Matt Rhule is Convinced Football Will be Played in 2020
When Matt Rhule first took the job as the head coach of the Carolina Panthers, the first thing on his mind was how to improve the team and get a winning culture and environment back in the Queen City. I can almost guarantee that he never once thought that his first season would include a worldwide pandemic, which forced the draft to be held virtually, the cancellation of OTA's, minicamp, preseason games, and so forth. Now, as the season sits just a little over one month out, there is major concern of whether or not the NFL season will be played.
In the early summer months, the amount of new cases per day in the United States began to decrease, which gave hope that by the time football season rolls around, it won't be as much of an issue. Unfortunately, the amount of new cases began to see a rise in the last month or so, diminishing almost every ounce of hope that was being restored.
College football has already seen massive changes from revised schedules of the FBS to the FCS on the verge of cancelling its season as a whole. Obviously, colleges have a much tougher time operating a football program during a pandemic then NFL organizations would, but it goes to show the severity of this virus.
Friday, Matt Rhule was asked if he thought the NFL would get through the entire season without interruption and where his level of concern of the virus sits.
"I think when you're in this building every day, I think you walk away saying there's absolutely no doubt that we're going to play football. Now, I can't talk about society at large. I don't know what will happen outside, but I think when you're here, you feel a real sense of calm because A. you know everyone is being tested and B. we're socially distanced, like we are walking around with contact tracers. We're taking it so seriously that you feel really comfortable, calm, and safe being here. You're not going to prevent everything, but there's a really good system set in place for when something does happen."
With the strict safety measures that teams across the league are taking, it is certainly believable that the season could run uninterrupted. The MLB has seen outbreaks with the Marlins and the Cardinals, yet the rest of the league continued playing while those two clubs' games were postponed. If cases start to spike once again in late October/early November, it will become a very tough decision for league officials to determine what to do. But as of right now, it seems like the feeling around the Panthers organization is very confident that a season will take place.
One little gadget that has really helped the Panthers monitor social distancing is the tracers that players and staff have to wear on their wrist. Once you get within six feet from someone, the tracer blinks red, giving you a warning to spread out from one another. Rhule admits that it's inevitable to stay six feet apart at all times, but it remains a top priority when not engaging in tackling or other contact drills.
"You're going to get too close to somebody. The whole point is that you want to minimize your contact to less than 15 minutes. Someone could walk up to you with a terribly contagious disease and cough in your face, but if it's one time your immune system fights it. When it's over time that's when it builds up. What we're trying to get guys to understand is football is a game where we're going to be close and get near each other. But we want to keep six feet apart as much as we can, as often as we can and just not for more than 15 minutes at a time. So those trackers really do two things, if someone gets sick, instead of quarantining the whole building we can go back and see who was close to that person so we can quarantine those people. And then every night we look at the data and say okay, where do we have people that are being together for more than 15 minutes? It's not happening on the football field, the field is one of the safest places in terms of that. It's happening maybe at lunch, it's happening maybe in a meeting, it's happening sometimes in the training room and so we just keep installing new protocols."
Although not an ideal start to a one's NFL head coaching career, Rhule is making the most of it and not making any excuses. He fully expects this team to be competitive and see progression as the season moves along. Whether or not he gets to see how far his team progresses over the course of a 16-game season remains to be seen.
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