Travis Kelce Comfortable with Chiefs' COVID-19 Protocols
Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce recognizes there is a lot more to Training Camp than preparing to run it back.
Kelce and the Chiefs’ other veterans joined rookies and quarterbacks at the team’s training facilities for the first time Wednesday.
Though he won’t share the locker room with 52 other teammates as he would in a typical season, Kelce said it felt good to be back with the team, which shares a common goal other than winning the Super Bowl — keep each other healthy.
“The guys coming into this office, they know what this team is capable of,” Kelce told reporters in a virtual press conference Thursday. “It shows in what we did last year and who all we have coming back, which means we have about every single leader that we had in this locker room — outside of the two that respectively decided to opt-out [running back Damien Williams and right guard Laurent Duvernay-Tardif]. The tone has to be set and the accountability has to be set amongst all the guys in the locker room that you know what, there’s a virus out here, it’s not something we can play around with. It’s something we have to take seriously.”
Kelce learned the complete extent of the Chiefs’ and NFL’s plan to keep players safe through social distancing and other guidelines during a meeting Wednesday.
Chiefs Vice President of Sports Medicine and Performance Rick Burkholder detailed several of the plans with media members on June 25. The team has since released a walk-through video of a modified Arrowhead Stadium in the latest episode of Kingdom Short.
Every player’s day will begin with COVID testing and a health questionnaire. Policies also protect the players from unnecessary contact with individuals not essential to their routines. All personnel members are required to wear masks.
“I’m not going to lie, I feel pretty good about the situation we have here in Kansas City,” Kelce said. “I know everyone’s not fortunate to have the head athletic training staff and all the docs that we do here in Kansas City — I get it. We’re checking all of the boxes here and KC and it’s really making us feel like we’re at home.”
If all goes to plan, the Chiefs will open their season against the Houston Texans on September 10.
Since over a month remains until kickoff, uncertainties exist. Those will likely be addressed once contact begins in practice, and a trend is established in positive player tests.
Kelce said it’ll be up to the entire team, and the general public, to ensure Week 1 arrives on time.
“I think it goes way way way beyond football, man,” Kelce said. “Wearing a mask is if you want to get down to the nitty-gritty, life or death for a lot of people. Who’s to say who’s safe and who’s not safe, who’s able to get the disease and who’s not or how. It’s such a question mark on what’s going on with this virus right now that that wearing a mask is the first thing that you can do to save somehow else from getting it knowing that you don’t know if you have it because of how it’s been rapidly making its way through every single city and a lot of homes in this community… Just be safe about it, wear the mask and respect the people around you just as if it were your family member if it wasn’t."
