GAME ON! DESPITE VIRUS FEARS,
After a 90-minute video conference with NFLPA officials Friday, and also including input from the NFL after it conducted a chat with owners from its 32 teams, here’s the biggest takeaway from those two sessions:
Game on! The league is moving forward with its schedule for the start of training camps, as well as the season.
While cases of coronavirus have spiked in a few cities of note, it’s full steam ahead for the NFL.
Of course, that doesn’t mean DeMaurice Smith, the Executive Director of the NFL Players Association, and JC Tretter, the Cleveland Browns center who currently serves as the president of the NFLPA, didn’t voice serious reservations on behalf of their constituency.
They were very much on point with their message, offering plenty of concerns with regard to the health and safety of players amid this pandemic, and the repercussions for those who might get infected with COVID-19. That was first and foremost on their minds.
To that end, let’s hit on a number of points made by Smith and Tretter, and decipher the meaning.
One: Smith said several times the NFLPA didn’t have any authority over start dates, that it’s all on the league, as both the Chiefs and Texans have rookies reporting as early as Monday, with other teams following suit the rest of the week.
“The union doesn’t decide opening and closing (dates),” Smith said. “The appropriate way of looking at this is, what are the factors that we believe the league should be utilizing in order to make decisions about the health and safety of the players.”
Translation: Don’t blame us if this turns out to be a disaster. Don’t say we didn’t try to push things back or express legitimate concerns so the league would make the “right decision” with respect to getting football back, as opposed to a “fast decision.”
We’re not in charge of the plan. That’s the NFL.
Two: Time and again, Tretter drove home the fears players have expressed about their safety, and wanting answers from the league before jumping on a plane.
“We have players who are nervous about flying from a relative safe location directly into a hotspot with their families, with their kids, with their wives. That’s a major concern with stuff going on in Houston, in Miami,” said Tretter. “How safe is it? Our job is to hold the NFL accountable and answer those questions… how safe is it to start up a football season with locations in this country going through giant spikes with this virus? That has to be something that has to be looked at.”
Translation: The concerns are legitimate. Closer to home, plenty of Patriots players have chimed in with these issues, namely the McCourty brothers, Jonathan Jones, Dont’a Hightower, and Patrick Chung.
They can’t fathom traveling to virus hot spots, and also playing a contact sport amid a pandemic, especially with players locked in the trenches, face mask-to-face mask.
Smith, however, acknowledged that even with those concerns, the NFLPA hasn’t had any player formally tell them they’d like to opt out of this season. Maybe the closer it gets, we’ll see some players stay home.
As for playing preseason games, the NFLPA expressed the desire to dump all of those games. They preferred an “acclimation period,” with practices, to protect players from getting hurt in games due to the shortened on-field time.
At this stage, it looks like there will be one pre-season game for teams to assess personnel, while also getting used to the new protocols.
Three: The union called an “emergency meeting” Thursday night with team doctors to discuss coronavirus concerns. Let’s just say they didn’t get all the answers they might have hoped for.
“The doctors (Thursday night) on the call said, with a couple of reservations, that it was safe to open training camp. And they provided their medical reasons,” said Smith. “Some of the things we agreed with, some of the things we may not have, but overall, they gave their medical opinion it was safe to open training camp.”
Translation: Should anyone be surprised team doctors