More injured players for the Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers are expected to be healthy for the Super Bowl LV.
Chiefs running back Le’Veon Bell (knee) and wide receiver Sammy Watkins (calf), as well as wide receiver Bucks duo Antonio Brown (knee) and safety Antoine Winfield Jr. (ankle), are expected to be ready by Feb. 7. , sources told Dianna Russini of ESPN.
Each missed the championship team’s victories on Sunday.
Watkins played in 10 games for the Chiefs in the regular season. He came out earlier in the season with a painful hamstring and later with a calf injury and did not play in any of the Chiefs’ previous postseason games. Watkins finished the fifth regular season on the Chiefs with 37 catches for 421 yards and two touchdowns.
Bell joined the bosses in October after being released from the New York Jets. Since his arrival, he has had less of an impact on bosses than he had expected. After the Chiefs lost to Clyde Edwards-Helaire for a while, they overtook Bell and played Darrel Williams in a Week 16 game against the Falcons and a playoff game in the divisional round against Browns. During the regular season, Bell rushed for 254 yards in nine games for the Chiefs.
Winfield suffered an ankle injury in practice last Thursday and missed training on Friday. He still flew to Green Bay with the team, but after testing his ankle in the warm-ups, it was considered the best course of action for him to solve the game.
Brown, who led the Bucs in the final five weeks of the regular season, suffered a knee injury in the divisional game against the New Orleans Saints. He did not train last week and did not make the trip to Green Bay, as the team felt that he was not as far away as they had hoped in his recovery and they felt that a plane trip could cause additional swelling. Brown caught a 36-meter touchdown in the wild card game against Washington.
Bucs’ other starting safety, Jordan Whitehead, who forced two headaches, left Sunday’s victory over the Packers with a shoulder injury and never returned. Whitehead underwent an MRI on Monday, but sources told ESPN’s Jenna Laine that it was too early to say whether or not she would be able to play in the Super Bowl and that they were taking it once in a while to see how it went.
Information from Adam Teicher and Jenna Laine of ESPN was used in this report.