Travis Kelce ‘Progressing’ in Rehab From Bone Bruise
As the Kansas City Chiefs begin their week of preparation ahead of a Sunday matchup against the Jacksonville Jaguars, all eyes are on the status of star tight end Travis Kelce.
Everything was business as usual heading into Week 1 until late in Tuesday's practice when the 33-year-old hyperextended his knee (and suffered a bone bruise) during a red zone drill. Despite Kelce and the team's best efforts over the next two days to get him ready to play, the Chiefs opted to make him inactive against the Detroit Lions. Kansas City lost by one point on opening night, clearly missing its best offensive weapon to start the year.
While it's still unsure whether Kelce will be given the green light for Week 2, there's a bit of optimism coming from the team. Head coach Andy Reid spoke to the media on Monday afternoon, providing a brief update on his stud pass-catcher's ongoing rehab from injury:
"I don't have anything to tell you on the injuries other than Trav is getting better," Reid said. "He's progressing. We'll see how he does the rest of today and tomorrow, then we'll go from there."
This is an expected answer from Reid, as he wouldn't typically reveal whether a player of Kelce's caliber would be active until he absolutely had to. Kelce is also just a handful of days removed from his pre-game testing from Thursday, so the team is still gathering more information from both him and the training staff. While many expect Kelce to be back in the fold this weekend, it's far from a foregone conclusion.
The good news for Kansas City is that Kelce continues to make positive progress after what was initially viewed as a very scary injury. According to a recent report from Jay Glazer on FOX NFL Sunday, the team feared at first that the future Hall of Fame tight end was going to miss the entire 2023 season rather than a small number of weeks. Joshua Brisco of Arrowhead Report dove into Glazer's story in more detail, but here's some of the context:
"People actually don't know how big of a bullet they missed on Travis Kelce," Glazer began on FOX NFL Sunday. "When it first happened, they actually thought there was a tibial plateau fracture, which is a fracture of the leg which would've put him out for the year. Instead, he just had a really deep bone bruise. They had to pull out 45 cc of blood."
As the Chiefs' week of practice unfolds and Sunday draws nearer, expect there to be more clarity provided on Kelce's likelihood of playing against the Jaguars. The Chiefs' offense was deficient without him in Week 1, as multiple wide receivers struggled to make much of an impact and tight ends Noah Gray and Blake Bell couldn't pick up the slack. Drops were a common theme, and the team's hope is that things will be different this time around either with or without Kelce back to make his season debut.
