The Kansas City Chiefs got some good news on Monday evening, with saying that the team would not need to place wide receiver Tyreek Hill on injured reserve.
Hill suffered a dislocation injury involving his clavicle in the Week 1 game against the Jacksonville Jaguars. Hill spent the night at a Jacksonville-area hospital and today flew back to Kansas City, where the Chiefs were expected to examine Hill and gain some clarity on the timetable for his injury.
Andy Reid spoke to the Chiefs media on a conference call on Monday and provided a brief update.
“Tyreek had the dislocation, and Rick (Burkholder) explained that yesterday it was reduced nonsurgically,” Reid said of Hill. “He stayed there (at the hospital) overnight and he’ll be back today. We’ll have to see when he gets back here how he is doing and just kind of monitor that as we go through the week.”
Later, we heard from NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport that the Chiefs were weighing their options with Hill’s injury. On Monday evening, after Hill had returned to the team, we learned from the Kansas City Star’s Sam Mellinger and Yahoo Sports’ Terez Paylor that Hill will avoid injured reserve, at least for now. The Chiefs don’t yet have a specific timetable for Hill’s recovery, with both reports claiming that Hill will have specific recovery phases that he’ll have to go through during his rehabilitation and before returning to action.
This is not a common injury; the most recent occurrence was with then-Rams WR Danny Amendola in 2012. The Chiefs will have to tread carefully so they do not rush Hill back and risk further injury. That means that they’ll avoid putting him in contact situations until the training staff believes he’s ready.
What is encouraging is that the Chiefs feel that Hill won’t miss enough time that injured reserve is necessary. So we can assume that Hill will be ready to return to action ahead of Week 10, which would be the earliest he could possibly return from injured reserve.
