NFL's Plan for Reopening Practice
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00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03 NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell sent a memo
00:09 to all 32 teams detailing what it looks like as the facilities
00:13 look ahead to reopening.
00:14 I'm joined now by MMQB senior writer Albert Breer.
00:17 Albert, can you break down what exactly was in this memo,
00:20 and what do teams need to see and facilities need
00:23 to see to be able to reopen?
00:25 Well, it's obviously the first step
00:27 of trying to get people back into their home facilities
00:30 and working again.
00:32 And so a big piece of this, of course,
00:33 is going to be sanitizing.
00:34 And a big piece of this is going to be federal and local laws
00:37 and what's allowed and what's not allowed.
00:39 But they sort of outline what the process is going to look
00:42 like and who's going to be allowed in.
00:43 And I think the most interesting part here, Madeline,
00:45 was the fact that this first phase is not
00:48 going to include players outside of guys
00:50 who are going in for regular rehab sort of work.
00:53 And so what you're going to see, I think,
00:55 is maybe some non-football employees going in,
00:58 maybe some coaches, maybe some scouts.
01:00 But there's going to be, in the first phase, up to 75 people
01:04 allowed into the building.
01:05 And so I think that number is interesting
01:08 because it's going to allow you to bring in maybe
01:10 certain people in certain departments
01:12 and slowly work people into the building.
01:15 And of course, the other interesting part
01:16 being that they aren't going to allow players in right away,
01:20 which I think, of course, addresses
01:22 the competitive balance issue.
01:24 Right, and an important thing for fans to remember
01:27 is there are a lot of people who work in these buildings that
01:29 are not players or coaches.
01:31 But as you mentioned, players and coaches are not--
01:33 players are not part of that first wave.
01:36 Roger Goodell had previously mentioned
01:38 that no teams will be able to begin on-field activities
01:42 until every team facility is safe to do so.
01:45 Is he still sticking to that, or does this kind of
01:47 make room for that to pivot?
01:49 Yeah, I think they like to stick to that.
01:52 And I'd also say this, I was on the Crossover podcast
01:55 with Chris Mannix.
01:57 He brought up a great point here, and I'll repeat it.
01:59 I mean, he said that the NBA teams were actually
02:02 thinking this way for a while, too,
02:04 that they were going to keep everything shut down until
02:06 everyone could open back up.
02:08 And ultimately, what wound up happening over a few weeks time
02:11 is you saw some states were much slower
02:12 to come back than other states.
02:14 And then the question becomes, do you really
02:17 want Atlanta Hawks players or Dallas Mavericks players
02:20 forced to go to, say, a lifetime fitness
02:23 when the team facility is sitting right there
02:26 and it's a safer environment for them to work in,
02:28 even if, say, players from the Lakers or the Clippers
02:31 or the Celtics or the Knicks or the Nets
02:33 can't go into their home facilities?
02:35 And so it's a tricky question to answer.
02:37 And I think the NFL feels fortunate that they don't have
02:39 to answer it right now.
02:41 What'll be really interesting is that if we
02:43 get to the middle of July, then we're
02:45 right under the doorstep of training camp,
02:47 and, say, New York, New Jersey, California still
02:50 aren't open, but most of the other states are.
02:52 I think that's when the decision point comes.
02:54 The NFL's comfortable going forward, probably
02:56 for the rest of the offseason program through May and June,
02:59 the way they have it now to try to create an equitable
03:02 situation across the league.
03:04 What'll be really interesting, again,
03:06 is when we get closer to training camp,
03:08 if so much of the country is open
03:09 and we're at a much more critical juncture in the NFL
03:11 calendar.
03:13 Right, got to kind of balance that competitive edge
03:15 and competitive balance with the health and safety of everyone
03:18 involved.
03:18 MMQB senior writer Albert Breer, thanks so much for the time.
03:22 All right, thanks, Madeline.
03:24 [BLANK_AUDIO]