Chiefs’ Edwards-Helaire explains Super Bowl parade absence, talks 2023 motivation
Chiefs running back Clyde Edwards-Helaire missed the team’s February Super Bowl parade in KC, instead attending a fashion show in New York.
Edwards-Helaire said Tuesday that his absence was simply about honoring a commitment he’d given roughly three months before the Chiefs’ 38-35 victory in Super Bowl LVII.
“It’s just how I was raised. I’m not gonna verbally give somebody my ‘Yes’ or give them that ‘A-OK,’ and then back out on them two days before,” Edwards-Helaire said after the Chiefs’ first mandatory minicamp practice Tuesday. “I wasn’t raised on that, with how my dad and how my mom is.”
The way Edwards-Helaire’s season ended, there certainly could have been reason to be frustrated over the 2022 season’s final chapter.
Edwards-Helaire began last year as the Chiefs’ starting running back before rookie Isiah Pacheco passed him on the depth chart midseason. Then, in Week 11, Edwards-Helaire suffered a high-ankle sprain that landed him on injured reserve.
The Chiefs activated Edwards-Helaire from injured reserve the week of the Super Bowl, but he was listed as inactive for the game.
Edwards-Helaire admitted Tuesday that he believed he might play. He practiced with the Chiefs the entire Super Bowl week, taking some reps at receiver with the team facing some injuries with that position. He also was on scout team and played the part of Philadelphia receiver DeVonta Smith when going against the Chiefs’ defense.
The day of the game, Edwards-Helaire said he realized he wasn’t playing when he showed up to the locker room and his uniform wasn’t there.
“So it was just one of things, ‘OK cool.’ You roll with the punches,” Edwards-Helaire said. “That’s what I was raised on.”
Edwards-Helaire said he turned in that moment to tight end Travis Kelce in the locker room, who looked at him and said, “I’m going to get you one.” Edwards-Helaire said he also spoke to teammates Frank Clark and Kadarius Toney.
“I did everything that I needed to do in order for us to win that game,” Edwards-Helaire said. “And that’s just what it was. If they called my number, then I was out there.”
In his age-23 season, Edwards-Helaire finished with 71 carries for 302 yards and a 4.3-yard average. Each was a career low.
When asked to reflect on his 2022 season as a whole, Edwards-Helaire first described it as a “roller coaster” to reporters. But then, he stopped himself and offered a different view.
“I would just say ‘experiences,’ man. I wouldn’t even say it was some of the hardest things,” Edwards-Helatire said. “It was just, you go through something. You figure it out.
“... It was some things — some trials and tribulations throughout that time — but it was never (that) I was down and out. I was doing the things I needed to do in the building, outside the building, in order to get in the position that I am today.”
And yes, the beginning of this season gives the former first-round pick another chance to start fresh.
Edwards-Helaire has gotten plenty of running-back reps in recent weeks with Isiah Pacheco and Jerick McKinnon sitting out team practices; Pacheco is recovering from offseason surgery, while McKinnon is a veteran who didn’t attend optional Organized Team Activities.
As for Edwards-Helaire, he faces a career crossroads this season after Kansas City elected not to pick up his fifth-year rookie option this summer. That means Edwards-Helaire will be a free agent after this 2023 campaign.
While he admitted Tuesday that the Chiefs not picking up that extra year was “most definitely” motivating, Edwards-Helaire also said he couldn’t get caught up in it too much.
“I can’t think two years ahead from now, or the position that I would be in 12 months from now when I still have the rest of OTAs and camp (now),” Edwards-Helaire said. “It was really just coming in and figure out and see the things that I could work on, and from that point, just kind of roll with it during camp.”
Edwards-Helaire said part of his work to improve this offseason was speaking with former NFL running back Kevin Faulk in Louisiana. Both are originally from the state, and Faulk was on the football staff at LSU when Edwards-Helaire played there in 2018 and 2019.
The two, Edwards-Helaire said, had multiple days of conversations this offseason.
“We worked on some of the things that we did in college,” Edwards-Helaire said, “and really just be me.”
Chiefs general manager Brett Veach previously expressed optimism about Edwards-Helaire during a news conference in early May. He said the team was “excited” to have him back while complimenting him for being in “tremendous shape.”
“He’s a good football player,” Veach said on May 1. “He’s gonna help us out here.”
