Fauci warns NFL season ‘may not happen’
Top expert says ‘bubble’ environment for players key to any possible return
WASHINGTON As the NFL makes preparations for its teams to open training camps next month and continues to express optimism about its ability to start and complete its 2020 season, the most prominent infectious-disease expert in the U.S. sounded a warning Thursday.
Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN that football players would need to be placed in a “bubble” environment, isolated from others, for a season to be successfully staged this fall and winter amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.
“Unless players are essentially in a bubble — insulated from the community and they are tested nearly every day — it would be very hard to see how football is able to be played this fall,” Fauci told the network.
“If there is a second wave, which is certainly a possibility and which would be complicated by the predictable flu season, football may not happen this year.”
The NFL did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Fauci’s remarks.
The league has released a full schedule for the regular season, set to begin Sept. 10, and NFL leaders repeatedly have expressed hopes that they can start the season on time and play to its completion. Teams are scheduled to open their training camps in late July and the NFL continues to deliberate with the NFL Players Association over the protocols by which players are to be tested and, if necessary, treated for the virus.
“I personally remain very optimistic that we’re going to be able to have a 2020 season and have it along the schedule that we’ve planned,” Allen Sills, the NFL’S chief medical officer, said in an interview earlier this month. “That’s what we’re planning toward. But we recognize that we have to continue to evaluate the state of the pandemic and what’s happening across the country and what the current public health guidelines are.”
The NFL plans to have teams play games in their home stadiums, if that’s permitted under local health guidelines. That’s in contrast to the NBA, which has formulated plans to resume its season with players, coaches and other staff members gathered at a single site in a bubble environment at Disney’s sports complex in Orlando, Fla.
The NFL’S plans are more like those of Major League Baseball, which would have teams playing games in their home stadiums —
If there is a second wave, which is certainly a possibility, … football may not happen this year.
provided MLB is able to complete an agreement with its players’ union on economic terms to begin its stalled season.
Ezekiel Elliott, the standout running back for the Dallas Cowboys, was among several players for the Cowboys and Houston Texans who reportedly tested positive for the virus recently.
Others in the NFL, including New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton and Denver Broncos star pass rusher Von Miller, previously confirmed that they had tested positive.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said in an interview Monday with ESPN that the positive tests of the Cowboys and Texans players would not change the league’s plans as it moves toward the opening of training camps.
“It doesn’t,” Goodell said Monday, “because all of our medical experts indicated that as testing becomes more prevalent, we’re going to have positive tests.”
The NFLPA told agents in a conference call this week that the current concept is for players and other staff members to be tested about three times a week for the virus.
The league has consulted with health experts and has distributed an extensive set of protocols to teams for the players’ eventual return to team facilities.
Those measures include the mandatory use of masks, physical distancing in locker-rooms and advisories for meetings to be held remotely or outdoors.
The protocols do not yet include the frequency of testing or the steps to be taken if a player tests positive. The league and NFLPA continue to discuss those issues, and one prominent head coach recently raised skepticism that the protocols could be followed.
“I’ve seen all the memos on that and, to be quite honest with you, it’s impossible what they’re asking us to do, humanly impossible,” Baltimore Ravens coach John Harbaugh said in a radio interview last week.
Teams’ facilities have been reopened to staffers and coaches under strict protocols.
Only players undergoing medical treatment and rehabilitating from injuries are permitted back in team facilities at this point.
Most teams are scheduled to report to their training camps July 28.
Consideration is being given to an earlier opening to camps, to give players more time to ease into full-speed on-field activities, and to shortening the pre-season from four to two games per team.
The NFL has contemplated contingencies for the regular season that include games in empty or partially filled stadiums, games being relocated or rescheduled, and the season being delayed or shortened, according to people familiar with the league’s planning.
Sills said earlier this month that the NFL is “certainly looking for solutions” by which fans could safely attend games this fall and winter.