A shortened season? No byes? Seahawks’ Carroll has a more basic NFL scheduling concern
More fundamentally important to the Seahawks and Pete Carroll than whether Jadeveon Clowney is finally going to re-sign or not: When will the season begin?
Coach Pete Carroll says he’s moving on—remotely, with his Seahawks players in the first NFL virtual offseason training program—to get ready for the regular season to begin on time. That would be in early September.
But he is aware the coronavirus pandemic may wipe out all offseason workouts and practices planned at the team’s training facility into mid-June. And the COVID-19 virus could delay or shorten training camp. Seattle’s and all other team headquarters in the league are closed indefinitely as part of states’ closing non-essential businesses in an effort to contain the virus.
“We’re operating like we’re going to be on somewhat of a schedule that’s going to work out, because we have to keep our minds in it,” Carroll said. “And so we are anticipating that we will get together before the season starts. And when they tell us that it isn’t, then we’ll adjust to that.
“Our planning and our operations are on full to get ready.”
Players got behind computer and smart-phone screens to begin the three-week, virtual offseason training program this week. Carroll and his coaching staff are assigning workouts and installing the framework of play terminology remotely via video conferencing, in lieu of minicamps and organized team activities (OTAs).
There is a strong chance the players won’t get on the field at all this offseason. The first time they may reunite at the Seahawks facility in Renton could be for the start of training camp. That usually begins in late July, six weeks before the games get real.
Who knows when preseason camp will begin this year?
The Seahawks’ coach doesn’t.
“The process is underway. We are just going to keep thinking it’s happening and keep our head down about that and find out more later,” Carroll said. “We haven’t heard much of that at all in regards to that from the league. They are not ready to make any statements at this time, either.
“Nobody knows what’s going to happen, really, so we’ll just wait and see.
“But meanwhile, we’re going for it.”
Asked if he thought training camps will begin on time, Seahawks general manager John Schneider said last week: “Really feels like we’re just trying to...as a league, we are trying to get through the draft process. Then we’ll focus on that after the draft.”
The draft was last weekend.
A shortened regular season?
The league has said it will have the 2020 schedule of games out by May 9. It’s been delayed from its usual release in mid-April.
The merits of putting out a schedule now with so many unknowns—about the virus’ projections for the summer and fall, the availability of testing nationally by then, how soon states’ restrictions will be lifting—is highly debatable, to say the least.
Yet teams and their leaders of business operations such as ticketing and advertising are getting nervous about losing money and customers the longer they don’t have an official schedule game dates and times to sell.
The NFL is remaking the schedule to structure it in a way that it can more easily be cut from 16 games to 14 or 12, if need be.
That includes the likelihood on interconference games, each NFC team’s four games against AFC foes and vice versa, being lumped in the first weeks of the season. The league could easily cut those NFC-versus-AFC games if the pandemic pushes the start of the season from the week after Labor Day in September into October.
Sports Business Journal reported this week the NFL is considering a season that starts Thursday, Oct. 15, more than a month late. Such as delayed season would then have no bye week nor a Pro Bowl; the annual all-star games is played on the week off between the conference championships and the Super Bowl at the end of January. The Super Bowl could be three weeks late, on Feb. 28.
It’s also possible the NFL plays games in empty stadiums, to keep fans from massing in the tens of thousands. There has been no talk of what USA Today reported Tuesday for Major League Baseball: that it is considering ditching its leagues, changing to three, 10-team divisions grouped more strictly by shared geographic location and playing a season reduced by perhaps 40 percent.
“The league’s executives are trying to put themselves in the best position to fit in a full season, or at least a nearly full season, even if there are delays,” SBJ wrote of the NFL.
To preserve all 16 games per team, SBJ reported the league is considering making two weeks of games in September easily able to be shifted to the end of the season, into early January. Week three would schedule teams only playing opponents that have the same scheduled bye weeks. That’s in the event the third week and byes need to be cut this season.
Of course, the players union would have issues with 16 games and no bye weeks, as players have collectively bargained to have every season.
Carroll’s biggest concern
Carroll has no idea whether the season will begin on time, or what form it may take. Multiple times in the past week, the coach has said it’s his goal to keep the Seahawks “adaptable,” with a potential winning advantage in the ability to be flexible and unaffected.
The veteran coach’s main concern: the players getting enough time to safely prepare the violence of the season.
“There’s a lot of this that’s going to be unique, and we don’t know what the runway time is going to be once we get them,” Carroll said. “We won’t know how much time we will have to prepare them.
“There’s a lot on the players right now and a lot on them to hold their end of it. We are monitoring them, but it’s a challenge and there will be issues because of that.”
Carroll was asked Saturday following the draft how much time he needs to have players properly trained and ready to start the season.
“That’s a really good question, because that’s going to be a very big issue,” Carroll said. “ I know that our guys need six weeks of work to get rolling, and that’s what the league has always allowed us. A couple weeks, then four (preseason) games—it takes a full five, six weeks in camp. ...
“And that’s coming off weeks and weeks of an entire offseason.
“Without an intense offseason, with competition and guys working against each other and all of that, I don’t know. We’re going to have to just figure it out. We won’t know until after we see the results of what happens.”
Carroll calls it “this most rigorous of events, going through a football season.”
And he doesn’t want the league shorting its players in the name of fitting all 16 games into a window of keeping the Super Bowl in February.
“I’m hoping it’s not going to be let’s get two weeks of work and then, ‘Let’s start playing NFL games,’” Carroll said. “I hope it’s not like that because that’s going to be really challenging on their bodies and it will be almost impossible to figure that you could do it.”
This story was originally published April 29, 2020 at 6:59 AM.
