Clyde Edwards-Helaire pens heartfelt note after Chiefs waive 2x Super Bowl winner
Clyde Edwards-Helaire is no longer a Kansas City Chief. On Monday, the defending Super Bowl champions announced that they had waived the running back after five seasons.
He took to social media to react to his release:
"Love ya KC! A family I didn’t know I needed, y’all made a Kid from Baton Rouge dreams come true!
"To Chiefs Kingdom, its all love and the support I had in troubling times will forever be unmatched from you guys! With love!"
A former national champion with the LSU Tigers in 2019, Edwards-Helaire was drafted 32nd overall by the Chiefs in 2020. He would win consecutive Super Bowl titles with them despite posting minimal stats.
He has rushed 441 times for 1,845 yards and twelve touchdowns; and also caught 89 passes for 765 and seven.
Clyde Edwards-Helaire had been open about mental health struggles
The release of Clyde Edwards-Helaire should come as no surprise, given his mental health struggles stemming from being the victim of an attempted robbery and witnessing an ensuing death, back when he was still in college.
He had been absent from summer practices a few months ago, eventually opening up about the reason why on his social media:
He also expounded on it in a feature for ESPN:
"Sometimes I'm admitted into the hospital, I can't stop throwing up and it's just, 'I [don't] know [anything] pretty much to stop it.' My first couple of years, you just try to block everything out and it's like, 'Oh, at some point I'm going to get over it.' And you start to realize that that just doesn't happen."
Last month, when speaking to the "Pivot Podcast," Edwards-Helaire revealed that head coach Andy Reid was never informed of his situation. He also intimated that only star tight end Travis Kelce empathized with him:
"The amount of time that I was spending with Travis was unreal. I really look at him as a big brother... My first year in the league was COVID, which literally kept us isolated from each other. But the only person that'll do those things, reach out and make sure I'm good, text me on random days, was Travis. He called me 'GBC': Good Brother Clyde."
He had not played in 2024, having been placed on the NFI (non-football injury) list before Week 1.