NFL rooks report to training camps this week, as the Shield plows ahead with its 2020 timeline like a pulling guard leading a sweep. Nothing will stand in the way of its bullheaded stalwart-ness -- which is OK, because the Shield has a carefully detailed plan in place to deal with the Bastard Plague and all its repercussions.
Nah, I'm just kidding. The NFL actually has no coherent plan at all in place.
No details about testing and health and safety protocols. No Infectious Disease Emergency Response plan. No details about what happens if the schedule has to be rearranged to deal with outbreaks.
Even game-day plans are up in the air, with the NFL currently leaving it up to the individual teams and their cities to decide whether or not there will be fans in their respective stadiums.
In response to all this open-endedness, J.J. Watt, Patrick Mahomes and a score of other NFL players have taken to Twitter to plead with the league for answers to the aforementioned questions, and to address their safety concerns. Even Raiders owner Mark Davis, not notably one of the sharpest knives in that particular drawer, is wondering what the hell is going on.
"I don't even know if it's safe to play," says Davis, the lone dissenting vote in the NFL's decision to tarp off the first eight rows of seats in every stadium, its only coordinated game-day decision. "'Uncertainty' is the word."
Indeed it is. Camps haven't even opened, after all, and already some 70 NFL players have tested positive for COVID-19. What happens when everyone's in camp, and when they start breathing on one another in games? How long before teams have so many players in quarantine they'll be unable to field a unit that isn't down to a kicker, a punter and a bunch of XFL refugees?
And what happens to competitive balance if, say, one team with a dozen or more starters in quarantine plays a team with only a couple unavailable? And how do you square things if some teams allow fans and others don't?
The former will have a home-field advantage. The latter will not. How do you rectify that?
According to Davis, one of the options the NFL has is to push back the start until November and reduce the season to 12 games. That seems pretty sensible. It gives everyone two extra months for the pandemic to subside, for one thing. Or if it doesn't, it narrows the window for the virus to gut available rosters and bring the season to a screeching halt.
Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be in the cards for a league that seems determined to forge ahead with the hammer down. Which means there's a good chance we'll see the start of the season, but not the end of it.
In the meantime, the worker bees are getting nervous.
Hard to blame 'em.
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