After the loss to the Titans, Kansas City Chiefs defensive end Frank Clark was candid about the mysterious injury he’s dealt with all season. We learned ahead of Week 8 that he’d been dealing with a neck injury, but there wasn’t much information on when it happened or how long it’d been going on. It wasn’t something that popped up after Week 7 against the Broncos, which Andy Reid made clear.
This injury would lead to Clark missing two games. Clark first popped up on the injury report with a neck injury ahead of the Chiefs’ Week 2 matchup against the Raiders. Most thought little of it because he was a full participant, but according to Clark, this injury has been going on since training camp and it has impacted his play.
“I’ve been playing kind of timid this whole season,” Clark said. “That’s why I’ve been kind of slow. I’ve had a pinched nerve since the end of training camp. I’ve been playing through it. It just got to the point where [it] was so serious it was sending burning sensations down my arm. My two fingers were going numb. I had to take precautions, get checked out and make sure everything that I was doing football-wise wasn’t going to affect my life after football.”
Going back to training camp, Clark dealt with a wrist injury and an illness, but the neck injury was never on an official injury report. It’s likely that he didn’t receive treatment for it until Week 2 of the regular season, when he first was spotted on the report.
Those are scary symptoms that Clark claims to be dealing with, and it makes sense why he’d take the utmost caution in his return to play. He’s been the subject of a lot of criticism, and it seems like it all finally boiled over for Clark in the disappointing loss to the Titans.
Reid continued to be optimistic during his Monday conference call that this wouldn’t be a long-term problem for Clark.
“I know that (trainer) Rick (Burkholder) will keep a close eye on it, which he has been doing,” Reid said of Clark’s injury. “Those things you can help with treatment and all of that. They’ll work on that.”
Clark’s health is paramount for the Chiefs because they’ve lost defensive end Emmanuel Ogbah, their sack leader, for the season with a torn pectoral. With Alex Okafor also dealing with a high ankle sprain, the Chiefs are quickly running out of bodies at defensive end.