Former Kansas City Chiefs running back Kareem Hunt has started working with the NFL on a treatment and counseling program, a league source told 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.
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 in February. The NFL placed Hunt on the commissioner's exempt list later that day, shortly before the Chiefs released him.
"The most important thing is that he gets some counseling that can help him with his issues," Chiefs chairman Clark Hunt said Sunday, his first public comments since the video surfaced. "Certainly we wish the best for Kareem in the future. I hope at some point he's able to come back to the National Football League. I'm not sure when that will be. Our message to him was, 'Even though we're having to part ways with you today, we're still supportive of you. If you need us to get you some help off the field, we're going to do that.'"
Clark Hunt said the team "had some issues with Kareem not being truthful about what happened that night" and "felt for everybody's best interest we needed to head into a different direction."
Kareem Hunt addressed the incident in an interview with ESPN on Dec. 2, 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 resort altercation from June about which the league questioned him and a violent incident at a nightclub in January about which the NFL didn't know until recently. TMZ reported the January incident on Monday.
Clark Hunt said the Chiefs were familiar with all three incidents.
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-the-field behavior and comes to a decision on a suspension.
ESPN's Dan Graziano and Adam Teicher contributed to this report.