NFL players want concrete COVID-19 safety protocols before they report to camp
The NFL is moving forward as scheduled.
But the NFL Players Association would prefer that some concrete COVID-19 protocols are in place ahead of the commencement of training camp next week.
In a call with media Friday afternoon, NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith and president JC Tretter outlined a series of questions to which they’ve yet to receive satisfying answers from the league.
“Slogans and wishful thinking haven’t led our country through this pandemic, and they will not lead football, on any level, through this pandemic,” Smith said.
Players are expected to report for camp next week, with the Chiefs and Houston Texans leading the way as the two teams slated to open the season Sept. 10 at Arrowhead Stadium. The precise schedules for camp have not yet been made public.
The Chiefs will not head to St. Joseph this summer and will instead host training camp, without fans, at their practice facility at Arrowhead Stadium, falling in line with a league mandate.
While NFL camps will look nothing like their predecessors, players remain unsure exactly what they will entail, as the U.S. continues to set records for the number of new coronavirus cases. States like Arizona and Florida house NFL teams and have become national hotspots for the virus.
“You’re going to have to change this year. And every thought and every idea that leans on, ‘We’ve always done it this way,’ it’s unacceptable,” said Tretter, a center for the Cleveland Browns who took over as the union’s president this year. “It all needs to be revamped to fit into this world of coronavirus.
“Because the expectation that you’re going to be able to fit coronavirus into football, it’s not the right expectation.”
Smith said he has informed players of their contractual obligations under the collective bargaining agreement — which requires reporting to camp. The NFL, he emphasized, dictates when it’s open for business. And NFL officials have provided no indications of a delayed start.
In a statement Friday, the league said, “We will continue to implement health and safety protocols developed jointly with the NFLPA, and based on advice of leading medical experts, including review by the CDC.”
As of Friday, the NFLPA still wondered: What are those protocols?
The union’s leadership had a teleconference Thursday with team physicians in some of the country’s coronavirus hotspots. Those doctors, Smith said, deemed it OK to move forward with training camp. But the league and union have yet to come to an agreement on a myriad of issues surrounding COVID-19 — such as testing, acclimatization periods, preseason games, practice schedules and how to deal with positive tests.
Asked for the potential response if they don’t receive answers they believe preserve player safety, Smith said, “We’ve looked at all our options.” He declined to elaborate.
One of those demands centers around testing. Smith implied the league has pushed back on a union proposal to test players daily.
“We believe daily testing is important, especially given some of these hotspots,” Smith said. “We don’t, right now, plan on changing that position. It doesn’t mean we won’t continue to talk about it. But we were clear in our belief that daily testing is going to be necessary.”
He later added, “I believe daily testing increases our chances of finishing (the season).”
The response to a positive test has not yet been settled in agreement, either. Tretter asked: Shouldn’t players who come into close contact with those who test positive be quarantined? Thus, he outlined a scenario in which a team would not be able to field a team on a Sunday.
What if one player tests positive on a Friday afternoon after spending a week huddling with some teammates, directly blocking some during drills and sharing a locker room with others?
“What does Sunday’s game look like?” Tretter asked. “Those are the questions the league needs to offer their opinion on how this will move forward.”
The players’ association is also fighting for an acclimatization period — which medical experts recommend to prevent injuries. In the lockout season of 2011, after players missed offseason workout programs as they did this offseason, the absence of an acclimatization period prompted a rash of injuries, many of them season-ending.
After forming a committee with those experts, Tretter said the players’ association has recommended 21 days of strength and conditioning to return the body to shape, followed by 14 days of non-padded practices and then 14 days of full practice. That timeline would cut into the NFL’s preseason schedule, even though it’s already been halved.
And therein lines another point of contention. Although the league subtracted two preseason games from each team’s schedule, the NFLPA argues that flying teams across the country — and then having those teams in close proximity to one another on the field — does not increase the likelihood of a completed season.
“Every decision we make this year needs to be made through a medical lens of what’s the safest and healthiest way to move forward,” Tretter said. “So as we look through all these issues, the only way we’re going to be able to make it through a full season is if that’s the criteria in which we make our decisions. ...
“Every decision not having that be top of mind, it’s going to set us up for failure in the long run.”
This story was originally published July 17, 2020 at 4:11 PM.