American sports remain on pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and with the NFL’s offseason and draft undergoing significant changes, questions about the viability of the league’s regular season beginning on time are understandable. The NFL addressed this issue Tuesday.
The NFL’s current plan remains to begin its regular season on time and with fans present in stadiums, NFL general counsel Jeff Pash said (via Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk, on Twitter). Owners did not discuss the prospect of a shortened season on their conference calls Monday or Tuesday, Pash added (via the Washington Post’s Mark Maske, on Twitter). The league is “pretty confident” it will be able to play a full 16-game season this year, Pash notes (via Maske, on Twitter).
Regular contact with the CDC and other public health agencies have led NFL brass to use a model that indicates it remains possible for the regular season to begin at its usual time — the Thursday after Labor Day — but the league cautions public health conditions changing could cause its plans to change, Dan Graziano of ESPN.com tweets.
Given the way the coronavirus has changed the country, it certainly cannot be assumed the NFL schedule will take place as usual. The MLB season continues to be pushed back, and a shortened NBA playoffs in quarantined neutral sites without fans has surfaced. The NFL’s training camps — which begin in late July — figure to be a logical goal. But the prospect of an altered camp schedule (without fans) and a shortened preseason may be on the table already.
“If I had to speculate now, and I use the word speculate because that’s really all it is, I would say yes,” Falcons owner Arthur Blank said regarding the season starting on time (via NBC Sports’ Peter King). “Only because it’s so far away from where we are today. I could easily see camps being shorter, players being tested on a daily basis, things of that nature. No fan attendance. Things like that.
“We may have fewer preseason games, which probably wouldn’t be the end of the world. But I think by September, my hope is by the time the regular season starts, that we’ll be able to bring people together in some form or fashion in a safe manner and play.”
The NFL has gone through two modern-era shortened seasons. Players’ strikes in 1982 and ’87 condensed the season to nine and 15 games, respectively. In 2001, the league delayed Week 2 after the September 11 terrorist attacks but played a full 16-game season.
I am ready to head to Las Vegas to start the NATION.
So what exactly is going to motivate teams to play for home field advantage in the playoffs if no fans are going to be in attendance?
It’s highly unlikely that it will come to that. The latest REALISTIC models have us emerging from the worst of the crisis sometime during May.
There’s really no reason to think the NFL season will be affected, at least not the first few months. It COULD be affected, but it’s not likely at all.
I don’t have any confidence in so called “realistic” models which are constructed with algorithms by so called “experts” who were caught asleep at the switch like everyone else. According to the CEO of Sanofi (world leader in vaccine development) an antivirus probably won’t be available to the public for a year or more.
link to cnbc.com
Not to be a Debbie Downer but personally I don’t see any sports coming back this year. If it’s as bad in some of these big cities as they say it is, saying things are going to “peak” in May doesn’t mean anything. It’s going to be a long time before they let people gather socially.
I agree. It would be absolute political suicide to assure the public that the crisis is over and then find out it isn’t.