Chiefs coach Andy Reid will play his healthy starters in Friday night’s preseason finale against the Bears. He said they need the work before the season opener, which comes exactly two weeks after the last exhibition game.
“Yeah, there’s just a little bit longer wait here in between this game and the next game,” Reid said Wednesday, via Charles Goldman of AtoZ Sports. “And so, I just think I’d rather give the guys a little bit more time in this game so the timing keeps a little closer to when we get to our game.”
Reid listed the seven injured players the Chiefs will hold out of the game.
Tight end Jake Briningstool (hamstring), cornerback Nazeeh Johnson (shoulder), linebacker Jack Cochrane (bone bruise), offensive tackle Ethan Driskell (appendectomy), safety Mike Edwards (hamstring), defensive tackle Omarr Norman-Lott (ankle) and wide receiver Jalen Royals (knee tendonitis) will not play.
Cornerback Kristian Fulton, who recently returned from the active/physically unable to perform list, could get some snaps. The Chiefs, though, could hold out wide receiver Hollywood Brown, who recently returned to practice from a foot/ankle injury.
“I’m going to just play that by ear,” Reid said of Brown’s status. “I’m going to see how it does through warm-ups and all that. We’ll just kind of go from there. This is day by day right there. I want no steps backward on that.
The NFL means Not For Long, in more ways than one.
For Welsh rugby star Louis Rees-Zammit, it didn’t take much time for him to realize that a pro football career was not in the cards. So he pulled the plug and went back to his original sport.
“I just felt like I was kind of wasting my talent out there,” Rees-Zammit said, via the Times. “It’s very difficult to get into the NFL if you haven’t gone through the college system. You just don’t get the same opportunities as those boys. I was getting minimal reps, and it was just something that I was fed up with when I was practicing there.”
During his time with the Chiefs and Jaguars, Rees-Zammit witnessed the ever-revolving door.
“It was absolutely brutal,” he said. “I was seeing new players every day, players cut every day. It was pretty tough, and I knew that going out there.”
Rees-Zammit did not make it to the active roster for any NFL team. He spent time with both the Chiefs and Jaguars. He played some preseason football. But, ultimately, he decided he wouldn’t make it.
The kicker may have come from witnessing the influx of a new crop of college players during the 2025 offseason program. That’s the case every year. Fresh prospects, who have been playing tackle football for years.
And so Rees-Zammit has returned to the sport that he grew up playing, where that experience gives him a significant advantage against someone like, say, a career pro football player who decides to take up rugby on a whim.
The Bears will play their starters in the preseason finale Friday night against the Chiefs.
Bears coach Ben Johnson told Kay Adams on Up & Adams that Caleb Williams and the rest of the team’s healthy starters will play.
“We’ll go ahead, and we’ll play,” Johnson said. “We’ll see how long it is. We’re going to get through a couple days here of practice, and we’ll determine for how long, but we need to go through this.”
Johnson hinted earlier this week that he would play the starters this week.
Chiefs coach Andy Reid announced Monday that his starters would play some against the Bears.
“They’ll start it off, for sure, and then we’ll see how it goes from there,” Reid said.
The Bears opened Sunday night’s game against the Bills with their starters on the field. Williams and receivers Rome Odunze and DJ Moore each played 14 snaps.
Williams was 6-of-10 for 107 yards and a touchdown.
Skyy Moore has one last chance Friday in what very well could be his final game in a Chiefs uniform.
The wide receiver’s future with the team is uncertain at best.
In last week’s preseason game, Moore dropped two passes and muffed a kickoff before returning a punt 88 yards for a touchdown.
His special teams talent might keep him in the NFL.
He played only six games last season because of a core muscle injury. Moore saw action on 82 offensive snaps and 18 on special teams, with no catches but two kickoffs for 43 yards.
“His punt-return ability and kick-return ability has really gotten better over the years,” Chiefs special teams coach Dave Toub said Tuesday, via Pete Grathoff of the Kansas City Star. “It showed right there. He’s solid there in that part of it. The other part is the mental thing with him. It’s just getting over the hump. He’s definitely an NFL player, whether he’s on our team or not on our team.
“I think the return helped him and opened a lot of eyes for people. He’s a good football player.”
The Chiefs made Moore a second-round pick in 2022, but he has only 11 starts, 43 receptions for 494 yards and a touchdown and 86 punt return yards and 93 kickoff return yards. He fumbled three punt returns in 2022 and has dropped four passes in his career.
“It’s a physical game. Everything that I’ve got physically, God-gifted, is the reason I’m here,” Moore said. “I feel like 90 percent of the game is mental. Everybody that plays in this league goes through those mental obstacles. I feel like it’s about how you do it. Whether you win or lose, you just have to keep getting up and keep going. I feel like that’s the biggest thing people should take out of what went on [in Friday’s preseason game].”
The first Friday of Week 1 will include the first-ever YouTube broadcast of an NFL game. And it will have a distinct YouTube flair.
Via Andrew Marchand of TheAthletic.com, the free stream will include a content creator named Deestroying. He’ll be one of the sideline reporters.
Deestroying’s legal name is Donald De La Haye. He kicked at Central Florida, and he has spent time in the CFL and the UFL. More importantly, his YouTube channel has 6.32 million subscribers.
Rich Eisen will handle play-by-play duties. Kurt Warner will be the analyst. Stacey Dales will serve as a sideline reporter, too.
The NFL’s primary broadcast partners have become very reluctant to loan talent to networks that televise a stray game.
The September 5 game will stream at no charge on YouTube.
