The Kansas City Chiefs have placed linebacker BJ Thompson on the non-football injury list, roughly two months after the second-year linebacker was hospitalized after suffering a seizure and going into cardiac arrest during a special teams meeting.
While he will miss the season’s first four games, there is optimism Thompson will play this season.
Thompson was a fifth-round pick in the 2023 NFL Draft. He made two tackles in his one regular season appearance last year. Five days after he was hospitalized, his agent confirmed that he was home and “making progress.”
Rick Burkholder, the Chiefs’ vice president of sports medicine and performance, said in June that Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker ran to get medical help after Thompson had started seizing.
“As a team we tried to stabilize BJ and then put him on the floor while he was still seizing. Then he went into cardiac arrest,” Burkholder said at the time, via Today. “Our team of that group of people provided CPR for him. He had one AED (automated external defibrillator) shock and came back. So he was only in cardiac arrest for probably less than a minute, minute and a half.
“He’s alert. He’s awake. He’s coming through quite well. We don’t have a diagnosis. In medicine sometimes you don’t have that. Like I said, he’s awake and alert and he’s headed in the absolute right direction. All things good in a little bit of a hairy situation.”
While the situation was serious, the fact that there is optimism that Thompson will play this season is certainly good news for all involved.
