New England Patriots safety Devin McCourty and his twin brother and cornerback Jason McCoury explained why the 2020 NFL season is a scary prospect for the players amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.
“I think everybody’s nervous, because the norm is that we just go to work,” Devin said on the podcast, as transcribed by ESPN.com’s Mike Reiss. “We put in a lot of work, we bond together, we lift, we’re in close quarters. It feels like that’s all being taken away from us, so I don’t know how to react. I don’t know what’s it’s going to be.
“I love how a lot of players’ attention has been on what’s going on outside of football, and I think we’ll continue to do that. But figuring out football, to me, seems to be the hardest thing right now. We hope — but I don’t know if we’ll figure it out, honestly.”
It’s a pessimistic — but perhaps realistic — view of how hard it will be to get an NFL team together safely for a whole season. There have been athletes and team staffers across the US that are testing positive for the disease. A few Dallas Cowboys and Tampa Bay Buccaneers staffers, for example, have gotten sick with COVID-19, according to reports.
“When you think about the future, if it’s hard for 10 guys just to get together to do little passing drills or anything of that nature, to think about somewhere between 53 and 90 guys in a training camp, it’s going to be insane,” Devin said. “So I don’t know how that’s going to turn out.”
NFLPA medical director, Dr. Thom Mayer, suggested he doesn’t see a way for the league to maintain the bubble approach which the NBA is poised to try in Florida, with the league essentially locking in athletes and their families in an enormous Disney facility. But that’s what Dr. Anthony Fauci, the NIAID Director, suggested would be the best method. Jason McCourty isn’t so sure players will be able to leave their families for a full season, especially on short notice.
“We have training camp kind of in a month and a half, so we haven’t heard until now,” Jason said. “The days start counting down. You might be telling your wife with a week’s notice that you’re gone for six months. To me, that would be very tough. If that is on the table, I think that needs to be discussed sooner than later for guys to be able to make that decision.”
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