The long wait to see wide receiver Hollywood Brown in the Chiefs offense is about to come to an end.
The Chiefs announced on Friday that they have activated Brown from injured reserve. Brown has missed the entire season with the shoulder injury he suffered on his first play of his first preseason game for Kansas City, but he returned to practice last week and is now set to play against the Texans.
Brown had 51 catches for 574 yards and three touchdowns for the Cardinals last season. He joins DeAndre Hopkins, JuJu Smith-Schuster, Xavier Worthy, and Justin Watson in the Chiefs receiving corps.
The Chiefs also announced that they have elevated safety Deon Bush and tight end Anthony Firkser from the practice squad. Tight end Baylor Cupp was placed on the practice squad injured reserve list.
The Texans signed veteran tight end Irv Smith Jr. from the practice squad to the active roster Friday, the team announced.
He has appeared in two games with the Texans this season, seeing action on 40 offensive snaps and nine on special teams. Smith has no stats this season.
The Texans need him for depth purposes with Cade Stover out after undergoing an emergency appendectomy last week.
Smith has played 51 games with 22 starts in his career and has totaled 109 receptions for 973 yards and 10 touchdowns.
The Texans waived wide receiver/returner Steven Sims in a corresponding move.
In seven games, Sims averaged 6.2 yards on 16 punt returns and 27.9 yards on seven kickoff returns.
The Texans also announced the elevations of fullback Andrew Beck and wide receiver Jared Wayne from the practice squad for Saturday’s game against the Chiefs.
Beck has appeared in three games, playing 15 offensive snaps and 17 on special teams. Wayne made his NFL debut on Dec. 1 against the Jaguars, playing 16 offensive snaps and 15 on special teams.
The Chiefs have added a key defensive player to their injury report in advance of Saturday’s game against Houston.
Linebacker Leo Chenal is now questionable with an illness.
In his third season, Chenal has recorded 51 total tackles with four tackles for loss, a sack, and three forced fumbles.
Chenal has been on the field for 41 percent of defensive snaps and 71 percent of special teams snaps.
Defensive back Chamarri Conner (concussion) and offensive tackle D.J. Humphries (hamstring) are out for Kansas City. Everyone else has no game status and is expected to play, including quarterback Patrick Mahomes (ankle) and receiver Hollywood Brown (shoulder).
The NFL and college football rarely compete for eyeballs. They’ll be doing just that on Saturday.
A pair of college football playoff games will be played, starting at noon ET (SMU-Penn State) and 4:00 p.m. ET (Clemson-Texas). A pair of NFL games also will be played, starting at 1:00 p.m. ET (Texans-Chiefs) and 4:30 p.m. ET (Steelers-Ravens).
It’ll be interesting to see the numbers. The NFL typically trounces other sports that dare to compete with it. To go against college football in the opening round of the first 12-team college playoff is gutsy, to say the least.
The other rounds of the college playoff avoid conflicting with the NFL. As originally scheduled, Saturday’s games did, too. The NFL moved two games from Sunday only because the four teams who are playing in those games will be playing on Wednesday.
The NFL originally said it wouldn’t stage Christmas games in the years that saw December 25 land on Tuesday or Wednesday. And then the NFL realized that there was too much money to be made by playing that day.
So that’s how it happened. The NFL didn’t pick a fight. The NFL also didn’t run from it.
Either way, the fight is happening.
Last night’s win over the Broncos dramatically increases the Chargers’ chances of making it to the playoffs. It also gives them an important advantage when it comes to sorting out the AFC playoff tree.
By sweeping the Broncos, the Chargers are in position to avoid the No. 7 seed — and a likely trip to Buffalo in the wild-card round.
L.A. still needs to remain at least tied with Denver; they’re both 9-6 with two games to play. And there’s a chance that neither the Broncos nor the Chargers would end up at No. 7, if the second-place team in the AFC North slips behind both of them.
Still, last night’s win, and the critical two-game swing it entailed, might insulate the Chargers from having to play in a Western New York deep freeze or a snowstorm, or both.
The Bills aren’t locked at No. 2. It could still be the Chiefs (who hosted a North Pole simulation game last January) or the Steelers or even the Ravens, who are three games behind the Bills and who hold the head-to-head tiebreaker, thanks to a 35-10 win over the Bills in Week 4.
Regardless of how it plays out, none of the seven seeds in the AFC are determined — even if at least six of the playoff teams are essentially locked in: Chiefs, Bills, Steelers, Ravens, Texans, Chargers. The Broncos hold the inside track to the seventh seat at the table.
And all teams that will make it to the AFC postseason surely hope (even if they’d never say it) that the Broncos hold on and hold the Bengals out. Quarterback Joe Burrow is playing at an MVP level that has gone largely unnoticed because the team has struggled. In the postseason, he transforms into a higher level of badass. (He’d also relish the chance to go back to Buffalo as the seventh seed. Two years ago, Cincinnati won in the snow against the Bills, ending Buffalo’s season and likely creating the wedge that resulted in the eventual exit of Stefon Diggs.)
How and where the seven qualifying teams will do battle in three rounds of the playoffs is still to be determined. Which, given that there’s not much AFC drama as it relates to getting in, gives the last three weekends of the season a little extra kick.
Texans running back Joe Mixon had a third consecutive limited practice Thursday. He has an ankle injury after Dolphins linebacker Jordyn Brooks used a hip-drop tackle on him in Sunday’s game.
Mixon, though, has no designation for Saturday’s game against the Chiefs.
