The Kansas City Chiefs came into the 2026 season with massive expectations after a poor 2025 campaign. They even made some major acquisitions and drafted elite talent to make sure they would be ready to go back into Super Bowl contention. However, once again, there appear to be injury concerns around the roster, as two key players have already gone down on the injury reserve list, even just as training camp started.

“Chiefs officially placed DE Ethan Downs (torn ACL) and TE John Michael Gyllenborg (sprained knee) on injured reserve. They no longer count toward the 90-player limit. That leaves the Chiefs with two openings on the roster, with the first full-squad practice Wednesday morning,” tweeted Matt Derrick of Chiefs Digest.

Downs suffered the injury in a 7-on-7 red zone drill on the first day of camp when the 23-year-old edge rusher got tangled up with rookie running back Emmitt Johnson at the goal line and went down clutching his left knee. He didn’t practise for the next two days, and the diagnosis that followed was the worst: torn ACL.

That injury hits a particular spot on the Kansas City depth chart hard. Downs was vying for the No. 2 edge-rusher spot behind George Karlaftis, Ashton Gillotte, and Oklahoma product R Mason Thomas, with veteran Tyreke Smith and a pair of undrafted rookies also in the mix. Suddenly, with him completely out of the picture, that battle for depth behind Kansas City’s top edge rushers is a lot more open.

Downs’ path to the Chiefs wasn’t a straight line to begin with. He entered the league as an undrafted free agent out of Oklahoma in 2025, signed with Jacksonville, and was waived before the season even started. Kansas City picked him up for its practice squad two days later, and he eventually logged these numbers during the Week 18 season finale against the Las Vegas Raiders. He was on the field for 11 defensive snaps and 22 special teams snaps, with his forced fumble coming on special teams coverage.

Reid had already flagged Gyllenborg’s knee sprain to reporters as still under evaluation, and once testing wrapped up, the team made the same call it made with Downs, straight to injured reserve, ending his rookie season.

“Gyllenborg, he’s still working through the knee sprain which he had,” Reid said at the pre-training camp press conference. “They’re doing some other evaluations on him, so we’ll just see for this camp here. Most likely he won’t get much work there.”

Gyllenborg is a hometown product out of Rockhurst High School in Kansas City who signed with the Chiefs as an undrafted free agent this offseason after a strong college career at Wyoming, and he was viewed as a real option as a defensive end.

With him out, the Chiefs will have to rely on Mason Pline and Jake Briningstool, who are young options. But whether either of them do enough to help the Chiefs will be something only time will tell.

Both moves opened up two spots on Kansas City’s 90-man offseason roster, and general manager Brett Veach now has real work ahead of him, figuring out how to fill those gaps before the regular season starts.

What comes next for Kansas City’s depth at both positions

With Downs sidelined for the year, the door is wide open for other names to push for that same depth role. Undrafted free agents VJ Anthony and Anthony Dunn, and practice-squad holdover Tyreke Smith, are all candidates to see more reps as camp goes on.

Both Downs and Gyllenborg are expected to remain on Kansas City’s roster as injured reserve stashes rather than being cut outright, which means both could still be part of the team’s future plans even though their 2026 seasons are over.

According to reports, the Chiefs are more likely to add bottom-of-the-roster depth pieces or tryout players during camp than to pursue a notable free agent, and any addition would be a body to generate competition rather than a player expected to take on a real role this season.