DeAndre Hopkins trade comes with very predictable bad news for Chiefs WR on the outs

If a player is injured, then he's injured — and we are going to assume that Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Skyy Moore really is injured as the team just placed him on the Injured Reserve with a core muscle injury, meaning he will miss at least the next four games.

The timing is a tad convenient though, as this move comes just a day after Kansas City traded for wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins. Many fans assumed Hopkins would take Moore's spot on the Chiefs 53-man roster and that Moore could be cut, even as the Chiefs wide receiver room keeps being bitten by the injury bug.

Instead, Moore heads to the IR — where he does not count toward the Chiefs 53-man roster for as long as he stays there — and Hopkins enters the fold, bringing some much-needed wide receiver help to Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City offense.

Skyy Moore has had a brutal start to 2024

About as brutal as it can be, actually. Moore has not caught a pass in 2024 and has only been targeted three times in six games. He's played just 82 snaps — 20% of KC's total offensive snaps — and has become a non-factor in the Chiefs offense even as his fellow wide receivers keep dropping like flies with injuries.

Moore was a second-round pick in 2022 and caught 43 passes for 494 yards and 1 touchdown in his first two seasons with Kansas City. Fans and KC's front office has been waiting for him to pop but that unfortunately never came, and now it looks like Moore's time in Kansas City is winding down, especially with Hopkins now in the picture. Maybe Moore just needs a change of scenery — that's the case for a lot of young players who don't mesh with their first teams. The problem here is that if Moore can't make it work on the Kansas City Chiefs, the powerhouse of the NFL, things won't get easier elsewhere.