Getty Sammy Watkins of the Kansas City Chiefs
The Kansas City Chiefs will be looking to bounce back after a shocking 40-32 loss against divisional rivals the Las Vegas Raiders Sunday. Unfortunately, they’ll have to do so without one of the core members of their receivers unit. Per ESPN’s Adam Schefter, wideout Sammy Watkins could miss “a couple weeks” after enduring a hamstring sprain during Sunday’s game.
Chiefs’ WR Sammy Watkins is expected to miss time, “possibly a couple weeks”, with a hamstring injury that doctors still are evaluating, per source. Chiefs scheduled to play at Buffalo and at Denver the next two weeks.
As the analyst mentioned, the defending world champions are scheduled to play the Buffalo Bills Monday evening and the following week, AFC West rivals the Denver Broncos.
Per ESPN, Watkins is ranked third for Kansas City this campaign in catches (29), yards (222) and receiving touchdowns (2).
Thankfully, the Chiefs have room to spare on their depth chart. Tyreek Hill, who has scored in every game this year so far, will remain WR1. Mecole Hardman, who enters his second year at Arrowhead Stadium, will make a fitting backup.
Chiefs Coach Andy Reid Speaks Out About Watkins’ Recovery
Kansas City head coach Andy Reid is anxious to have his guy back, as evidenced by his remarks during Monday’s media availability.
“Sammy’s a good player,” Reid said, via The Chiefs Wire. “We’ll see how he does here. The guys are just coming in now. We’ll see how it looks, but if Sammy can’t play, we’ve done that throughout last year for a few games and the year before that. So we put the next man up and go. I’m not going to take away from how good of a player he is. He’s a terrific player, but we also have some other guys who can play too.
“He plays a little bit of the low post for you,” Reid continued. “He does a good job with that. He’s strong. But again, we can work around that and we’ve got other guys who can step in and fill those types of roles.”
From the looks of things, Reid is confident Hardman will do what’s necessary to ensure his side won’t tally too many losses in their Super Bowl defense campaign.
“Mecole (Hardman) just needs to keep growing and keep working,” the veteran manager said. “He got a few reps yesterday and so that’s a step forward for him. We’ll see how he does as we go forward here.”
Both Watkins and Hardman tweeted statements on Sunday’s result, with the latter also assuming partial responsibility for the team’s unfortunate result.
Keep in mind, the Chiefs also lost last year’s Week 5 game and went on to win the Super Bowl. So, this might be history repeating itself.
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