The Kansas City Chiefs are running out of time, and now they may be running out of protection as well.
Ahead of a crucial Week 15 showdown against the Los Angeles Chargers, the Chiefs received troubling news when Pro Bowl guard Trey Smith was downgraded to limited participation in practice, just one day after logging a full session. Smith has been dealing with a lingering ankle injury since Week 12, and the sudden setback raises serious red flags about his availability and effectiveness.
Smith tried to push through the pain in an effort to stay with the full 53-man roster during the most critical stretch of the season. Instead of stabilizing the offensive line, his effort may have made an already fragile situation even worse.
Kansas City’s offensive line has been in survival mode all season. Through just 14 weeks, the Chiefs have already used 17 different offensive line combinations, a shocking number that highlights constant instability up front.
The damage keeps piling up:
Left tackle Josh Simmons lost for the season
Swing tackle Wanya Morris no longer available
Jawaan Taylor still dealing with injury concerns
Now Trey Smith, the most reliable interior lineman, is compromised
With Smith potentially sidelined or playing far from 100 percent, the Chiefs face a nightmare scenario against one of the hottest defenses in the AFC.
Head coach Andy Reid addressed the situation and did not hide his concern.
“I know he wants to give everything he has for this team in these final games,” Reid said. “That mindset is exactly why we respect him so much. But at the same time, pushing through that kind of injury can backfire. We thought we were getting stability, and instead it made things tougher. Now we have to reassess everything and figure out how to protect both the player and the team.”
Reid’s words suggest the Chiefs may have crossed a dangerous line between toughness and risk at the worst possible moment.
At 6-7, Kansas City sits as the No. 10 seed in the AFC, clinging to faint playoff hopes. The matchup against a surging 9-4 Chargers team is essentially a must-win game. If the offensive line cannot hold up, Patrick Mahomes will be under constant pressure from Khalil Mack and a Chargers defense that is playing with confidence and momentum.
Trey Smith tried to ignore the pain to help his team when it mattered most. Instead, his injury has exposed just how close the Chiefs are to the edge. At this point, the question is no longer about playoff math. It is about whether the Chiefs can keep their franchise quarterback upright long enough to keep the season alive.
Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce has a decision to make regarding his future with the Kansas City Chiefs as he mulls retirement once again. But as he considers his future, he’s facing a bit of a scandal.
Last month, Kelce was announced as the Kansas City Chiefs’ club winner for the 2025 Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award, recognizing his community impact through his Eighty-Seven and Running Foundation. However, that foundation has recently come under some strong scrutiny.
According to federal tax records obtained by the Arizona Republic as part of a recent investigation into the charity, Kelce’s nonprofit told the IRS that it spent just 41 cents of every dollar on charity from 2021 to 2024.
Instead of the money going directly to charity, the Arizona Republic investigation found that Kelce’s Eighty-Seven and Running Foundation has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to A&A Management Group, which is a management company co-founded by Kelce’s longtime business managers, brothers Aaron and André Eanes.
Not only that, but the Arizona Republic found that the company had no official president, secretary, or treasurer and had just two board members, which is below the minimum of three required to ensure good governance.
“It appears to function more as an extension of the management company versus as an independent public charity,” said Laurie Styron, the executive director of CharityWatch, an independent charity watchdog group that reviewed the nonprofit’s tax filings for The Arizona Republic. “That’s not how charities work. It’s wrong.”
Aaron Eanes addressed these issues, claiming that the numbers were a result of incorrect tax filings and said that the charity is working to expand its governance.
Eanes told the Arizona Republic that the operational costs for charitable efforts were “mistakenly reported under management rather than allocated adequately to program services.” As a result, the public records do not provide an accurate “indication of where the resources were truly directed,” Eanes claims.
“We have since corrected this: Management fees decreased significantly in 2024 and dropped to zero in 2025,” Eanes said.
“Looking ahead, we are expanding our board of directors, bringing on advisers with nonprofit expertise, and restructuring our reporting processes to better reflect our actual program work. We are dedicated to ensuring this foundation operates at the highest standards,” he added.
Mistake or not, the current numbers indicate that just 56 cents of every dollar spent has gone to charity since the nonprofit was created.