Eric Berry injury update: Andy Reid confirms Chiefs safety out for season

Eric Berry is now confirmed to be out for the season with a ruptured Achilles tendon that will take him considerable time to rehab.

The Kansas City Chiefs were fearing the worst while hoping for the best. Now the worst case scenario has been confirmed to be true: star safety Eric Berry has been lost for the rest of the 2017 season. It’s a brutal hit on a defensive unit that had the potential to be the NFL’s best at season’s end.

This will be the third season lost to injury for Berry in his career, who also missed the entirely of the 2011 season and the majority of the 2014 campaign as well. Berry tore his ACL in 2011, which forced him to miss the entire year, and in 2014, the Chiefs safety suffered from Hodgkins Lymphoma. When he returned the following season, he was given the NFL’s Comeback Player of the Year award and was once again named to the Pro Bowl.

Berry signed a six-year extension with the Chiefs this offseason, and after two straight seasons of high-caliber play, the hopes is that Berry’s days of being sick or injured were behind him. However during the Chiefs victory over the Patriots on Thursday night, Berry came up limping in the fourth quarter with an apparent Achilles injury after an entire preseason was largely lost due to a sore heel.

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Berry is a five-time Pro Bowler who had 77 tackles and 4 interceptions last year for the Chiefs. He’s one of the NFL’s most popular players and feared tacklers who will still be only 29-years-old when next season begins.