Field Gulls
It appears as though the Seattle Seahawks will not be facing Patrick Mahomes or Travis Kelce (and seemingly several other starters) on Friday night.
On Wednesday, Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid told reporters that he is not likely to play his star quarterback or tight end in his team’s second preseason matchup.
“There’s a good chance he doesn’t [play],” said Reid of Mahomes after the team’s final training camp practice on Wednesday (via Arrowhead Pride). “We’ll see how it goes.
“There’s a chance I sit a couple of the starters or at least be short with them. […] We want to make sure we get a good look at these young guys, so we’ll just see how it all rolls going forward.”
The Chiefs did play Mahomes and starters early in the first quarter against the Arizona Cardinals last week.
Instead of spending time preparing to start in the game, Mahomes and Kelce spent Wednesday’s practice with the Chiefs’ scout team.
“It’s fun,” said Mahomes. “You get to try stuff even more than you would try at a regular training camp practice, and so [I] worked on my fakes and stuff like that — trying to get a defense to bite on fakes and stuff. [I] tried to throw it into tighter windows. Sometimes those things are circled but you still want to try to fit it in there and get the completions. It’s a different type of competitive thing that you go through, and you’re trying to beat the defense whenever they are set up to succeed.”
Backup Gardner Minshew II was getting snaps with the first-team offensive line, so he will earn the start. That being said, Mahomes is prepared to be in the lineup just in case.
“I always want to play,” said Mahomes. “I always want to be out there and playing. You could say that you don’t want to play and then you get to the game and it’s like, ‘Man, I want to be in the game and playing a game with my teammates.
“At the end of the day, I trust in coach Reid and his process. He has a reason for everything that he does. Like I said, I’ll be ready to play this week… If I get to play, I’ll be ready to go, and if I don’t, I’ll be ready to go again the next week. And if not, I’ll be just as energized on the sideline as if I was playing in the game.”
In addition to Mahomes and Kelce being unlikely to face Seattle, Reid also confirmed that several players will be out of the lineup due to injury: tight end Jake Briningstool (hamstring), wide receiver Hollywood Brown (ankle) and offensive tackle Ethan Driskell (appendectomy). Running back Kareem Hunt is considered questionable after being held out on Wednesday with a quad contusion.
It is unknown what the Seahawks will do in terms of playing their starters in preseason, having sat out almost every established starter last...
