Darnold ready for a ‘boring’ NFL season
Sam Darnold’s social calendar will be empty this season.
The Jets quarterback said COVID-19 will keep him at home this season unless he is playing football.
“For me, I’m going to stay in my apartment and really just be traveling from there to here inside the building,” Darnold said. “That’s going to be it for me. It might be boring, but that’s kind of what I have to do at this point.”
Darnold lives close to the Jets’ training center in Florham Park, so he won’t even be in the car very much. The 23-year- old knows how tricky this season can be for the Jets and every other NFL team trying to avoid an outbreak of the coronavirus.
“I think we have to trust the fact that everyone is staying safe,” Darnold said. “We’ll be getting tested every day. We’ve just got to trust each other that no one’s going out and seeing people that they shouldn’t see and people who haven’t been tested.”
Darnold began getting tested last Friday as one of the early reporting players for the Jets. His first day back inside the team’s building was on Tuesday. Most of his teammates won’t be allowed into the building until this weekend and that’s only if they don’t test positive for the virus.
As Jets players have rolled into town, some have texted Darnold about meeting up.
“I’ll respond, ‘Have you gotten your test yet? Because I’m not going to see you if you haven’t gotten your test,’ ” Darnold said.
Like the rest of the country, NFL players will have to adapt to a new normal. The Jets building has been set up to promote social distancing. There is extra locker-room space in trailers outside of the building to allow social distancing in the actual locker room. Meeting rooms will look different, the cafeteria will look different, just about everything will be different.
“I’ve been going around the building and I haven’t been shaking hands,” Darnold said. “I’ve been dapping elbows. You go about your life in a completely different way right now. I guess we’re all just going to have to get used to it.”
There will be no preseason games and actual training camp practices won’t begin until mid-August. Teams will have an acclimation period of strength and conditioning before putting the pads on.
“Nothing is going to be easy for any team this year. It’s going to be tough,” Jets coach Adam Gase said. “It’s going to be about really everybody as an organization — staff, coaches, players, everybody doing the right thing not only in the building but outside of the building. It’s all going to be about which teams can stay the healthiest. That’s going to be our focus this entire training camp.”
The Marlins have shown in Major League Baseball what can happen if an outbreak occurs. Darnold said it will be on the players to make sure they stay safe.
“Coaches can tell us all day not to go out, but at the end of the day it really comes from the players and the leaders in the locker room,” Darnold said. “I think it’s going to be on us to be able to have the patience. If some friends are in the city and I want to go out to the city, I’m just going to have to say no. It’s just going to be the way of the world. There’s a new norm now.”