OWINGS MILLS, Md. — His eyeball felt like it would burst.
In the first game of the NFL season, Baltimore Ravens outside linebacker Kyle Van Noy pursued Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes for a potential sack when he got too low. With his body prone and his arms at his sides, Van Noy’s helmet skidded in the grass, his chin strap slipped under his chin, and the top of his helmet came down over his eyes. Then Mahomes fell on Van Noy’s head and Ravens defensive tackle Nnamdi Madubuike fell on both of them.
Van Noy’s eye socket took the brunt of the weight. His eyeball didn’t burst, but his orbital socket fractured in two places.
The result was excessive bleeding through his nose, double vision, sinus issues, sleep problems and breathing difficulty. Season-ending surgery was recommended by doctors but dismissed by the patient.
Van Noy refused to miss a game because of the fractures.
If you look closely at the 33-year-old’s eyes, you will notice the area around his right eye still doesn’t align perfectly with the left.
But what you mostly see in those eyes is resilience.
In the offseason, the Ravens were the only team that expressed interest in signing him. Now? Van Noy has the fourth most sacks in the NFL, and his 11 hard seasons could be a case study in how the league fails to take advantage of players’ gifts.
Kyle Van Noy is up to 11.5 sacks on the season! #NFLonNetflix#BALvsHOU on @Netflix pic.twitter.com/ndk7xQXeDa
— NFL (@NFL) December 25, 2024
At BYU, Van Noy was a stand-up edge rusher. In four college seasons, he had 26 sacks, 62 tackles for a loss, 11 forced fumbles and seven interceptions. In the spring of 2014, he was widely considered the best 3-4 outside linebacker in the draft.
The Detroit Lions chose him with the 40th pick, then, logic be damned, had him play strongside linebacker in a four-man front, meaning he wouldn’t be rushing the passer very much. It was kind of like telling a concert pianist to play electric guitar.
One of his coaches told him they didn’t know where to play him.
Core muscle surgery during his rookie season was another obstacle. In Year 2, Van Noy remained a backup — in his words, a “demoralized and depressed” backup. While driving to practice in his truck, he often was in tears.
Then came a herniated disc. Doctors pushed for spinal surgery, and injured reserve looked like a certainty, but after a week of rehab with an outside trainer, Van Noy was healthy enough to play.
But to a jaded, impatient fandom, he was already a bust. The frustration led him to consider retiring.
In his third season, Van Noy finally became a starter for the Lions. Then after seven games, he was crushed to learn they were trading him — giving up on him, really. All they were getting in return was a sixth-round pick. And they had to throw in a seventh.
His career took a turn in New England. He was always highly motivated, but after his experience in Detroit, he was motivated like Bruce Banner after gamma radiation. As a Patriot, he played in three Super Bowls, won two and established himself as a starting-caliber player.
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Van Noy still wasn’t being used the way he wanted, though. Patriots coach Bill Belichick saw him as a jack of many trades, lining him up at strongside linebacker, weakside linebacker, middle linebacker and defensive end.
Versatility revived Van Noy and restrained him.
“They say, ‘the more you can do,’ and they have you do everything,” Van Noy says. “But then they use it against you and devalue you that way. You know, ‘He’s not that good at everything.’”
He was good enough that Brian Flores, his former linebackers coach in New England, brought him to Miami a year after he became head coach of the Dolphins, signing him to a four-year, $51 million contract in 2020. Flores named Van Noy a team captain.
“It was that dream you have of a young kid of not just making the NFL but getting that huge contract that you know is going to change your family for generations,” he says.
It was a setup for the biggest comedown of his career. That season, Van Noy injured his foot so badly that it still bothers him today. There were fractured ribs and a hematoma the size of a mango on his side. But he gutted it out and somehow played 14 games, though not as effectively as he had hoped.
After the season, the Dolphins cut him, meaning he wouldn’t be paid most of the $51 million.
Kyle Van Noy thought it was a dream come true when he signed a lucrative contract with the Dolphins in 2020, but it turned into a nightmare. (Kirby Lee / USA Today)
Van Noy was stunned, angry and confused. He believes he was caught in a “civil war” between Flores and Dolphins general manager Chris Grier. There were intimations they thought he was a locker room lawyer who was trying to undermine quarterback Tua Tagovailoa. He says it wasn’t true.
“That’s the homie,” he says of Tagovailoa. “I’m super proud of the way he’s battled through injuries and started a family. It’s awesome to see.”
Van Noy says he no longer has a relationship with Flores, however.
Getting cut by the Dolphins was his lowest point. Retirement became a real possibility for a second time.
The Patriots took him back in March of 2021, but not for long. The following March, they released him, the second time he was cut in 12 months.
By then, he was 31 years old, had played eight NFL seasons and was about to change teams for the fifth time. What was most important to him was taking control of his career narrative. Van Noy wanted to be an edge rusher for the first time, and he wanted to play on the West Coast, where his family could attend his games more frequently.
Van Noy says he had to almost beg the Los Angeles Chargers to sign him to a one-year $2.25 million deal. Coach Brandon Staley saw pass-rush potential in him, but Van Noy ended up playing various roles.
Van Noy had five sacks in the final five games of the 2023 season, and then the Chargers were done with him. It seemed as if the rest of the league might be as well. While he waited for the phone to ring — and waited and waited — he thought seriously about retirement for a third time.
If not for his wife, Marissa, he might have filed his papers and called a press conference. A Miss Utah USA who gave up her dreams of modeling and acting, Marissa would not allow him to give up his. He says in his career, she has been an angel who has guided him.
