The Houston Texans are taking steps to be ready for the “new normal” when everyday life resumes following the COVID-19 outbreak.
According to Aaron Wilson of the Houston Chronicle, the Texans are planning to hire a “facility hygiene coordinator.” Just as the Texans are one of the few teams in the NFL to have a coach and general manager in the same person in Bill O’Brien, so too would the Texans be one of the few, if not the first, team to make such a hire.
The job would be an external hire, according to Wilson, and a job posting would follow soon.
Texans plan to hire a facility hygiene coordinator and are believed to be first team to do so in NFL, per a league source. Would be an external hire with job posting in near future. In unprecedented times, team is being proactive about sanitary conditions
— Aaron Wilson (@AaronWilson_NFL) May 5, 2020
It is the best step the organization can take from a preventative measure until a vaccine for COVID-19 is developed and testing is rapid and available, which is what coach and general manager Bill O’Brien would like to see.
“In my opinion, just my opinion, before we let people back into stadium and things like that, we better have the testing down, we better be on our way to a vaccine,” O’Brien told reporters on April 16. “I don’t think you’re going to be able to move forward until we have a better grasp of the whole thing.”
The hire of a facility hygiene coordinator would be another part of the process of getting “back to football.”
Said O’Brien: “We’ll play football at some point. We will definitely play football. When that is, who knows, but we’ll just keep doing what we have to do to stay up with the competition and when they tell us to get ready to play, we’ll try to get ready to play.”
The NFL releases their schedule on May 7 at 7:00 p.m. on NFL Network. The league seems to believe pro football will at least return in the fall. When it does, it will be a much cleaner game than before.
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