NFL drives on through coronavirus pandemic, intends to start full 2020 season on time
Mini-gatherings to conduct the draft, maybe in the GM’s living room.
No organized team work on any field all offseason. Players straight onto the field for training camp.
The season starting on time in early September. The expanded playoffs on schedule, in January.
All are becoming increasingly likely in the NFL, if the league has its determined way through our national crisis.
As the coronavirus pandemic widens and worsens and the league’s headquarters city of New York endures a dreadful spike in deaths, the NFL remains intent on staying on schedule.
The league held a conference call meeting with its 32 teams on Tuesday. The NFL said it is going forward with its plan to start the 16-game regular season on time in early September, on its annual kickoff the first weekend after Labor Day. International games, multiple ones again in London and one in Mexico City in 2020, are still on.
The league intends to release its full schedule of games by May 9. It’s normally out in mid-April.
Jeff Pash, the league’s vice president for general counsel, told NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero: “Our planning, our expectation, is fully directed at playing a full season starting on schedule and having a full regular season and a full set of playoffs. ...
“Am I certain? I’m not certain that I’ll be here tomorrow. But I’m planning on it.”
Pash went on to state the NFL’s plan remains for games to be played in teams’ home stadiums full of fans, as usual.
The Chinese Basketball Association, in the country of origin for the COVID-19 virus, is attempting to return to play in April. Its plan is for the league’s 20 teams to play games in two cities in front of empty arenas.
Many see that plan, currently put on hold by China’s government, as a test case for U.S. and global sports leagues returning to play after suspending games in the last month.
Commissioner Roger Goodell had already told NFL teams in a memo last week the draft is going on as scheduled April 23-25. It’s going to be unlike any previous draft.
Players and their families will not be at the draft itself. No photo ops on stage with Goodell with jerseys and caps of the team that just drafted a guy.
Team headquarters remain closed through at least April 8; the league will determine then whether to extend those closures. With President Donald Trump last weekend extending social-distancing guidelines nationally through at least the end of April, it is unlikely the Seahawks’ or any other team’s headquarters are going to be open for the draft. Goodell has told teams to be prepared to have decision-makers gather remotely to conduct their draft.
For now, the NFL is going to allow each team to have no more than 10 people in a draft room, whether that is in the currently-closed team headquarters or, perhaps, general manager John Schneider’s living room. The Seahawks usually have dozens of scouts, assistant coaches, executives, franchise vice chair Bert Kolde and more inside its draft room at the team’s headquarters in Renton.
The league is considering an allowance for the possibility communications between and within teams may be altered in this new draft arrangement. In particular interest to Seattle and Schneider, who trades draft picks like Wall Street brokers trade stocks: the NFL may grant exemptions to teams to give them more time to complete a deal while they are “on the clock” to make a pick. That could make for a longer first round than the usual four or so hours. Typically, each team gets 10 minutes to pick—or, in Schneider’s case especially, trade that pick.
The Seahawks have traded their first-round pick in eight consecutive drafts. They own the 27th-overall choice in this month’s draft.
During Tuesday’s remote meeting NFL owners voted to approve what the new collective bargaining agreement ratified by the players last month now allows: expanded playoffs, from 12 to 14 teams. Instead of two teams getting a bye, there will now be only one bye per conference through the first, wild-card playoff round in early January.
The top seed in the NFC and in the AFC will get the bye. The second, third and fourth seeds will be the other three division winners in each conference. They will host the wild-card playoff games. It will be 2 versus 7, 3 versus 6 and 4 versus 5 in each conference on the first playoff weekend. Three wild-card playoff games will be on Saturday, January 9 and three will be on Sunday, January 10.
Free agency went off as planned last month as the pandemic was first spreading across the country. It’s still ongoing, with the Seahawks’ top offseason priority, pass rusher Jadeveon Clowney, remaining unsigned.
The only scheduled NFL events unlikely to happen as of now: offseason workouts.
Next week was supposed to be the start of the Seahawks’ formal offseason workout program in Renton, with phase one of weight training and post-injury rehabilitation work in the training room. The usual NFL offseason program works through phases and includes incremental, on-field training. That includes rookie minicamp in early May the week after the draft, then organized team activities (OTAs), no-pads practices on the field for veterans in May and June and one, mandatory veteran minicamp in June.
All of that is likely to be pushed back, if not canceled. If projections from the White House’s coronavirus task force of 100,000 to 240,000 deaths in the U.S. through the summer are accurate, it’s likely the NFL won’t hold any on-field work into July. It’s possible the first time players will be on the field as a team since the end of last season will be at the start of training camps.
Usually, that’s the last week of July. This summer, that could be into August. Preseason games could be canceled, reduced from the usual four exhibition games in August.
For now, everything is to be determined.
Everything, in the NFL’s mind, except the regular season beginning on time in September.
This story was originally published April 1, 2020 at 11:53 AM.
