Eric Berry out for the season with torn ACL

The NFL has played exactly one regular season game, and one of its star players is already out for the season: Kansas City Chiefs safety Eric Berry tore his ACL against the New England Patriots and is out for the year, head coach Andy Reid confirmed today.

Obviously, that’s terrible news for Berry and the Chiefs, who will have to go through the season without the player they just gave a six-year, $78 million contract. It’s a reminder of just how fragile NFL seasons, teams and players are—one injury, and a player’s season can be over, and if a team’s unlucky, their season could fall with one injury too.

That’s why it’s really important that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers got through the preseason with an almost entirely healthy starting offense and defense. No long-term injuries there, and even Jacquies Smith is likely to return in relatively short order. There’s no guarantee that that holds up, after all—see that fragility—but there’s a reason why Dirk Koetter keeps saying that getting through the preseason healthy was the most important part of preseason.

So far so good for the Bucs. Not so much for the Chiefs—though at least they started the season with a win.