NFL teams are scheduled to convene for training camp next week. Several famous NFL players took to Twitter on Sunday to suggest that the NFL mightn’t be ready for such convocations. From Drew Brees, quarterback: “We need Football! We need sports! We need hope! The NFL’s unwillingness to follow the recommendations of their own medical experts will prevent that.”
From Deshaun Watson, quarterback: “It is disheartening to hear the NFL is unwilling to follow the recommendations of their own medical experts regarding player health & safety.”
(I believe this is what’s known as a Talking Point. We move on.)
From Todd Gurley, Falcon: “You want to watch football this year? Us players need to remain healthy in order to make that happen.”
From Russell Wilson, quarterback: “I am concerned. My wife is pregnant. NFL Training camp is about to start. And there’s still No Clear Plan on Player Health & Family Safety.”
Late Monday afternoon, the NFL and its players association agreed to daily testing for COVID-19, at least over the first two weeks of training camp. Until Monday, nobody was sure what the NFL’s plan for testing was, or if it even had one. Hence the barrage of Sunday tweets.
Unlike baseball, the NFL and its players weren’t squabbling over money. Unlike college sports, the NFL didn’t have to worry about what university presidents decide about the reopening of campuses. Unlike the NBA and NHL and MLS, the NFL wasn’t forced to stop and restart a season. Of all our team sports, the NFL figured to have it the easiest, seeing as how six months separated March 12, the Day Sports Shut Down, from Sept. 10, the date of its opening game. It had time, or so you’d think to get this right.
At issue now, and surely forever, is this: Is it possible to get anything right when your sport involves people running into other people amid a pandemic wherein the virus is spread by human interaction?
On Friday, players association chief DeMaurice Smith and NFLPA president J.C. Tretter held a Zoom call with pro football writers. Here was Tretter: “Obviously I’m a center. So I’m living it. … I have a dangerous job, not just what normal football is like. What with what’s going on in the world, my job has gotten especially dangerous. This is going to be a battle of risk mitigation, finding guys opportunities to make safe decisions and try(ing) to stay as safe as possible. But you can pull up almost any picture from a December winter game and can see how much breath is being blown back and forth a yard away from each other.”
Credit: D. Orlando Ledbetter
The NBA has its Disney bubble. (Which, from the many videos posted on social media, appears to be the goofiest summer camp in the history of the world.) The NHL has its two Canadian hub cities. MLB has a detailed plan for testing and quarantine and suchlike. The NFL’s players aren’t sure what their league has, especially at a time when four states – Arizona, California, Florida and Texas – are seeing record highs in cases. Those four states are home to nine of the NFL’s 32 franchises.
Tretter again: “Football isn’t in a bubble. What goes on in our communities has a direct impact on how football works this year or if it can work this year. It will be a constant monitoring of what’s going on in our local communities. Our position was we have players, who have spoken with our membership, who are nervous about flying from a relative safe location directly into a hot spot with their families, with their kids, with their wives. And that’s a major concern with stuff that’s going on in Houston as well (as) Miami. How safe is that? ... Our job is to hold the NFL accountable and have them answer those questions.”
In June, Ravens coach John Harbaugh read through the NFL’s list of training-camp protocols and deemed them “humanly impossible.” It’s possible, sort of, to keep a social distance on an MLB diamond. It’s not possible to do that in any known football setting. Said Harbaugh: “I’m pretty sure the huddle’s not going to be six feet apart.”
What’s surprising – maybe not so surprising, given that the NFL has never faced a pandemic – is that this is the sport often accused of micromanaging; rarely is the NFL faulted for taking a laissez-faire approach. But, as Andrew Beaton of the Wall Street Journal reported last week: “There isn’t yet a testing strategy in place, with the player representatives wanting tests as frequently as every day. … There’s even disagreement about whether or not there should be a preseason, which the players see as a major health and safety concern.”
The NFL has sliced the number of exhibition games from four to two. Its players want none. That issue was left unresolved Monday. From Tretter’s open letter posted on the NFLPA site last week: “When we asked for a medical reason to play games that don’t count in the standings during an ongoing pandemic, the NFL failed to provide one. The league did provide a football reason, though – to evaluate rosters.”
Day 1 of camp will be the first time NFL players and coaches have been together in person in more than six months. There were no minicamps, no OTAs. The draft became a virtual thing. The NFLPA announced last week that 72 players have tested positive for COVID-19 – an average of 2.3 per team. That’s without them sharing a locker room. What happens when they do? (Remember, the usual NFL roster includes 53 men plus practice squadders; that’s more than double the customary MLB roster.)
The NFL had six months to figure this out, but there might be no figuring the greatest unknown any of our sports has ever confronted. What’s bizarre is that the league that prides itself on leaving little to chance had left so much now. Per reports, it’s leaving the biggest variable – whether to have fans in the stands – up to teams and their respective local/state governments. Even oft-erring baseball said, “Blanket policy – no fans.”
On Sunday night, Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis – who has a new stadium in a new city – told ESPN he’s leaning toward going fan-less. He also said: “I’m not even sure it’s safe to play.”
That’s an owner wondering that. Players are likewise wondering. There might be no good answer. Such is our world.
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