‘Home market bubbles’ are NFL’S path forward
League hopes restrictions on teams, staff key to an uninterrupted football season
The NFL has constructed what it calls a “virtual football bubble” around each team’s training facility this summer, hoping that stringent health protocols and regular testing of players, coaches and staff members for the novel coronavirus will enable the league to conduct training camps and, ultimately, the 2020 season amid the pandemic.
The issue, of course, is that players and others leave that virtual bubble to go home each day. The potential exposure to the virus faced by NFL personnel outside the team environment has some health experts and other observers worried that the pro-football season could be marred by the same sorts of outbreaks that have plagued Major League Baseball this summer.
So some NFL teams, including the New Orleans Saints, are taking it a step further by providing players, coaches and staffers with the option of staying in a hotel while away from the facility, reducing the risks of infection through interaction with the outside world. That’s not a mandatory element of the NFL’S protocols, but it is a voluntary step that could enhance the league’s chances of staging an uninterrupted season.
“I think our clubs have had a lot of very creative ideas and we’ve seen a lot of different innovations from how they practise to how they conduct meetings to the overall conduct of their day,” Allen Sills, the NFL’S chief medical officer, said in a conference call with reporters last week. “And I think we’ll continue to see that, and I think those are all positive developments. That tells me that our players, our coaches, our staff, all the organizations, they’re thinking creatively about how they can mitigate risk for everyone that’s involved. And so we certainly encourage that thinking.”
The Saints are using four floors of the Loews New Orleans Hotel. The team estimates that about 150 of 180 players, coaches and staffers are staying there during training camp. No other guests are staying at the hotel, a team spokesman said.
The spokesman said he was not aware of any other NFL teams inquiring about the details of the setup or how it’s working. But Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Bruce Arians told reporters last week that his team has some players “sequestered” in a hotel.
“We can’t force the guys to go,” Arians said, “so it’s up to them. … We’ll obviously stay there the night before home games, like we always have. We talked about having a commitment to each other. It only takes one to sink the ship.”
He added that “it’s going to take a hell of a commitment from everybody.”
The NFL Players Association supports the arrangements, according to a person familiar with the union’s views.
Zachary Binney, an epidemiologist at Oxford College of Emory University, said such “home market bubbles,” with team personnel isolated from their communities in hotels, might be the NFL’S best chance to avoid Mlb-like outbreaks within teams. The NFL, like baseball, is attempting to have a season with teams based in their home cities and playing in their home stadiums.
“They’re trying to do essentially what MLB has done,” Binney said. “And unless you believe that your people are going to be that much more responsible or your protocols are that much better, I’m afraid you’re going to see the same scenario.”
The NFL opted against a single-site bubble setup. It doesn’t have teams at a small number of hub cities, as the NHL is doing in two Canadian venues. Such measures were not considered feasible by the NFL given the length of the season, the number of players and team personnel involved, and the amount of space required.
Sills has said the NFL, in its deliberations with the NFLPA, must be flexible and is not ruling out any scenarios. But he also said last week that, no matter the setup, the level of compliance by participants with safety measures will determine the league’s success.
“A bubble alone doesn’t keep us safe if everyone is not complying with all the other elements of risk mitigation,” Sills said.