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Six months passed — OTAs, minicamps, training camps, the preseason and three games of the regular season — before Van Noy had an NFL offer. By then, the Ravens were desperate, down to two healthy outside linebackers.
He had spent his spring and summer devoting himself to pass rush and working up an attitude.
Coach John Harbaugh felt the heat of his fire, and he liked it.
“He could thrive here because he loves football,” Harbaugh says. “And if you love ball, we love you here. That’s how we are.”
Ravens pass rush coach Chuck Smith appreciates the way Van Noy has approached the latter stage of his career with what Smith calls a “learning heart.” Instead of wanting to do things the way he’s done them in the past, or thinking he knows more than his coaches, Van Noy has been open to new approaches.
The result is growth, rare growth in a player who is closer to the end than the beginning. Van Noy never had more than 6 1/2 sacks in a season before having nine last year with the Ravens. He is averaging 10.2 sacks per season in two years as a Raven after averaging 3.7 in his previous nine years.
Age, we are always told, is a thief. And then someone like Van Noy exposes the lie.
“This is not New England Kyle Van Noy,” Smith says. “This is not Detroit Kyle Van Noy. This is not Miami Kyle Van Noy. This is not (Los Angeles) Kyle Van Noy. This is a pass rusher.”
Smith, who has worked with hundreds of pass rushers as a personal trainer and is known as “Dr. Rush,” has helped Van Noy expand his repertoire, working on a cross chop, adding spin moves off both feet and stealing T.J. Watt’s rip move. He’s also refined his visual keys, varied his alignments and honed his head fakes.
Van Noy makes Smith think of the Transformer Optimus Prime because of his ability to modify in response to a challenge.
“If he’s against a tackle who is a soft setter, he can power,” Smith says. “If it’s a hard setter, he can spin. If it’s a drifter, he can cross-chop. And he can long arm. He has all those tools.”
Smith says Van Noy is a master of pass-rush games. The Ravens entrust him with calling games at the line.
Several of Van Noy’s sacks have been sneaky sacks, big plays borne of subtle movements, intuition and time on task.
“He has a sense of what the play is, where the ball is, where the quarterback is going to end up,” Harbaugh says. “And then he just shows up there.”
Kyle Van Noy says Ravens coach John Harbaugh “has allowed me to be me.” (Ron Jenkins / Getty Images)
It ultimately doesn’t matter how he gets sacks — it’s that he gets them.
“I know he gets put in a box because of his past, but Kyle is one of the best pass rushers out there,” Smith says. “Listen, they chip him like they do the best ones in the league. Look at how many people have doubled him.”
An unmistakable difference between then and now is respect. It comes from those he does battle against and those he does battle with.
Van Noy says Harbaugh has empowered him to lead.
“It’s brought out a different side of me because it hasn’t been like that in my career,” he says. “He has allowed me to be me.”
The coach asks him for his opinion on scheme, practice intensity, scheduling and timing of days off. Van Noy, the oldest player on the Ravens defense, is a member of Harbaugh’s leadership council and isn’t shy with his thoughts.
In early December, after the Ravens had lost two of three, Van Noy told Harbaugh and the other team leaders that the Ravens could benefit from a team dinner. Harbaugh told him it was a great idea and wanted to know when and where. Van Noy told him it would be at Ruth’s Chris that night — but coaches weren’t invited.
“He called the shots on that and helped bring a lot of camaraderie,” says Madubuike, who split the bill with Van Noy and a couple of others.
It was the third dinner Van Noy initiated this season. He also arranged dinners for the front seven and another for the defense when it was struggling.
Sacks are just part of what he brings.
What if Van Noy had been a Raven from the start? Would he have 100 sacks and $100 million?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
That back injury that crushed his spirit when he was with the Lions led him to Dave Daglow of DAG Athletic Group, who introduced him to an alternative way of training that has served him well. With Daglow, Van Noy has focused on muscular balance, functional strength and perfect posture. Instead of Olympic weights and chains, he uses bands and dumbbells and mostly goes high rep. To this day, he and Daglow FaceTime regularly to address imbalances, and Van Noy says Daglow is a significant reason why he is doing what he is.
Being minimized and criticized in Detroit and traded for nearly nothing gave Van Noy an indignation that he repurposed into drive and focus.
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Van Noy wasn’t thrilled about how he was used in New England. But he came away from the experience with a worldview of playing defense that he would never have had without Belichick. Playing for the Patriots helped him understand pressures, stunts and the responsibilities of those around him in a way most never do.
The cut by the Dolphins was the deepest. And it led to the most significant healing. He needed perspective, and it came from Dana Sinclair, a performance-based psychologist he had known since his time in Detroit.
“She kind of put me together after my Miami situation because I wasn’t doing very well mentally after that fiasco,” he says. “She helped me keep my stress levels down and just be in that Zen feeling, playing football like when you were a kid.”
He started questioning himself after being cut for the second time in a year, this time by the Patriots who had been so good for him. It led him to seek out Marie Diamond, a life coach and Feng Shui master he first encountered early in his career but had lost contact with. Diamond helped him let go of the past and taught him to have compassion not only for others but himself.
Every day now, he recites a simple saying she taught him. “I can do this. God is always with me. I am a winner. Today is my day.”
Being unwanted for six months after the Chargers was awful. But the feeling of having nothing left to lose, he learned, sometimes brings out our highest self.
So it’s likely none of this would have happened without all of that.
“I had to go through the rain,” he says, “to get to the sunshine.”
He says it with a laugh — a deep, hearty laugh that almost makes the room vibrate.
It’s a laugh they wouldn’t recognize in Detroit.
(Top photo: Vincent Mignott / DeFodi Images via Getty Images)
