Thursday, January 19, 2006

Holmes Apprears to be Done in KC


Larry Johnson will be the feature back in the Chiefs offense next season regardless of Priest Holmes health.

Johnson said new Coach Herman Edwards gave him the role during their first meeting Tuesday.

"He told me I would be the guy going into training camp and that I should start the season prepared to start," Johnson told the Topeka Capital-Journal.

Johnson said that Edwards told him, “I want to tell you this now that when we get going, you'll have to be the guy on this team who is the leader and gets things done,"

Holmes, the team's all-time rusher, said in November that he plans to play next season if tests show encouraging results.

He saw specialists in California and Florida after sustaining a concussion on Oct. 30 and was told to avoid contact for at least 30 days. His 27 touchdowns in 2003 are a single-season record and the 66 touchdowns he scored from 2002-04 are the most in any three-year period.

"The main concern was that [doctors] wanted to know if there was pressure on the spine," he said. "If there's pressure on the spine, of course if you're hit there's a number of things that could possibly happen. Would those things happen to me? It hasn't happened yet.

"So I'm very, very confident about the recovery time and the number of things I have to go through."