The Kansas City Chiefs had a good notion of what the COVID-19 protocols they would have to overcome in defending their Super Bowl championship would be by the time they met for training camp in person.
It was one of them who helped design the protocols.
Chiefs Vice President of Sports Medicine and Performance Rick Burkholder worked with the NFL, physicians and coaches to develop the tests and parameters for social distancing and contact tracing that led to the full 256-game regular-season schedule.
It was Burkholder himself who helped the Chiefs navigate the season with few positives and only one postponed matchup – because of the other team.
“I think spring and early summer, there was a lot of uncertainty about how it would play out,” admitted Chiefs president Clark Hunt. “I think we weren’t sure we could play safely.”
In the end, the Chiefs and Buccaneers are in the Super Bowl in part because they cracked it better than anyone.
“We had to take care of each other. We couldn’t go out and do the things we normally do, “acknowledged Chiefs wide receiver Mecole Hardman. “We did a very good job of protecting each other and it brought us closer together.”
According to the NFL, 922,220 tests were conducted from August 1 through the end of the regular season. There were 256 positives from players and 432 from staff. But most of these positives could be traced to a few teams.
The Titans had an outbreak involving 24 players and staff that forced two games to be postponed and took away their bye week. The Ravens struggled before their Thanksgiving game against Pittsburgh and ended up playing the following week without quarterback Lamar Jackson. The Broncos played a game without a quarterback.
All of this makes the Chiefs ‘and Bucs’ problems seem trivial.
Kansas City had eight players on the COVID-19 list. With Tampa Bay, 11 players went from active to the COVID list.
Four of the Chiefs players and four more of the Bucs who were on the COVID-19 list did not miss a game and both teams are expected to have – knocking on wood – their entire team for the Super Bowl on February 7 in Tampa.
“It was a mental fight trying to get through a full football season, trying to stay focused on the game when the whole world seems to be in chaos,” admitted Chiefs safety Tyrann Mathieu.
–
