Kansas City Chiefs release cornerback Ashton Lampkin with injury settlement
By Matt Conner
The Kansas City Chiefs have released cornerback Ashton Lampkin with an injury settlement which now makes him a free agent.
One year ago, Ashton Lampkin was a rookie free agent who was showing well as a special teams dynamo and potential depth piece in the Kansas City Chiefs secondary. As of Friday, that experiment is now over with news that the team has waived Lampkin with an injury settlement.
Lampkin first signed with the Chiefs shortly after the 2017 NFL Draft along with his college teammate from Oklahoma State in Jordan Sterns. The pair roamed the Cowboys’ secondary for years before joining the Chiefs, and Lampkin looked good last year before suffering a season-ending torn ACL that resulted in a lost rookie season on injured reserve.
Lampkin continued to rehab his torn ACL during offseason training activities and into training camp. The team recently waived him again at the beginning of August and it was possible that he could spend another season or part of one on the team’s injured list, but clearly that won’t happen now that the Chiefs have reached an injury settlement with Lampkin. Once Lampkin is healthy, he will be free to sign with any new team as a free agent.
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There are a few reasons why a team like the Chiefs might want to reach an injury settlement with Lampin. If the team wants to free up their training staff from working with Lampkin on top of several other players, a team will work out a financial settlement with a player to set them free from the roster to allow them to rehab on their own without having to contractually provide the medical care and rehabilitation efforts on a player who might have made the team anyway.
It’s also possible that the Chiefs wanted to save money and worked out a way to part ways with Lampkin for a certain amount of money rather than continue to pay him on injured reserve for an indefinite amount of time as long as he remains hurt. A team cannot release an injured player at any time without reaching an injury settlement since players have rights that keep teams from using them and dropping them without proper medical care.
Either way it’s unknown but Lampkin will now rehab on his own. We certainly wish him the best and look forward to seeing the next chapter of his football career.