If and when NFL training camps open next week as currently scheduled, teams’ rosters will include a maximum of 80 players, as opposed to the usual 90, in an effort to help enforce social distancing measures in team facilities. This is according to sources who were on an NFLPA players call Tuesday night discussing details of the league’s latest proposal on coronavirus protocols.
The league and the players’ union are inching closer to an agreement on rules that will govern training camp and the season under the difficult current circumstances. Weeks of negotiations seem to be coming to a head, as sources who were on the players’ call Tuesday night said there’s been agreement on several issues but work remains to be done on others.
The NFL and the NFLPA announced Monday that they’d agreed on COVID-19 testing protocols. Players and team personnel will be tested every day for the first two weeks of training camp, then every other day as long as their team’s positive test rate is and remains under five percent. Additionally, sources said, the league and the union have agreed to eliminate all preseason games this year and to the reduced training camp roster size.
In a typical year, many teams have to add additional lockers to their usual locker rooms to accommodate 90-man camp rosters. But this year, with rules mandating six feet of space between lockers, teams have had to get creative in terms of finding new space to put additional locker rooms. Some teams are using rooms that won’t be in use, such as media work rooms, as auxiliary locker rooms, and some are importing trailers and other means of adding space. The hope is that reducing rosters to 80 will help limit the extent to which teams have to create that extra space.
But while agreements have been reached on several issues, others remain unresolved. One of those is the proposed extended acclimation period for players in training camp. Players asked, based on the advice of jointly appointed medical experts, for a camp plan that would limit the first 21 days to strength and conditioning work only, followed by 10 days of non-padded practices and then a 14-day contact acclimation period in which padded practices would be permitted. The league’s latest offer, sources say, comes much closer to that than any of its previous offers had, though as of Tuesday night the players still had not agreed to it and expected to continue discussion.
The other major issue concerning players right now is the procedure under which they can opt out of the 2020 season if they are in a high-risk category of they’re simply not comfortable playing amid the pandemic. One source said the league has offered to give stipends ($250,000 for active roster and $100,000 for practice squad) to players who opt out because they’re in high-risk categories but nothing for players who opt out voluntarily. The source said the league’s proposal would be that players who opt out would have their contracts “toll” (meaning just slide back a year and pick up next year where they are now) but that the teams would in the meantime retain whatever rights they had to release or trade those players under their current contracts. The players are seeking better protections due to the unprecedented circumstances.
Hanging over all of this is the macro financial issue of the league’s long-term finances. With widespread expectation that the league will lose a significant amount of revenue this year due to empty stadiums and possibly canceled games, the league and the union have had preliminary talks about the effect that will have on the salary cap in future years. Agreement on that issue appears to be a ways off, as the sides are focused on getting to an agreement on the more immediate issues that would stand in the way of training camp and the regular season.
Training camp for most teams is scheduled to begin next Tuesday, July 28. The Texans and the Chiefs, who are scheduled to play this year’s Thursday night opener, are scheduled to report this Saturday, July 25. It may not be necessary to have final agreements by then, since the testing protocols stipulate that any player who reports must test negative for COVID-19 twice, with 72 hours between tests, before being allowed in the facility. So Chiefs and Texans players reporting Saturday, for example, would be tested, then go home and quarantine for two days, go to the facility and get tested again Tuesday, and if both tests came back negative, they could enter the team facility next Wednesday, July 29.
Source : ESPN
