Is Eric Berry’s playing career finished?

Eric Berry hasn’t played at all this season and has no team to call home. Will this be the official end of the line for a brilliant player?

Three hundred and forty days have passed since Eric Berry last played an official snap in an NFL game. Late last season, Berry played in two games for the Kansas City Chiefs, interrupting a 463 day stretch between the previous time he’d put on a uniform and played another official snap.

If you’re looking at the bigger picture, Eric Berry has played 99 snaps in the last 811 days. That’s not exactly a solid runway from which you’d expect a veteran player with an unfortunate injury history to suddenly take flight once again. Despite more talent than 99 percent of his peers at the NFL level and the good will of a host of Chiefs fans who’d love to see him succeed once again, the reality is that Berry is likely a grounded flight at this point.

If this is the case, however, why have we not heard about the ending just yet?

You’d think, at some po onial one-day contracts that would allow him to retire with the team. Neither of those things have happened, and it’s likely because Berry is still waiting and hoping for someone to call him with time still left in the 2019 season.

A comeback for Berry at this point would be as admirable as the one for which he earned the NFL’s Comeback Player of the Year award after overcoming a cancer diagnosis to return to form as the league’s most dynamic safety. At this point, ankle and heel problems have plagued him to the point that he’s been unable to play despite the drive and talent pushing him to suit up again.

For any other player, even asking the question of whether or not he could return after so many injuries would sound silly. Then again, Berry was on a Canton-worthy trajectory when the injuries began to overwhelm him. There are the three All-Pro nods and the five Pro Bowl awards. Even as recently as 2017, his peers voted him the 13th best player in the league. He was a rare safety taken in the top five of the draft, and a redraft would likely push him even higher than that.

Eric Berry was, undoubtedly, a special player.

So what happens from here on out? Is Berry still waiting for a last gasp from the 2019 season (perhaps an injury strikes somewhere) before calling it quits? Is Berry never going to officially announce an ending to any of this? He’s such a gifted communicator, a smart leader, and exciting presence that Chiefs fans would be thrilled to have him wandering the sidelines as an assistant coach in some form or another. Yet is he ready for that? A player has to accept that reality in order to embrace it.

Will Berry ever play another NFL snap? If not, when will he call it a career? These last few years tell a sorrowful tale of a player who deserved better, but the bigger picture still speaks loudly of the greatness we were privileged to watch this decade as Chiefs Kingdom.