How Chiefs-Steelers Christmas Day game accentuates NFL’s hypocrisy over player safety
Shortly after the Chiefs fended off the visiting Las Vegas Raiders 19-17 the day after Thanksgiving, star defensive lineman Chris Jones stood in the postgame interview room and pondered the moment.
In his exhaustion, though, he didn’t consider merely the latest wacky finale.
He also spoke to the reckless, rapacious and hypocritical matter of NFL scheduling that rendered the Chiefs playing not just their second game in six days and third in 13, but also their fifth in 26.
With the worst, right now, yet to come: four games in 18 days and three in 11 in the final weeks of the grueling season.
“Hey, listen man, this is one thing I’m doing this offseason … I’m going to the NFL (Players Association),” he said. “I think that’s a conversation to be had this offseason.”
Especially after this week, when the Christmas Day NFL schedule features the Chiefs at Steelers and Ravens at Texans.
That makes for four teams playing on three days of rest so the league professing safety initiatives can siphon all it can from its gladiators.
Well-paid gladiators, to be sure.
And it’s notable that this nonsense isn’t so much entirely new as it is shades of further burden from the longtime scheduling exploitation of NFL players — whose bodies take days and days to reach some semblance of recovery from a single game full of physical trauma scientifically likened to car accidents.
Particularly after the cumulative effect this late in the season.
It might be surmised that would be especially so for a Chiefs team that had a crazy-early bye week (Week 6) and effectively over the last six years has played an entire extra NFL season (18 postseason games). It also has experienced the most fleeting of offseasons by playing in four of the last five Super Bowls and then being the first to play in the ensuing seasons in three of those.
But the point here isn’t about what Jones called “a kind of awkward” schedule for the Chiefs, who as of Wednesday will have played on six different days of the week this season.
It’s about the unsavory absurdity of the overarching approach, including the now-frequent practice of teams playing Thursday night games after Sundays, accentuated by this season’s heightened malpractice.
From a purely practical commercial standpoint, the product Wednesday almost certainly will be diminished or even compromised because of just the general capacity of players to recover and play well.
Then there’s the matter of how players are managing recent or chronic injuries, the evident ones and otherwise, to be able to play at all after already contending with a short week for the last game (Sunday to Saturday) and a long season that took its toll on all four teams that played Saturday.
As we write this Sunday, it seems likely Patrick Mahomes will once again work through his high ankle sprain to play.
But will right tackle Jawaan Taylor be able to return from a knee injury that took him out of the game? He was limited in practice Sunday.
And what about Jones, who also left the game after suffering a calf injury and sat out practice Sunday?
Asked about Jones afterward on Saturday, under 93 hours to kickoff in Pittsburgh, coach Andy Reid said “it’s probably too early to tell right now.”
In this compressed time frame, though, time already is almost up to maximize his chance.
And, again, while this isn’t about the Chiefs per se but the NFL itself, the Chiefs have given voice to the broader issue.
Even through what they won’t say.
When Reid was asked Saturday if three games in 11 days is too much, he said all he had to in the way he declined comment.
“Ah, that’s a tough question,” he said, smiling. “I’ll let you figure it out there — or you can pay my bill.”
Meaning a prospective fine.
Speaking of fines, this accelerating development seems all the more warped as the league makes what in this context feel like sanctimonious symbolic statements addressing player safety.
Like fining Chiefs’ running back Isiah Pacheco $45,020 for unnecessary roughness when he lowered his helmet into a Charger defender.
If that’s a fine-worthy transgression, what to call this institutionalized safety violation?
Even months ago when Mahomes first saw the schedule, he said the other day, this time frame jarred him.
“It’s not a good feeling …” he said recently. “You never want to play this many games in this short of time. It’s just not great for your body.”
When I spoke with him at his locker last week, safety Justin Reid recalled the schedule-release moment, too.
“When it came out, I thought it was horrible,” he said. “And I still think it’s horrible. But it is what it is.”
Indeed, lest they be misperceived, the Chiefs don’t like this much but aren’t exactly protesting as they prepare for Pittsburgh — where Mahomes threw six touchdown passes in his only previous visit.
“I think you’re motivated to play a great football team,” Mahomes said Saturday. “To play in Pittsburgh — it’s a great environment, a great stadium, it’ll be rocking. Playing on Christmas, so everybody’s going to be watching.”
As guard Trey Smith thought of it a couple weeks back, he smiled at the thought of the gantlet and said “eyeing this now isn’t great.” But like most NFL players, he’s conditioned to always being ready to play “regardless of situation, circumstance or time.”
Or terrain, for that matter.
“We’ll play on concrete,” he said.
Given what their bodies have been through, it might feel about like that on Wednesday.
To gird themselves for this, Justin Reid said, coaches for several weeks now have eased on-field practice demands and reps more than they normally would at this time of year.
In return, he said, the players give that time and effort back in film and scheme study that remains a vital work in progress.
(When I asked him if defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo had simplified defenses in recent weeks, he literally laughed out loud and said, “Hell no! Simplified, from Spags?! No chance, no chance.”)
Meanwhile, every player has his own routine for recovery that they’ll likely lean on all the more in these fleeting days.
Reid will depend on hydrotherapy, cold tub treatment and massage. Defensive lineman Malik Herring, who along with Tershawn Wharton and Derrick Nnadi are Pilates’ devotees, will be focusing on sleep, stretching, hydration and diet.
Mahomes will be intent on ongoing rehab of his ankle, staying off his feet and stretching as he enters this run he said he’s tailored his workouts to for months.
As a father of two now, he may or may not retain the title of “most prolific sleeper in the world” bestowed upon him a few years ago by longtime personal trainer Bobby Stroupe, but you can bet he still appreciates its value.
Receiver DeAndre Hopkins will concentrate on sleep and hydration.
“It’s a unique situation; you just have to manage it,” Andy Reid said earlier this month. “It is what it is, so you make the best of it.”
In the short term, making the best of it would be to win Wednesday and secure the AFC postseason No. 1 seed and a first-round playoff bye.
That would mean resting key starters at Denver on the first weekend of January and then having two more weeks to prepare for the pursuit of the threepeat in earnest.
That sort of rest, though, shouldn’t distract from what the Chiefs — and every other NFL team in some ways or another — have been put through along the way.
“You don’t want this to be a precedent,” Justin Reid said. “You don’t want this to become normal.”
Some solutions may be more feasible than others. Jones and Hopkins brought up the notions of mini-byes, however that might be executed. Certainly, early-season byes are of little value.
But the NFL has created this situation by creeping more and more this way for nearly two decades since the advent of Thursday Night Football in 2006 — premiering with the Chiefs and Broncos.
And now it needs to solve it.
For plenty of reasons, but none more than the most obvious:
“Never played this many games in (this) short amount of time; I think the league should definitely do something about that …” Hopkins said, later adding. “As … they preach player safety, I don’t feel like this is the best situation for any team to play three games in this amount of days.”