'Rare' injury leaves Ravens without Kyle Van Noy for the foreseeable future

Thursday night, the Baltimore Ravens left their 2024 season opener with more than just one loss.

Not only did the Ravens lose in heartbreaking fashion to the reigning champion Kansas City Chiefs, but one of their top pass rushers left with an injury in the third quarter.

The specific injury Van Noy suffered is not one you see very often in the NFL, though. Van Noy left the game with an orbital bone fracture. The orbital bone surrounds the eye socket and typically takes quite a bit of force in order to break.

Many common occurrences of this injury will happen in car accidents, but in football? That's relatively unseen, especially considering players are obviously wearing helmets accompanied by face masks making it pretty difficult for anything other than a few fingers to reach a player's face, if anything at all.

In the meantime, the Ravens now await further testing in order to find out how long they'll be without their veteran pass rusher.

How much time will Kyle Van Noy miss with a fractured orbital bone?

Healing and recovery from an injury like this varies greatly, with some medical professionals giving an average of 25 days (anywhere from five to 56 days). Other medical outlets give more murky explanations stating that recovery time "will vary based on severity."

Assuming Van Noy's fracture isn't of high severity, it would be safe to guess the Ravens will be without him for a couple of games, minimum.

Without Van Noy, the Ravens will be leaning more heavily on players like 2023 fourth-round pick Tavius Robinson and 2022 second-round pick David Ojabo. The latter of the two was able to sack Patrick Mahomes once on Thursday night, so the Ravens are hopeful to see more of that going forward.

Last year, Van Noy was able to put up a career-best 9.0 sacks at age 32, proving he's far from done at the NFL level. Baltimore may even have to go out and look for help, elsewhere, if they want to keep their depth at the position.

Fortunately, the Ravens now have 10 days before their matchup with the Las Vegas Raiders in Week 2. That is also a very winnable game, even without one of your top pass rushers like Van Noy.

From there on, though, the Ravens will face Dak Prescott, Josh Allen and Joe Burrow in consecutive weeks. Hopefully, Van Noy's recovery is of the speedy fashion.