Almost 10 days ago, on September 1st, the Chiefs announced that they had placed safety Tyrann Mathieu on the reserve/COVID-19 list. According to NFL Network reporter Tom Pelissero, Mathieu was placed on the list because of a positive test. And while the team has been pleased with Mathieu's progress in the week since, on Thursday, defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo admitted that the team still wasn't sure whether Mathieu would be available for Week 1's game at Arrowhead.
"It’s up in the air right now," he said. "It’s a little bit challenging to game plan for, but we’ve got plan A and plan B. We would handle it no different, obviously, than somebody getting hurt in the middle of the game. Guys have got to be ready to step up. The advantage we have, I guess, versus that particular scenario is we’re practicing with guys that we think might have to play. So, we’ll move guys around, do what we have to, try to do most of the things that we do with Tyrann [Mathieu], but certainly some of those things will change and some of the calls might alter because of that.”
Spagnuolo added that Mathieu's been present in meetings, calling in on Zoom and taking part like any other player on the team. But with three days before the team's season starts, there's still no timetable for when they can expect their starting safety to return. And even if he tests negative enough times to be cleared, Spagnuolo alluded to the likelihood that Mathieu probably still wouldn't play his usual amount.
"We don’t know, right? But this dude we’re talking about is a special guy, in my opinion," he said. "So, we’ll see, but I think we’ve got to be fair to him. We always say that sometimes you’ve got to protect the players from themselves, so we’ll be careful there. Coach [Andy] Reid and I have talked about it with Rick [Burkholder]. We’ll see where we’re at when the time comes.”
