Seahawks set to begin camp — make that, COVID-19 testing — Tuesday after NFL approves plan
Training camp is on.
The NFL Players Association announced Friday its team representatives approved the league’s coronavirus-related changes to the collective bargaining agreement. They add new COVID-19 testing protocols and financial elements for a 2020 season like none in league history.
That NFLPA team’s reps vote by 29-3 plus the approval by teams earlier in the day clear the way for training camps to start as planned on Tuesday. That includes the Seahawks’ at their team headquarters in Renton.
The agreement states players won’t be fully practicing until mid-August.
Training camps will begin Tuesday with universal COVID-19 testing for all players and coaches plus staff that will be in daily contact with players. After a first test just outside the doors of team facilities, all team personnel will be sent back home — or to nearby hotels, for players new to teams without homes in their market areas.
They will all wait until day four of camp, Friday, July 31, for a second COVID-19 test. Only players, coaches and staffers who pass both tests will be allowed in team facilities, for the first time since January. With the national testing laboratory with which the NFL contracted promising results within 24 hours, the first day players can go into their team buildings is Aug. 1. That will be to begin a week-plus of strength and conditioning work.
The rest of the details of the compromise plan for camps reached Friday, as reported by The Athletic’s Lindsay Jones and others:
- Teams will have a maximum of 80 players, down from the usual 90-man rosters for camps and the bulk of preseasons. The Seahawks currently have 90 players. They have the option to cut down to 80 either by Tuesday, or by Aug. 16.
- Practice squads will increase from 10 to 16 players. Six of those practice-squad players can have unlimited number of accrued seasons. In previous years and per the CBA ratified in March, only rookies and limited-experience players had eligibility for the practice squad.
- Aug. 1 is the first possible day for a strength and conditioning period lasting eight days. Teams also can have walk-through practices in this period.
- Then come four days of practices without pads.
- The league and NFLPA agreed to a maximum of 14 days of practices in pads. Those will begin on Aug. 17.
- It’s official: all preseason games are canceled—as the players demanded.
Players can opt out of the 2020 season, with a six-figure stipend. Players have the next 10 days to decide whether to opt out.
If games are canceled for the 2020 season, players won’t get paid. NFL players are paid their base salaries (and for many veterans, roster bonuses) per game week, over each of the 17 weeks of the regular season.
It’s a 30-day acclimation period for training camps, including the first four days for COVID-19 testing.
The league will spread the expected losses of $3-5 billion from having few or no fans at games this year over three years of salary caps. The players had wanted eight years to absorb the losses of in-stadium revenue.
But that became the players’ cost for getting daily virus tests, no preseason games, the extended acclimation period and other concessions from NFL.
Friday’s agreement also establishes a league fund to pay back any benefits eliminated as a result by the coronavirus pandemic, up to the 2023 season. It will also pay back any guaranteed money players may lose to the COVID-19 virus. That player win is per ESPN’s Chris Mortensen.
Daily, limited media access to practices is not expected until mid-August. Until then, the Pro Football Writers Association is working with each team to have regular, online interview availability with coaches and select players.
This story was originally published July 24, 2020 at 1:39 PM.
