The Chiefs have made a roster move with injured left tackle Josh Simmons.
Head coach Andy Reid told reporters during his Wednesday press conference that Simmons underwent successful surgery on his dislocated wrist and is being placed on injured reserve.
That means Simmons is out for at least the next four weeks.
The Chiefs currently have multiple injury issues along their offensive line, as right tackle Jawaan Taylor is also dealing with a triceps injury and left guard Trey Smith has ankle and back injuries. Neither Taylor nor Smith will practice on Wednesday.
If Taylor is not available, Wanya Morris will start at left tackle with Jaylon Moore slotting in at right tackle. Moore previously started at left tackle during Simmons’ absence from the team this season for a personal matter.
Kansas City defensive back Chris Roland-Wallace (back) also is not slated to practice on Wednesday.
As a corresponding move for Simmons going on IR, the Chiefs are signing Esa Pole to the 53-man roster from the practice squad.
From the moment the 2025 schedule was announced, it was obvious that the Chiefs-Cowboys Thanksgiving game would break the all-time regular-season audience record.
It obliterated it.
According to CBS, 57.23 million viewers, on average, watched the game. It surpassed the prior record of 42.1 million, set by the Giants and Cowboys on Thanksgiving 2022, by 36 percent.
Viewership peaked at 61.357 million during the 15-minute period of 7:45 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. ET.
The game had all the ingredients to set a new record. Captive audience. Captivating franchises. National brands. Star players. And two teams trying to thread a narrowing needle on a playoff berth.
And, yes, the numbers got a boost from the “Big Data + Panel” metric, which captures out-of-home viewing better than ever before. Which bodes well for the remaining high-stakes, standalone regular-season games — and for the playoff contests in a year that should have a wide-open postseason.
Good things are worth waiting for.
And the NFL, CBS, and Fox are still waiting for the official Nielsen numbers from last Thursday’s captive audience games, both of which were inherently captivating.
Via Jon Lewis of SportsMediaWatch.com, the Thanksgiving Day ratings are expected to be released today.
It’s a product of the new “Big Data + Panel” approach (they really do need a better name for that), a revolutionary way to calculate out-of-home viewing that has goosed most numbers by 10 percent. It has created a slew of big audiences this year, which also sets a bar that won’t be easy to exceed in 2026. But that process takes time; the “fast-nationals” from Nielsen will inevitably be lower than the final numbers.
And so, for what could be record audiences, they’re waiting for the final numbers.
It’s widely expected that last Thursday’s Chiefs-Cowboys game will generate the largest audience for any regular-season game in NFL history. And it’s possible the Packers-Lions from that same day will finish second on the all-time list, passing the current record of 42.1 million.
And then there’s the reality that the whole process seems amorphous, with the vague potential of someone, somewhere putting a thumb on the scale. That’s the practical impact of YouTube suddenly announcing higher numbers for the disappointing free stream of the Week 1 Chiefs-Chargers game from Brazil.
It’s been a long time since Andy Reid and the Chiefs have found themselves with such long odds of making the playoffs as the ones they have right now, but there aren’t any signs of white flags being flown by the head coach in Kansas City.
Reid said on Monday that he feels the team has been a few plays away from turning most of their losses into victories and that the focus will be on tightening up their execution in those situations because they are still “in position where if we can figure out those two, three plays, you flip this around.”
“If you’re coming to me, we’re going to go after you every game, and that’s how we roll,” Reid said, via Dave Skretta of the Associated Press. “We’re going to tickle your tonsils on every play, every game. But that’s the attitude we’re coming in with, and then you let the chips fall where they may.”
At 6-6, the Chiefs are in a deep enough hole that simply winning their next five games won’t be enough to guarantee them a spot in the postseason tournament. It would be a pretty good place to start any push, however, and next Sunday night’s game against the Texans is the first must-win game for the defending AFC champions.
The Texans got quarterback C.J. Stroud back in the lineup for Sunday’s game Colts and they got the result they were looking for against the Colts.
Houston’s 20-16 win extended their winning streak to four games and kept them in the mix for the AFC South title if they can continue stacking victories. Stroud was 22-of-35 for 276 yards and an interception in the game and said he “knocked off some rust” that accumulated while he was out for three games with a concussion.
Stroud said that he felt he got “rolling” as that rust fell away and that he thinks the Texans can continue to turn around a season that opened with losses in their first three games.
“We’re super dangerous,” Stroud said, via Aaron Wilson of KPRC. “We lost some close games against some really good teams. If we can find a way to win some close games after Thanksgiving, we’ll put ourselves in position to do whatever we want.”
Stroud and the Texans will be in Kansas City next Sunday night for a game that is crucial to the playoff hopes of both teams, so Houston will need a rust-free performance from their quarterback if they want to keep rising after their early stumbles.
