KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas City Chiefs head coach Romeo Crennel showed up at the weekly Thursday morning news conference on crutches. When asked about it, Crennel told reporters that he had fluid drained off his knee.
He said he’ll be sitting at practice on Thursday. When asked if he’ll be on crutches for Sunday’s game against the Denver Broncos, Crennel said he hopes not.
“I hope not. I hope not,” he said, “and if I need those I’ll probably be in the box.”
He later added that critical decisions can still be made from the box, but he’s always preferred being on the field.
“Some people like to go upstairs and call the game or look at the game because they feel like they can see more than they can on the sideline, but I’ve always been a sideline guy myself.”
As for the Chiefs’ losing season, Crennel blamed turnovers.
“The turnovers are the biggest thing, interceptions and fumbles,” he said. “And this team, early on defensively, we were giving up easy touchdowns, which kept us out of games. We had penalties at inopportune times, so we tried to slow those things down, and we did. A couple of them cropped up last week, but we slowed down the turnover thing and slowed down the penalty thing. So, if we do that, then we’re going to be competitive when we’re in the game, but then we have to give ourselves a chance to win after that. We screwed that up sometimes when we’ve given ourselves a chance to win, get into the red zone and missed a field goal or fumbled the ball. Those are momentum swings that when you’re going against good teams is hard to overcome.”
Sunday’s game begins at 3:25 CT.