Are Chiefs players worried about COVID-19? What they say about playing during pandemic
As Chiefs veterans reported this week for an atypical training camp — absent two teammates — their initial meetings had little to do with football. They talked COVID-19. They talked safety and preventative measures. They talked new protocols.
And that alone might have been enough to leave a lasting impression. But then came the tour of a revamped Arrowhead Stadium — complete with clear plastic partitions between each locker.
It sunk in.
The 2020 season will be nothing like its predecessors. From start to finish.
“You actually literally see all these glass dividers,” Chiefs right tackle Mitchell Schwartz said. “That’s the stark reminder that’s going to be there every day for how important this is.”
The Plexiglas is one of several new attributes inside Arrowhead Stadium, the site of this year’s training camp practices. In more normal times, the team would make its usual trek to Missouri Western State University’s campus in St. Joseph. As part of the team’s Infectious Disease Emergency Response plan outlined by vice president of sports medicine and performance Rick Burkholder, players are separated into various locker rooms throughout the belly of Arrowhead.
The team will hold meetings in the club-level suites, with chairs lined six feet apart. As safety Tyrann Mathieu observed, “You can get lost looking for people sometimes in the room.”
It’s quite different. Quite an adjustment.
Yet quite comfortable. That’s according to four veteran players who spoke to the media Thursday after touring the space this week.
“I’m not gonna lie — I feel pretty good about the situation we have here in Kansas City,” tight end Travis Kelce said.
“We’re kind of in our own bubble,” Mathieu added. “I feel like Rick, the Chiefs, (president) Mark (Donovan), (owner) Clark (Hunt), have taken the time and put some money into this so they’re providing us with the things we need to kind of avoid each other when we can.
“Then a lot of this falls on us to being responsible once we leave (and go) outside the facility. I think that’s going to be a big thing, especially with younger guys. So I’m more than sure I’ll be preaching that all season.”
Mathieu, quarterback Patrick Mahomes and linebacker Anthony Hitchens said observing the details inside Arrowhead helped put their minds at ease, even if none of them considered opting out of the 2020 season, as teammates Damien Williams and Laurent Duvernay-Tardif have chosen to do. Williams’ mother was recently diagnosed with cancer, he told Sirius XM radio, and Duvernay-Tardif, a medical doctor, is staying in Canada to continue working in a long-term care facility.
As the NFL and NFLPA jointly announced training camps would proceed, Hitchens posted concerns for his family’s health on Twitter. He “just wanted it to be safe,” he explained.
He’s confident the new protocols at the stadium will help. But it all depends on teammates’ actions once they leave, too.
“Be smart. It’s not about you. It’s about the team,” Hitchens said. “A lot of us have families and wives and kids. If you go out and do something that you’re not supposed to do, you can affect other people’s families.
He added, “We have a lot of good people. I’ve got all the confidence in the world that everybody will go home and be smart.”
The consequences of the alternative can be grave. As the coronavirus runs through the Miami Marlins’ locker room, it’s thrown a wrench into all of Major League Baseball. And that’s on a team of 25 players plus staff.
When the Chiefs step onto the football field, they’ll have upwards of 80 players.
Which returns us to message behind their opening meeting this week: Particularly with this virus, one wrong step can override the best plan.
“One guy testing positive could have this huge spill-off, where a certain amount of people have to (quarantine) for five days,” Schwartz said. “There’s all these steps in the process where you realize, hey, one single test could really have an effect for multiple weeks on our football team, especially during the season.
“I think that was the biggest thing people realized.”