. “There’s a matrix of things that you’ve got to work out, and that’s where Rick (Burkholder, the team’s vice president of sports medicine and performance and infection control officer, as named by the NFL) comes in.
“I can’t sit here and tell you how all that works right now, but Rick can. He’s going to work through everything every day and see where we’re at, but it’s day to day as you go with these tests.”
So the Chiefs are left day to day, maybe even hour to hour … as is the rest of the NFL, where several other teams are scrambling now, too.
Just as the spread of the virus has been invisible in many ways, it’s spread within the Chiefs is all the more so, at least to the media and public, because of privacy issues and severely reduced access that has come with the COVID era.
Of course we’d all like to know how this has happened. Not just because some need someone to blame but, more to the point, to know how to help avert further spread, even as Reid says he has urged caution.
One way or another, we know the variant has an insidious reach, to be sure, making this a fundamentally new challenge.
Allen Sills, the NFL’s chief medical officer, made the point last week that the virus for the first time this season has been spreading within NFL facilities. Epidemiologists believe the highly transmissible Omicron is driving the spike.
Meanwhile, the immediate issue for the Chiefs is how to navigate the next few days laden with such uncertainty … and potentially an overwhelming number of key players unavailable.
It’s not a perfect parallel, but it bears mention that Reid’s career has been marked by innovation and adaptation. After guiding the Chiefs to their first Super Bowl triumph in 50 years just before COVID changed our very way of life, Reid coaxed them back amid unprecedented changes in routines around the NFL.
When he was asked in April 2020 about how to deal with all the vagueness and adjustments before him after the advent of the COVID era, he alluded to his first full-time coaching job in the mid-1980s as an assistant coach at San Francisco State — a Division II non-scholarship program that is now defunct.
“Everything wasn’t easy there,” Reid said during a teleconference from the basement of his Kansas City home. “I mean, to film practice we had to have a guy climb up on a ladder … We had to have the players pick up rocks on the dirt field so we could actually practice.
“So those experiences help me at times like this … when everything’s not quite perfect, to make it work.”
So just as everything seemed to be moving toward quite perfect for the Chiefs, they’re faced with something that looks just the opposite.
Now, how they solve this week and address these issues in the weeks ahead looms as the X-factor in the signature of their season.
This story was originally published December 21, 2021 at 4:29 PM with the headline "Kansas City Chiefs’ spike in COVID issues threatens to derail surging AFC leaders."