The NFL nixed the entire preseason, which means there will be no exhibition slate for the Houston Texans to refine themselves and ease into the 2020 season.
The elimination was part of an offer the league made with the NFLPA to come to agreement on playing pro football in the middle of a pandemic.
Though the Texans won’t take on the Minnesota Vikings, Seattle Seahawks, New Orleans Saints, or Dallas Cowboys, Houston is still working on ways to get ready for the pace of live action football.
“I think we’re going to have to plan at least two or three scrimmages,” coach and general manager Bill O’Brien told reporters on July 31. “I think that’s also going to be different for coaches, where coaches aren’t going to have those preseason games to iron out the communication from the sideline to the press box and things like that and substitutions during the game. We’ve planned on a couple of scrimmages that we’re going to have.
Maybe even more than that to work on everything and to give players an opportunity to get on film, bring officials in here to give players an opportunity to get on film to do some things they would’ve been able to do or show in preseason games. I think that’s a big thing that is missing but we’re all dealing with it. I think that’s part of our planning, is how do we substitute preseason games.”
Another aspect of a normal training camp that O’Brien enjoyed were the joint scrimmages. The team has had as many as two in a training camp, as they did in 2019 when they visited Green Bay to scrimmage the Packers and then hosted the Detroit Lions for a joint camp.
“Those are things we love to do but we we’re not going to be able to do those either, scrimmage the Saints, the Falcons, the Broncos and all the teams we’ve scrimmaged,” O’Brien said. “Again, we’re going to have to break it up during training camp and like I said, have some scrimmages to try to get these guys ready for the season.”
