Chiefs, Bucs ride (mostly) virus clear season to Super Bowl
KANSAS CITY, MO. » The Kansas City Chiefs had a pretty good idea what kind of COVID-19 protocols they would have to wade through in defense of their Super Bowl championship the moment they finally gathered for in-person training camp.
One of their own helped to devise them.
It was Chiefs vice president of sports medicine and performance Rick Burkholder who worked hand in hand with the NFL, physicians and other trainers in developing the testing, social distancing and tracing parameters that would ultimately allow the league to play its full 256-game regular-season schedule. And it was Burkholder who helped the Chiefs navigate the season with few positive tests and just one postponement — the fault of the other team — as they closed in on a Super Bowl repeat.
“I think in the spring and early summer, many of us had a lot of uncertainty about how this was going to unfold,” Chiefs chairman Clark Hunt said. “I don’t think we knew for sure you could play football
safely, that the virus would not be passed on the football field. Those were things we just didn’t know, and it was a process to figure out how to do this.”
Ultimately, the Chiefs and Buccaneers are in the Super Bowl in part because they figured it out as well as anybody.
They adhered to strict mask mandates inside the facility. They avoided large gatherings once they left. They spread out to eat meals, held meetings in small groups and paid whatever it took for cutting-edge tracking systems.
They held the health of the guy next to them in the same regard as their own.
“We had to take care of each other. We couldn’t go out there and do things we normally do,” Chiefs wide receiver Mecole Hardman said. “We did a real good job of protecting each other, and it did bring us together. We all had to be locked in.”
According to the NFL, there were 922,220 tests administered from Aug. 1 to the end of the regular season, resulting in 256 positive tests among players and 432 among other staff members.