The NFL has informed each of their 32 franchises that the opening of training camp will continue as planned — with teams able to call upon their players as early as next week. For the Miami Dolphins, the team is able to have their rookies report as early as this upcoming Tuesday. The rest of the team will then be able to report on July 28th.
But, according to a report from Adam Beasley and Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald, the Dolphins will not call their rookies into the team facility until Thursday of next week. Beasley and Jackson cite three separate league sources.
The process of welcoming players to the team facility will include two full days of exclusively coronavirus testing. Rookies can expect to arrive at the facility on Thursday, get tested for COVID-19 and then immediately return home before undergoing the same process again on Friday. Player physicals are expected to be undertaken for all players with two consecutive negative tests on the third day.
The South Florida region is currently one of the nation’s hotspots for the ongoing pandemic, which had called into question the outlook of training camps. But we’ve now reached a tipping point for teams, as the other sports leagues have thus far found that getting things started is the most challenging proposition experienced in a return to action. For the Dolphins, the first step comes on Thursday.
