The Kansas City Chiefs were hoping to begin their 2025 NFL season without the injury bug sinking its fangs into the receiver room, but the football gods had other ideas.
With rookie Jalen Royals unavailable against the Los Angeles Chargers due to injury, it took a couple of plays for second-year receiver Xavier Worthy to be struck down with a dislocated shoulder, and his immediate future remains in doubt.
For a Chiefs team needing to hit the ground running, that isn't a great start to what they hoped would be a much better season than last year, injury-wise.
POWER RANKINGS: Packers, Steelers, Chargers surge with Week 1 wins; Chiefs, Lions fall hard for Week 2
Will Jalen Royals and Xavier Worthy play vs. Eagles?
With the 27-21 loss to the Chargers in Week 1, Kansas City now faces the defending Super Bowl champions, the Philadelphia Eagles, in Week 2, so it doesn't get any easier for the Chiefs.
But will they have Royals and Worthy to take into battle? Head coach Andy Reid gave nothing away.
"Jalen's doing a good job with his rehab," Reid said. "We'll just see how that ends up this week. Guys are making good progress, but we'll see. If neither play, we got the guys that we played with the other night that are good football players."
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With Worthy out against the Chargers, it was left up to Marquise Brown (99 yards), Juju Smith-Schuster (55 yards), Travis Kelce (47 yards) and Tyquan Thornton (41 yards) to pick up the slack - and it wasn't enough.
Worthy was looming as the big wildcard for Reid and his offense this season after such a good end to his rookie year. A big leap was expected; however, now there is a real chance that he could need surgery, and that could end his season, according to some reports.
The Chiefs needed a good start with so many doubting their powers of recovery in 2025, and they couldn't have gotten off to a worse start to the year.
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