The Kansas City Chiefs, along with every other team in the NFL, will be enduring a training camp unlike any the league has seen before. The global pandemic caused by COVID-19 has sports taking a backseat due to the significant health risks.
Chiefs head coach Andy Reid teamed up with Vice President of Sports Medicine and Performance Rick Burkholder, who also serves as the Chiefs’ infectious control officer (ICO), to create a safer working environment. The duo spent nine weeks getting the Chiefs’ facility COVID-19 ready and in preparation for the first official weekend of training camp. Reid and Burkholder explained their plan to handle the virus throughout camp and beyond during Saturday’s press conference.
“I’d take it day-by-day,” said Reid. “I think we’re all doing that with this virus. We’ve learned that through the pandemic, things change and so we’re going to stick by what the experts tell us. I mentioned this before to you guys but the simple parts that we can do is wear a mask when needed, we can wash our hands after contact with people and make sure we use social distancing when we can. Those are important things that are base fundamentals with this, we’re going to do it. Then they’ve got the setup here, whether it’s plexiglass between lockers or all of the different things they’ve set up here with separation in meeting rooms and so on. We’re going to try to abide by that, we’re going to try to teach the best way we possibly can and then we’re going to trust the players and the coaches, I’m one of those, I’m included in this, that we do the right things when we leave here. That’s all you can do and then you go play. You focus in on playing.”
The NFL and NFL Players Association recently came to an agreement on sets of protocols to hold training camp during the pandemic. This agreement was pressured by star players protesting via social media using the #WeWantToPlay hashtag. The league was forced to reassess camp plans and eventually canceled preseason. Ultimately, the league anticipates positive tests, it’s how they respond to those positive tests that will be the difference according to Burkholder.
“Every team is going to have positive tests and we know that,” Burkholder said. “We are testing positive at 75,000 a day now [in the United States]. We know that. What we hope is we limit our positive tests and when we get a positive test, we act accordingly with the CDC to get those people isolated and get them healthy and safely back to work. There’s a protocol that would take me an hour to talk to you about because a lot of it is on an individual case basis. Whether it’s Patrick [Mahomes] or whether it’s me, we have to follow the guidelines if it’s a positive test with symptoms, days, antibodies, all of that kind of stuff to determine when it’s safe for them to come back to work. I think that the NFL will release that eventually, I just don’t think I’ve been cleared to release it. All of us who do health care for the NFL, the coaches, the general managers, we’ve asked the question about Fridays before games but right now we don’t have games, and that’s a good thing. They’re putting some protocols together as we get closer to game time. It’s not going to be normal. It’s not going to feel normal for anyone in this building because it is not normal. We’ve got to adjust. I’ll go back to the 2019 season because no team adjusted as well as the Kansas City Chiefs and
we’re going to adjust again. We’re going to get positives and take care of those guys so that when it is safe to come back to work, they will. We’re going to get positives within the staff, and we will take care of them and their families. . .”
Reid, of course, played a big role in the planning stages for the Chiefs as Burkholder helped him create structure during an uncertain time. This helped Reid take a lead role with the NFL as they worked with the NFLPA to solve outstanding issues ahead of training camp.
“You’ve really captured the motion of what Coach Reid is about and what I’m about with coach. There are two men in this world that I’d take a bullet for; one is my dad and the other one is Andy Reid,” Burkholder said. “He’s a father figure to me. He’s been awesome in this process, but he’s also been a big red-headed bear at times because of the unknown. He likes to lay things out. He has his schedule ready in May. We’re in July and it’s just being finalized today because we just got the schedule protocols. I feel like this was a chance for me to give back to Andy Reid. He’s given me so much and taught me how to be a good athletic trainer. I often feel like we are very close, but I walk into his office on Monday mornings with problems. This was the one time in my career where I actually could give him solutions. He was struggling with the unknown from the league and I was getting information earlier because it was all medical before they involved the coaches and the general managers, but then they started bringing Andy in. He knew what the questions were going to be in those meetings. He’d call me and we’d have some late-night conversations and we’d go through phantom schedules When it was all said and done, I asked how many schedules he had. He showed me on his iPad that he had 20 different schedules. Every time they would throw us a change in the protocol, he would make a change in his schedule. He’s got it pretty mastered.”
The appreciation for Reid has crossed over to the medical world as he continues to hear praise from many around the league. The Chiefs along with the Texans get the first crack at the new NFL approved pandemic training camp ahead of their opening night matchup scheduled for September 10th.
[vertical-gallery id=73053]