AFC Notes: Austin Ekeler, Patrick Mahomes, Zach Wilson, Chargers, Chiefs, Jets

Chargers

Chargers HC Brandon Staley announced that RB Austin Ekeler will miss his second consecutive game: “He’s working hard to get back. We’ll see how it goes here in the next few weeks.”

It seems as though this could be the last game Ekeler sits out as he recovers from his ankle injury.

“Dealing with the ankle. I’ve dealt with ankles in the past,” Ekeler said, via Yahoo! Sports. “You’ve just got to get it to a point where you feel good, where it’s taped up and you can actually feel like, ‘If I get tackled, it’s not going to be re-aggravated and set me back to where I was before, where I could barely walk on it.’ It’s not something that’s going to be like, ‘Ah, he’s out for several months’ type of thing. It’s a day-to-day, week-to-week situation. I like the progress that I’ve made so far. Hopefully back sooner than later.”

Chiefs

Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes said he’s grateful to receive his restructured contract with Kansas City, which will pay him $210.6 million over the next four years. 

“I’ve got a lot of great people around me,” Mahomes said, via ProFootballTalk. “Very thankful to the Hunt family and the Chiefs organization and glad that now I can just go out there and play football. And so, you get that security — and I already had it, but just to get a little bump and then be able to go back out there and just play football, I’m excited for it.”

Mahomes said his reworked deal helps “keep the market moving in the right direction” for quarterbacks. 

“I don’t want people to be negotiated against me,” Mahomes said. “So, that’s a reason that you do something that I did this last week, just trying to keep the market moving in the right direction, trending in the right direction so that it’s not only me but other quarterbacks and other positions can get paid the money they deserve.”

Mahomes thinks it’s important to find the “right median” in his contract to help the organization field a strong roster. 

“You have a lot of great players that I want to be here so we can win a lot of Super Bowls,” Mahomes said. “I want to make a lot of money, but I also want to win. And I think when you look back at teams and players, you look back at how they won and the perception of how they did things, and so that’s what I try to manage and find the right median of getting the money but also winning football games.”

Jets

Jets QB Zach Wilson said he isn’t concerned about the team potentially finding outside help at quarterback.

“I actually don’t look at it like that,” Wilson said, via PFT. “For me, I’m the guy right now and my number’s called and so I’m gonna go out there and do everything I can for this offense. That’s not something I really need to worry about. Right now, I have all the guys in the locker room behind me. I just gotta lay my trust in those guys and go play football.”