Source: Hunt to start treatment, counseling
Former Chiefs running back Kareem Hunt addresses the TMZ video that shows him shoving and kicking a woman in February. (5:55)
Former Kansas City Chiefs running back Kareem Hunt has started working with the NFL on a treatment and counseling program, a league source tells ESPN.
Although the NFL’s investigative process is ongoing, Hunt has voluntarily sought counseling after being involved in multiple violent off-the-field incidents this past year, all of which the league is now taking into consideration for potential future discipline.
Outside the Lines interviewed witnesses and reviewed police documents and nearly four hours of officer bodycam video for the most complete account to date of the night that jeopardized Kareem Hunt’s NFL career.
Hunt still has a long way to go before he can make his way back onto the field, but this is a first step that would have likely been mandated by the NFL down the road.
TMZ published a video on Nov. 30 of Hunt shoving and kicking a woman in a hotel hallway last February. The NFL placed Hunt on the commissioner’s exempt list later that day, shortly before the Chiefs released him.
Hunt addressed the incident in an interview with ESPN last Sunday, saying he was “in the wrong” and that he would tell the woman in the video that he is “sorry for my actions that night.”
The two other incidents involving Hunt are a restaurant altercation from last June about which the league already questioned him and a violent incident at a nightclub last January about which the NFL didn’t know until recently. TMZ reported the January incident on Monday.
The sources who spoke to ESPN on this matter didn’t know when the league would reach a decision on Hunt’s eventual suspension but said all three incidents would be part of the evaluation.
The NFL uses the commissioner’s exempt list as a means of keeping a player off the field while it investigates off-field behavior and comes to a decision on a suspension.
ESPN’s Dan Graziano contributed to this report.