The Kansas City Chiefs will face the Chicago Bears in their final 2025 preseason game Friday night at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium.
On Wednesday, head coach Andy Reid ruled out seven players due to injury: tight end Jake Briningstool (hamstring), linebacker Jack Cochrane (knee), offensive tackle Ethan Driskell (appendix), safety Mike Edwards (hamstring), cornerback Nazeeh Johnson (shoulder), defensive tackle Omarr Norman-Lott (ankle) and wide receiver Jaylen Royals (knee).
Reid confirmed that after
resting quarterback Patrick Mahomes, tight end Travis Kelce and defensive tackle Chris Jones — among other top players — last week in Seattle, he plans to play the starters for at least the start of Friday night’s game against Chicago.
“There’s just a little bit longer wait here in between this game and the next game, and so I just think I’d rather give the guys a little bit more time in this game,” he said. “The timing keeps a little closer to when we get to our game.”
As of Wednesday, it remains unclear if that includes wide receiver Hollywood Brown, who returned to practice this week after missing a large portion of training camp and the first two preseason games due to an ankle injury.
“I’m gonna just play that by ear,” said Reid of Brown. “I’m gonna see how it does through warmups and all that. We’ll just kind of go from there. This is day-by-day right there, so I want no steps backward on that.”
Cornerback Kristian Fulton has also yet to see preseason action, though he has practiced the past two weeks after beginning the summer session on the physically-unable-to-perform (PUP) list.
“We’ll see how that rolls with him and see how he feels and go from there,” said Reid of Fulton.
Following their final preseason game on Friday, the Chiefs will look ahead to cutdown day on Tuesday, August 26.
“Everybody can’t make the team; they know that,” said Reid. “I tell them that Day 1: ‘Just make our job hard,’ so they make it hard for (general manager) [Brett] Veach and his crew and the coaches, to get rid of them. And that’s how they’ve gone about their business. I haven’t seen guys counting numbers and lines and doing all that stuff. They’ve come out and worked hard from the first guy to the last guy, and I’ve appreciated that, and it’s a tough day. I mean, that’s not part of the job you like, but inevitably, you gotta almost cut half a team, so that’s not an easy thing.”
Kansas City opens the regular season Friday, September 5, against the Los Angeles Chargers in São Paulo, Brazil — exactly two weeks after their final preseason game.
