Cardinals will likely hold camp at home
The Cardinals are in the final stages of their virtual offseason program and it appears they will not hold an on-field minicamp. They can and likely will, however, conduct training camp at State Farm Stadium in Glendale as they have for the past seven years.
The NFL hasn’t cleared teams to begin any in-person club workouts because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The league did issue a memo to all 32 teams late Tuesday concerning training camps, however, and clubs are hopeful of staging them in mid-to-late July like always.
The one caveat, according to the memo, is that teams are required to hold their 2020 training camp at their team facilities. And that apparently includes a team’s home stadium.
“In the Cardinals case, that would allow the team to hold training camp at State Farm Stadium,” Mark Dalton, the team’s executive vice president of media relations, told The Republic via email on Wednesday.
“More specific details concerning training camp are not yet available,” Dalton continued, “and like almost everything else, continue to evolve.”
Staging training camp at the team’s Tempe headquarters – Dignity Healthy Arizona Cardinals Training Center – wouldn’t be ideal. As a practical matter, it would be too difficult to pull off. For one, the summer heat is just too intense. There’s enough room on the three outdoor football fields to accommodate 90 players, a coaching staff, and other team personnel. But the indoor practice bubble isn’t nearly big enough to handle that type of crowd and make things functional.
The Cardinals typically have a couple outdoor practices in Glendale outside their air-conditioned, retractableroof home stadium and they usually report to Tempe for the final week of preseason workouts. But to get the most out of an already-shortened offseason that wiped out rookie camp and a couple minicamps, it’s essential for the Cardinals to hold training camp at State Farm Stadium.
It’s too early to know if or when fans will be allowed to visit and watch practices at training camp, as they have been able to do for free. Those details and others will be outlined whenever the Cardinals announce times and dates for training camp, which likely will be released later this month.