Chiefs news: Jerick McKinnon seems frustrated at unemployment

No one but Jerick McKinnon can say for sure what the source of his frustration is, but it makes sense to wonder about his unemployment.

It can be a dangerous, or at least irresponsible, exercise to read too much into a vague statement, so when Jerick McKinnon turned to his Twitter account recently to share a general sense of frustration, it should be said that no one knows for sure what is wrong—at least until McKinnon explains himself.

That said, it raised eyebrows all over Chiefs Kingdom a few days ago when McKinnon decided he would tweet the short but pointed message that read, “The disrespect is crazy.”

Just like that, fans were left to wonder what that meant—or even if it had to do with football at all. The passive way in which Twitter allows an athlete to vent and even point a finger at someone makes it an obvious place to start when trying to interpret these cryptic sorts of messages. Which is why so many are thinking that maybe McKinnon won’t be back in Kansas City next year after all.

McKinnon has been an important player out of the backfield for the Chiefs for the last two seasons, specifically when it comes to producing down the stretch and/or into the postseason. In his first year, he was an unstoppable force on offense in the team’s postseason run in ’21 that ultimately ended with a loss to the Cincinnati Bengals in the AFC Championship. Then last year, it was the last month of the regular in which McKinnon earned Offensive Player of the Month honors in the AFC.

But what was also clear during that span is that as an aging back, the juice wasn’t quite there from a year prior, and looking ahead, it might make sense for the Chiefs to grab a younger back with a higher ceiling to pair with Isiah Pacheco going forward. For their part, the Chiefs might have told McKinnon to wait at this stage until after the draft to see how things shake out—if they are interested at all.

If that’s the case, it should sting for McKinnon and it would be hard not to take that personally. But the NFL is always business-first and these sorts of stories come every year as players realize just how cold the league can be. While nothing is for sure with any of this, the disrespect can be crazy to the NFL’s veterans.

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