The 49ers will hold the entirety of their training camp in Santa Clara barring a dramatic turn for the worse in the spread of COVID-19 in California. The NFL on Tuesday issued guidelines to teams barring them from holding their preseason workouts outside the team facility, and holding joint practices during the preseason with other clubs.
The NFL is wary of teams having to maintain the strict health and safety rules required post-COVID-19 at two separate facilities according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter.
San Francisco holds their training camp at the team facility, so that stipulation didn’t have much effect on them. The only way they might have gone outside the South Bay for camp was if Santa Clara County hadn’t reopened and the rest of the league was ready to begin ramping up for the 2020 campaign.
California Governor Gavin Newsom in a May 18 briefing indicated pro sports could return in early June if the state’s COVID-19 cases continued to dwindle. That would seem to mean the 49ers would be allowed to catch up with NFL guidelines and begin its slow re-opening of the team facility.
The new preseason guideline that could have an effect on the 49ers’ preseason plans is the elimination of joint practices. San Francisco has held combined practice sessions with preseason opponents over the last several years – most recently with the Broncos in Denver in 2019.
In those joint sessions, one team visits a preseason opponent for a couple days of practices before they suit up for their exhibition contest against each other. It makes sense the league would eliminate those dual sessions in order to cut down on the person-to-person interactions between clubs while trying to eliminate the spread of COVID-19.
There’s no official date for the start of training camp yet, but those tend to take place in late July. The 49ers are scheduled to open their preseason schedule August 15 against the Broncos in Denver.