#NFLPA wants safety answers ahead of training camp

The very nature of the sport tells you that playing football during a pandemic would be playing with a virulent fire that rages in too many hot spots that seem to grow hotter by the day.

The economics are a matter of contention between management and the union because it is always about the money at some point — just ask MLB.

But for the NFL, this is more about safety than it is for any of the other professional sports leagues.

It is our collision sport — the only one that features blocking and tackling and repeated huddling — and with training camps scheduled to open on July 28 for all 32 teams, the hit has hit the fan, and it appears possible that a delay of game may now be necessary.

This is unlike the MLB brouhaha where the safety of the players fell in line quickly after the unsavory economic tug-of-war resulted in a 60-game season.

This is safety first.

The issues

Daily testing: The union wants it. The league has advocated three weekly tests. With hot spots in Florida, Georgia, Texas and Arizona, and 140,000 deaths across America and counting, daily testing should be a no-brainer.

Preseason games: The union doesn’t want any and prefers a 21-day ramp-up period. The NFL will want one as a COVID-19 trial run.

Quarantine procedures: There is currently no number of positive tests that would force an automatic team quarantine.

“As a union,” National Football League Players Association president JC Tretter said recently, “our most important job is keep our players safe and alive.”

He also said: “More so than any other sport, the game of football is the perfect storm for virus transmission,” a chilling reality enforced on a union conference call Friday by ageless Rams tackle Andrew Whitworth, who revealed that he and his wife and children and father-in-law contracted the highly contagious virus.

The NFL continues to proceed with business as usual.

“NFL clubs met today via videoconference and received an update on preparations for the 2020 season,” NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said. “We will continue to implement the health and safety protocols developed jointly with the NFLPA, and based on the advice of leading medical experts, including review by the CDC. We will address additional issues in a cooperative way. All decisions will be made in an effort to put us in position to play a full regular season and postseason culminating with the Super Bowl which is the shared goal of the clubs and players.”

The union, concerned with the availability of hospital and intensive care unit beds in cities such as Houston, is not totally convinced.

“We have players nervous about flying from a relative safe location to a hot spot with their families, their kids, their wives,” Tretter said. “That’s a major concern, with stuff going on in Houston as well as Miami. How safe is that?

“Our job is to hold the NFL accountable. Those are the questions we want answered: How safe is it to start back up a football season at this moment where teams are located going through giant spikes of this virus? The health and safety aspect has to be taken care of with the players first and foremost.”

Any delay of game would further jeopardize any dreams of a 16-game season. Too many important heads have been buried in the sand, seemingly so no one can see them without masks on, with dire warnings of a second wave of infection in the fall.

“Slogans and wishful thinking has not led our nation through this pandemic and it will not lead football through this pandemic,” NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith said.

“Wearing a mask will probably be the most significant component of whether sports return in this country. That’s not a political statement; that’s a common sense and scientific statement.”

The league, much to the union’s objections, has proposed cutting each team’s player costs by $40 million “in salary cap and/or benefits.” In which case a projected $215 million salary cap would drop by $50 million-$70 million. Players have only until Aug. 1 to opt-out, another bone of contention between the sides.

The NFL no longer has the luxury of time on its side. The pandemic forced the league to matriculate the ball down the field, slowly but not very surely. And so here we are, suddenly looking more like fourth-and-long for the season to start on time than first-and-goal.