Kansas City Chiefs DB Juan Thornhill made his first start since suffering a season-ending knee injury in Week 17 of last season. Andy Reid spoke a bit about Thornhill’s 2020 debut on Monday, explaining that the team decided to limit his snaps out of caution in his return from injury.
“We did, we watched him,” Reid said of limiting Thornhill’s snaps. “He actually came out feeling good, which is what we wanted. We were cautious with him. He wanted to play more, to his credit, but it all worked out well. In particular, the day after, which was important for us.”
Thornhill only played in 38 defensive snaps which were good for 64 percent of the Chiefs’ total defensive snaps. It was still good for the eighth-most snaps of any Kansas City defender on Thursday. Tedric Thompson, who signed with the Chiefs as a free agent during training camp, spelled Thornhill on 21 snaps during the course of the game.
Thornhill recorded just one tackle during the game, but Reid said that Thornhill came out of it feeling good, which is the most important thing. The day after the game Thornhill sent out a tweet that gave some insight into his thoughts on how Week 1 went for him.
Knocked the rust off now it’s time to play ball…
— The_Juan_And_Only (@Juan_Thornhill) September 11, 2020
Thornhill was able to get his feet under him in Week 1 after several months of not being able to participate in football activities. Remember, he didn’t even have any preseason games where he could ease himself back into the swing of things ahead of the season.
Now that he’s knocked the rust off and the Chiefs know that he’s healthy, they can continue to increase his workload. Look for Thornhill to perhaps see a greater share of the snaps in Week 2 against the Los Angeles Chargers.
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