The incident regarding Baltimore Ravens linebacker Kyle Van Noy and the Kansas City Chiefs training staff has gained much attention over the last few days with accusations of inappropriate treatment.
Chiefs V.P. of Sports Medicine and Performance Rick Burkholder spoke with reporters on Friday about the comments made by Van Noy on his podcast earlier in the week.
“We respect the Ravens; we respect our medical staff. I respect Kyle as a player, and I’m pretty upset that he was upset. I’ve talked at length with their doctors and then actually exchanged text messages with John Harbaugh to clear the air.” said Burkholder. “Just a couple of points. One is that it’s not mandated in the NFL to have an ophthalmologist or dentist on the stands. We do that as a courtesy to both teams. So, it’s not mandated by the NFL or the NFLPA. The second thing is, when he went down, I went out there because I thought he had a head or neck injury, and I waited for them.”
Burkholder believes he and the rest of the Kansas City staff treated Van Noy’s injury appropriately and with the best intentions.
“I asked their physician whether they needed an Ophthalmologist. They didn’t at the time they evaluated him, and then when they wanted an Ophthalmologist, we made the phone call into the stands and got the Ophthalmologist out of the locker room in 12 minutes,” said Burkholder. “So there was a 12-minute time frame when we were alerted to him. I’m sorry that he was upset, and I think we’ve worked it out with the Ravens through coach and I. Both organizations respect the process.”
The situation does spotlight everything the medical staff does with players moving forward, as the veteran linebacker’s comments caught the attention of many around the league.