Chiefs WR Marquise Brown to undergo surgery next week, placed on injured list

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Chiefs wide receiver Marquise Brown will undergo surgery next week on a dislocated shoulder and will be placed on the injured reserve list, meaning one of the team’s biggest free-agent signings will be sidelined for at least four weeks and possibly much longer.

Brown, a former Ravens first-round draft pick who signed a $7 million contract with Kansas City this season, dislocated his sternoclavicular joint when he was fouled after catching a ball Aug. 10 in Jacksonville. The team did not place him on the injured list when it cut him after training camp, hoping he would return for the start of the season, but the injury did not heal properly.

“The protocol is you look at it in a week and make sure it’s still there. It was,” Chiefs coach Rick Burkholder said after his final practice before Sunday’s game against Cincinnati. “He did great in rehab; we talked about a return-to-play plan. He had one last check-up on another scan four weeks after the injury, and it looked like the bone had shifted.”

The Chiefs consulted with several doctors before deciding to have the surgery. The procedure will take place Monday in Vail, Colorado.

“Everyone involved thought it was too risky for him to play without surgery,” Burkholder said. “He’ll get it fixed and we’ll move on. There’s no timeline because we don’t know (how the surgery will go) yet.”

Brown has been hampered by injuries throughout his six-year NFL career, suffering foot and ankle injuries as a rookie with Baltimore in 2019, a knee injury the following season and ankle and hamstring issues in 2021. He was traded in April 2022 to Arizona, where he has had more hamstring and foot issues over the past two seasons.

His latest injury is similar to the sprain that then-Chiefs wide receiver Tyreek Hill suffered in Week 1 of the 2019 season, which forced him to miss the next four weeks. Coincidentally, that injury also occurred in Jacksonville.

“Next time we play there, I won’t field any wide receivers,” Reid joked.

Brown had hoped that a successful season with Reid — and Patrick Mahomes throwing him the ball — would allow him to parlay a relatively modest one-year contract in Kansas City into a lucrative multi-year deal in the upcoming offseason.

“Disappointment, frustration and sadness was the first wave of emotions when I realized I would need surgery, but it only lasted a day or two because I believed in God,” Brown said on social media. “This too shall pass.”

Brown was a dynamic quarterback when healthy, catching 98 passes for 1,008 yards while appearing in all 16 games for the Ravens in 2021, and in 72 career games he had 313 catches for 3,644 yards and 28 touchdowns.

“He’s a great kid, boy, I’m telling you, and nobody wanted to do this more than he did,” Reid said. “Our hearts go out to him, but he’ll be back and ready to go, whenever that is. It takes a long time.”

Instead of a mid-season injury that would require the Chiefs to adjust on the fly, they spent most of training camp and the start of the regular season without Brown. And they plan to move forward with their current group, led by second-year pro Rashee Rice and first-round draft pick Xavier Worthy.

Rice had seven receptions for 103 yards and Worthy had two scores in last week’s 27-20 win over Baltimore.