It appears that Eric Berry’s holdout with the Kansas City Chiefs is nearing an end.
According to Kansas City Star’s Terez Paylor and other media reports, Berry will end his hiatus from the team on Sunday. The Chiefs travel to face the Chicago Bears on Saturday for their third preseason game, which is usually a dress rehearsal for the starters, but Berry clearly will not play in the game.
Earlier this week Chiefs head coach Andy Reid said he hoped that Berry, who has missed all of training camp and the preseason to date, would be ready to go for the Chiefs’ season opener against the San Diego Chargers. Reid even believed that the four-time Pro Bowler could be good to go even if he did not appear in the preseason finale next Thursday.
Berry was franchise tagged this offseason but has yet to sign his one-year tender, which likely will happen upon his return. The deadline to dole out a long-term contract passed more than a month ago, so Berry would have to play this season on the tender salary of $10.806 million for the 2016 season and go through another round of free agency in 2017.
If there were hard feelings on either side, they appear to have subsided. Signs pointed toward Berry getting that long-term deal prior to the July 15 deadline, but Berry’s camp reportedly was upset at the Chiefs’ insistence at him signing team-benefited injury protection, which is a fairly common request in NFL contracts. However, the circumstances following Berry returning to the field last season following a December 2014 diagnosis of Hodgkin’s lymphoma made the issue a little more sticky and personal.
In recent days, hope grew about Berry’s return. It now appears that one of their more important defenders is close to getting back on the field, even if he might be rusty without much work with his teammates this offseason.
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