While the Baltimore Ravens lost their season opener to the Kansas City Chiefs in week 1, a veteran leader for the Ravens suffered an injury that he felt the Chiefs staff handled in a completely unacceptable fashion.
Baltimore Ravens Kyle Van Noy Rips Chiefs Training Staff
Ravens linebacker and Super Bowl champion Kyle Van Noy suffered a fractured orbital bone in the season opener against the Chiefs. He went on at length about how unacceptable the Chiefs training staff were in dealing with his injury.
He expressed at length that it took the opposing team’s staff an entire quarter before they evaluated him, and that delay led to him being ruled out for the entire game. Even more than that, that delay could’ve led to further injury for Van Noy.
Per Kyle Phoenix of SB Nation:
“I was disappointed in the way the training staff of the Chiefs handled the situation,” Van Noy said. “When things like that hurt, especially something that could be serious like mine was, you’re supposed to rely on the team’s training staff or their doctors and I was supposed to see an ophthalmologist—which is somebody who checks out eye(s), performs eye surgery and they took an entire quarter to get down to talk to me in the locker room. Which, to me, is unacceptable.”
“Because then you start thinking, ‘what if I was trying to go back in the game? What if I was really really hurt?’ I know mine was moderate but it’s still serious because it’s an eye [injury],” he said. “And your expectation of someone to be down there as the training staff asked them to be down there would have had a little more urgency. The way it took time was super unprofessional to me. Especially because there were people in there too. One of the doctors, or the friend of the doctor was in there double-cup fisted, styrofoam cups like everything was good and I just felt that was unprofessional.”
Van Noy went on to highlight that he is not the only player who feels this way, as the Chiefs’ players themselves reported the exact same thing. When the players all voted in the NFLPA’s team report cards that were released ahead of the season, the Chiefs received an F in 5 categories, and their training staff was ranked as the absolute worst in the NFL.
“I understand how Kansas City, the players have given that training room an F. Because with my experience, I would have probably gave them an F, too,” Van Noy said. “Yeah, they ended up figuring a little bit, but it was just, the unprofessionalism.”
After unleashing on the Chiefs staff, Van Noy made sure to highlight and praise the University of Kansas system for the treatment they provided him with after he left the Chiefs’ stadium:
“Now, fast forward to going to the hospital that night at the [emergency room]. I don’t know if they handled that or my trainers and the doctors were handling that [but] they executed so I do want to shout out the KU medical for doing a great job,” he said. “They took care of me in the wee hours into the morning. [They] did an awesome job getting all the info really quickly and so I appreciate that. So, if they did have their hands on that, I do applaud them for that. Everything went smoothly.”
The Chiefs are the perennial dynasty of this decade, and it is a bad look for them as a franchise to have such a poor training staff to accompany the best team of this decade by a mile. It’s hard not to feel for Van Noy, as he was waiting for so long to just get checked out, but it also makes you wonder how good this Chiefs team is if they can dominate everyone else with such a bad training staff. As voted by their own players, the worst in the entire league.