In two days, rookies and first-year players are set to arrive at team facilities. Ten days later they will be joined by the veterans. And yet there is still no real plan from the NFL. If there is one, they have yet to communicate that plan with the players.
Currently, everything is still on schedule, but with the COVID-19 pandemic not letting up with the number of daily new cases increasing every day, there is a lot of uncertainty. As one player I spoke with said “everything could change in a week.” But that uncertainty shouldn’t keep the league from having a plan in place should everything stay on schedule.
Some NFL players are getting frustrated with the lack of a communicated plan. Not all of them have the standing to speak up about it. One who absolutely does is JJ Watt. He spoke up today and as you might suspect, he expresses a great deal of frustration that is no doubt shared by players across the league.
The key points here are that Watt says the player have no received a single plan in case of emergency, they don’t know about testing, and they have received no word on how the “ramp up” period will work.
I was beginning to wonder if I was the only one who wondered what the ramp-up period was to entail. Is it supposed to mimic offseason workouts? OTA’s? Pre-camp warmup? All of them? Something else entirely?
As for. the preseason, thus far the reports have had the league eliminating Weeks 1 and 4, though all the original preseason games are still listed on the schedule on the Raiders team website. And there have been other reports of discussions about eliminating the preseason altogether.
Again, the preseason uncertainty and lack of official word are somewhat understandable with uncertainty about the entire schedule. The league is clearly waiting to ensure when they put out something official, they won’t have to keep amending it. But the clock is ticking. Players are getting antsy.