Mixon also was injured by a hip-drop tackle earlier this season, missing three games with an ankle injury after an illegal tackle by Bears linebacker T.J. Edwards in Week 2. Edwards was fined for the tackle, and Brooks likely receives a fine this week.
The Texans ruled out defensive tackle Folorunso Fatukasi (ankle), wide receiver John Metchie (shoulder), offensive guard Juice Scruggs (foot) and tight end Cade Stover (illness).
Linebacker Christian Harris (ankle) was added to the practice report Friday as a non-participant and now is questionable to play.
It’s been trending this way all week, and the door is still open for something to change. But on Thursday, Andy Reid effectively announced Patrick Mahomes is set to start Saturday’s game against the Texans, despite the quarterback suffering an ankle sprain last weekend.
“He worked out this week, full. We’ll most likely end up playing him,” Reid said in his press conference. “We’ll just see how things work out today.”
Asked as a follow-up if Mahomes will play barring a setback, Reid said he didn’t want to lead anyone one way or another.
“We’ve been taking it day-by-day, and that’s kind of where we’re at,” Reid said. “But, he did look good out there, yeah.”
Reid said Mahomes was able to move around well and looks as if he’ll be able to get out of the way and not further any harm to the ankle.
The head coach also noted he wasn’t sure at the beginning of the week if Mahomes would be able to make it to this point so soon.
“I’ve been through it with him before, and he amazes me every time he does it,” Reid said. “That guy, he’s so mentally tough. It’s a mindset that he has going into it. So, where he was a few days ago, yeah, I’d probably say it was a long shot. But he’s done well with it, yeah.”
Additionally, Reid said there’s a “good chance” receiver Hollywood Brown will make his debut on Saturday. Brown (shoulder) has also been a full participant in practice this week.
“He’s done a nice job,” Reid said. “Mentioned earlier — it wasn’t his legs, so he was able to run, keep himself in running shape. But the rest of it, where the surgery was and that, it looked good. He was doing fine, yeah.”
While left tackle D.J. Humphries (hamstring) is set to miss another game, Reid noted there’s a chance he could return for next Wednesday’s game against the Steelers. Regardless, Humphries is set to be back at left tackle when he’s healthy.
Kansas City’s full injury report with game statuses is due out later on Thursday.
It looks like wide receiver Hollywood Brown’s long-awaited Chiefs debut is on the horizon.
Brown was designated for return from injured reserve at the end of last week and his practice sessions have gone well enough that Jeremy Fowler of ESPN reports that the Chiefs plan to activate Brown ahead of this Saturday’s game against the Texans.
Brown signed with the Chiefs this offseason, but he suffered an injury to his shoulder in the teams first preseason game and had surgery that led to his extended absence from the lineup.
The timing will give Brown a few weeks to get fully up to speed in the offense and the Chiefs would welcome any boost he can provide as they move into the postseason.
For most of Travis Kelce’s career, the Chiefs have known that if they got him the ball, he was good for about 12 or 13 yards: From Kelce’s first season as the Chiefs’ starting tight end in 2014 through 2022, Kelce averaged somewhere between 12.2 and 13.5 yards per catch every year. That is no longer the case.
In 2023, Kelce’s yards per catch average dropped significantly, to a career-low 10.6 yards. And this year, Kelce’s average has dropped significantly again, all the way down to 8.4 yards per catch, by far the worst mark of his career.
Kelce is still getting the ball a lot, with a team-high 84 catches this season. But his average yards per catch of 8.4 is ugly; every other NFL player with at least 75 catches this season is averaging at least 10.0 yards per catch.
At the age of 35, Kelce has lost a step, and as a result he’s running shorter routes and doing less with the ball in his hands. He’s also not finding the end zone as much, with just two touchdowns through 14 games. And his first downs have declined as well, from 78 in 2022 to 50 last year to 41 this year.
The Chiefs have the NFL’s best record, and Kelce has a history of turning it on in the playoffs -- as he did a year ago, when his 32 catches for 355 yards and three touchdowns were the best of any player in the NFL last postseason. They need him to step it up when the games matter most again this year, because he’s having his worst regular season.
When asked earlier this week about possibly adding receiver Odell Beckham Jr. to the roster, Rams coach Sean McVay said, “That’s something we’ve not talked about yet.”
And so, when McVay met with reporters on Wednesday, he was asked whether the discussion has occurred. The answer this time was more definitive.
“No, we haven’t talked about it,” McVay said. “I love Odell. It’s not something that I think is something that we’re looking at right now.”
Beckham spent part of 2021 with the Rams. Even though he arrived with a torn ACL, he played with it until the knee gave out during the first half of Super Bowl LVI. At the time he left, Beckham was having the kind of game that could have propelled him to Super Bowl MVP.
Beckham didn’t play at all in 2022. He spent 2023 with the Ravens. Last week, the Dolphins released him. On Monday, Beckham cleared waivers.
He reportedly has a short list of teams he’d play for. However, no reports linking him to any specific franchise have emerged.
That doesn’t mean it won’t happen. There’s value in taking the Daniel Jones approach — join a practice squad, stay involved, and wait to see if an injury with a contending team opens the door for a chance to play in the postseason.
Beckham can sign with any team, at any time. He could wait until the Super Bowl teams are known, and sign with one of them. Still, the absence of any indication that anyone is trying to sign him could be regarded as proof that it’s not going to happen.
If not, the question becomes whether there will be interest in 2025. There’s a chance that, nearly 11 years after entering the league as a first-round draft pick, the door is closed for all 32 teams.
