Kansas City Chiefs GM Brett Veach spoke to the media for the first time this offseason ahead of free agency and the 2021 NFL draft.
Veach has his work cut out for him this offseason, navigating another challenging year. The Chiefs have several players who are recovering from injuries this offseason. Rick Burkholder provided Veach with some notes on those and it seems to be optimistic that Patrick Mahomes, Mitchell Schwartz and even Eric Fisher will be available to start the 2021 NFL season.
However, there are varying levels of optimism for each of the players, with Mahomes expected to make the most expedient recovery.
“Just looking at my medical notes here, Pat (Mahomes) had his toe surgery on Feb. 10,” Veach said. “Talking to Rick (Burkholder) earlier last week, it’s a three-month recovery. So we’re hopeful, somewhere around that mandatory minicamp if we have [it]. Certainly, by training camp, he’ll be good to go and we’ll be smart with him.”
There was some recent chatter that Mahomes might not be ready by the start of the season, but Veach doesn’t seem to indicate that at all with this timeline. As he said, though, they’ll be smart with their franchise quarterback. If he needs extra time, they’ll be more than happy to give it to him.
Moving onto Schwartz, Veach provided some missing context on his injury. While Schwartz recently alerted fans that he was having surgery on his back, it was never revealed what type of back injury he was dealing with or what type of surgery he was having.
“Mitch (Schwartz) just recently had his disk worked on,” Veach said. “We’re hopeful for him to return in training camp.”
The first two injury timelines Veach provided seem feasible, but the one provided for Fisher seems optimistic, if not miraculous. Fisher tore his Achilles against the Buffalo Bills in the AFC Championship Game. Typically an Achilles injury that late in the season would put the following season in doubt. The Chiefs, however, expect Fisher back to start the year.
“Looking at my notes right here, (he had) Achilles surgery on Jan. 29,” Veach said. “Based on Rick (Burkholder) and his medical staff, he projects a mid-August return. Now listen, how that works. Everything is different and everyone recovers differently, so I think with that injury and the time leading up to the season, Rick has here a mid-August return. You know how that works, that’s always to be determined until the player actually reports back to camp and goes through the offseason and you see where he is. But I think the mid-August timeline was put in the front of my notes here so I’ll defer to Rick (Burkholder) on that.”
Perhaps there is something more about this specific injury that we don’t know about, but this would be incredible news for Kansas City if Fisher were able to somehow be ready for the start of the season. All-in-all, the expectation seems to be that the three players are tracking to be on the field at training camp in some capacity.
“We’re hopeful that both of these guys will complete the rehab and be available for training camp and to start 2021 season,” Veach said of Schwartz and Fisher. “I’d probably say that Pat (Mahomes) is ahead of them, just because of that type of injury and probably a quicker recovery. But we’re hopeful to have all three ready to go by training camp.”
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