KC Chiefs have numerous injuries to watch as training camp begins

Juan Thornhill, S

Of all the injuries on this list, this one is a bit of a mystery.

Juan Thornhill suffered a well-known injury back in 2019 at the tail end of his rookie campaign when he tore his ACL in Week 17. From there, he was able to return to play in Week 1 last season for the Chiefs, but his athleticism was clearly limited as he worked his way back into form. In fact, it didn’t feel like we saw the “old” Thornhill until the Chiefs were into the postseason.

Fast forward several months and we find it interesting that Thornhill has been mentioned in conjunction with the Chiefs injured players getting work at camp. Andy Reid pointed out that Thornhill was working out early in training camp exercises, but we’re not entirely sure why Thornhill’s injury is notable. In fact, he’s there early as a rehabilitating player because other healthy vets aren’t supposed to report to camp until Tuesday (e.g. Dan Sorensen or Tyrann Mathieu).

Is all of this tied to the ACL injury? Perhaps Thornhill has had some lingering effects of the torn ACL and returned too quickly to the field—or at least to that amount of reps (he was playing almost every defensive snap early in the season before the team lowered his snap count). It’s also possible that he was injured in the postseason and no one has a specific documentation of it (that we can find).

Either way, we’re assuming that Thornhill’s ability to be back at work is a good thing, yet we also hope the Chiefs are doing whatever is best for Thornhill’s long-term health and not his immediately availability. (Although that could be too late.)