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The NFL and NFL Players Association agreed on an Aug. 6 deadline for players to choose to opt out of the 2020 season due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Teams must receive written notice from anyone opting out by 3 p.m. CT on Thursday.
So far, just two members of the New Orleans Saints have chosen to step away from the game for a year: tight ends Cole Wick and Jason Vander Laan. And it doesn’t sound like Saints coach Sean Payton is expecting more to join them, though it’s a fluid situation. He’s still looking for more ways to improve on the NFL guidelines for operating during a public health crisis, but Payton has confidence in the changes his team has made already.
The Saints have not received any positive tests for infections since players arrived for training camp last week, with just a few members of their support staff testing positive over the summer. That’s a streak of good health Payton hopes to keep going now that the Saints have reserved a French Quarter hotel for their private use, housing nearly 170 players, coaches, and staffers.
“It was really just looking at the percentages, all right?” Payton said during a recent media conference call. “Basically, every day those 170 go home and then come back the next day. So you have 170 stories each day. And so you might be like we were to start, pretty much clean by our players, and yet every day’s a new day. And then you take that and you times it by seven, then you take that and times it by four weeks in a month, and then do the season.”
Payton was quick to acknowledge that this isn’t a perfect strategy; attendance at the hotel is not mandatory, and infections are inevitable in a contact sport like tackle football. But if their efforts have raised their chances of avoiding an outbreak, it will have been worth it.
“If we can take that 170 number down to 25 (players going home every day), then we’ve certainly helped ourselves,” Payton added.
There’s a big element of trust involved here, by Payton asking his players to continue to watch out for themselves. He’s taken care to stress the gravity of the situation to them, relating that it’s important to take things as seriously now as they would in the playoffs.
“And I use this example with the players. I said, what do you think’s going to happen to the teams that make the postseason this year?” Payton continued. “I think there’ll be less positive tests during the postseason around the league because teams will at some point, say, ‘You know what? Now, this is too important at this time of the year.’ And so it would be hard pressed for me to see anyone test them positive before the championship weekend, to the Super Bowl weekend.”
That’s a good point — the team that does the best job of keeping itself healthy figures to keep its roster intact, fielding their best players and making the strongest playoffs push. That’s true in normal years, but that message takes on greater importance amid a public health crisis. The measures the Saints have taken so far have worked out well for them, and hopefully, they can keep it up.
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