NFL players wearing COVID-19 face shields? Seahawks’ Russell Wilson is prepping for that
Players wearing specially designed face shields, covering the eyebrows to the chin, in an effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus?
That’s what the NFL is considering for training camps and the upcoming 2020 season like no other.
Among the many health, safety and financial issues the league and the NFL Players’ Association are still negotiating before players are due into camps Tuesday: a new face shield. Oakley has designed one to snap onto the front bars of helmets, an extended visor with breathe holes over the mouth. It is intended to slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus among football players, who by the very essence of their sport will be violating the public-health community’s physical-distancing recommendations on every play.
As of Thursday, the league intended to recommend players wear the new shields, not mandate their use as the NFL originally thought. That’s according to NFL Network’s Mike Garafolo.
Yet Russell Wilson is already preparing for the face shields.
Of course he is.
“That’s going to be crazy, if we have to do that,” Wilson said this week during his appearance with guest host and Seahawks fan Joel McHale on ABC television’s Jimmy Kimmel Live
“I’ve actually been practicing with it, though, every day, just so I can get used to it—if we have to.”
Of course he has. As Wilson likes to say: “the separation is in the preparation.”
He’s the guy who last year studied satellite photos from Google Maps online of Pittsburgh’s Heinz Field during Steelers game week, to better visualize being inside one of the only NFL stadiums in which he hadn’t played.
But even Wilson chuckled a bit at the idea of NFL players wearing helmet face shields this season.
“You know, we are already out there already, you know? So it’s a little bit late, maybe, for that,” Wilson said, as he waded in a hillside pool during his virtual interview on Kimmel.
The Seahawks and all teams will have the face shields available for players to try as training camps get going. Garafolo reported the league and Oakley are already working on an updated, improved version, perhaps in an effort to gain more player support for wearing one.
Many NFL players, notably Houston Texans All-Pro defensive end J.J. Watt, have said they will not play this season wearing the shield.
“My second year in the league I thought it’d be cool, I put a visor on my helmet,” Watt told NBC Sports this month. “I was like, ‘It looks so cool, I wanna put a visor on.’ I had it on for about three periods of practice and I said, ‘Take this sucker off I’m gonna die out here.’ ...So now you’re gonna put something around my mouth? You can keep that. If that comes into play, I don’t think you’re gonna see me on the field.”
Wilson, though, acknowledges the need for extraordinary measures in our extraordinary times—especially to play football.
“We can’t take this time for granted, in the sense of health and safety. It’s such an important time,” Wilson said on Kimmel’s show. “And it’s really, really important that we do it the right way, at the highest level. And so I think, that’s what the concern is, especially for families.”
Wilson has stated his personal concern with the safety protocols the NFL and union are negotiating. Last weekend he was one of the league’s most prominent voices in a Twitter barrage aimed at increasing public pressure on the NFL to do right by its players in protecting them as much as possible from COVID-19.
He and his wife Ciara are expecting what will be their third child.
“I am concerned. My wife is pregnant,” Seattle’s franchise quarterback posted on Twitter Sunday. “@NFL Training camp is about to start..And there’s still No Clear Plan on Player Health & Family Safety. We want to play football but we also want to protect our loved ones. #WeWantToPlay”
Wilson reiterated that concern to McHale on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
“C’s pregnant, you know. We are going to have another new baby in the world at some point here. I know there are so many others, too, that have family and loved ones and everything else,” Wilson said.
“At the end of the day, we want to play. ...And us Seahawks, we want to go to the Super Bowl and win it all. So that’s our focus. But we want to do it in a safe way.”
This story was originally published July 23, 2020 at 11:57 AM.
