NFL, NFLPA Continue to Wrestle Over COVID Testing as Camp Approaches

Training camp for all 32 NFL teams starts soon. In fact, the Kansas City Chiefs and the Houston Texans are scheduled to report in the coming week. Texans star defensive end JJ Watt even went as far as saying, “Keep in mind our rookies are scheduled to report in 48 hrs.”

The NFL and the NFLPA, however, have not yet agreed on the most important coronavirus-related safety protocol: testing.

The players, to put it lightly, are concerned.

Cleveland Browns offensive linemen JC Tretter, who is also the NFLPA’s president, couldn’t have laid it out any better. The risks of playing football amid an ongoing pandemic should not be ignored. Many players, including NFLPA Vice President and former Tennessee Titans linebacker Wesley Woodyard, have recently expressed similar opinions. This season is more about health, safety and human life than all else.

Tretter, however, noted that the NFL doesn’t seem to be too worried about those sentiments.

"We've had coaches say the protocols are too much to ask, coaches come forward and saying,

‘Everyone's going to get sick, so we might as well all get sick together.' Those attitudes can't happen. There are consequences to getting sick,” Tretter said during a video call with media Friday.

According to multiple reports, at least 72 NFL players have already been infected with COVID-19, and it’s not wrong to presume that other players, coaches and team personnel will carry it with them to camps as they open.

Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University, told AllTitans in June that the NFL can’t assume that anyone is negative for the disease from beginning to end. A mass-testing plan to catch positive tests is crucial, he explained.

“You may have to quarantine the players,” Schaffner said, “do some contact tracing and quarantine those people, test them very quickly to see how many of them turn positive and return them as quickly as possible.”

Schaffner’s colleague, Dr. David Aronoff, an infectious disease physician, also weighed in on the importance of testing during a June interview with AllTitans.

Aronoff said testing would need to be frequent and intense to minimize risk of transmission. He explained that a person could test negative for the disease at one moment, and positive later on.

“It doesn’t tell you if the person got infected earlier in the day or the day before and they just haven’t generated enough virus to be detected,” he said. “It tells you that right now, they’re producing enough virus in their nose, or not.

“When screening athletes, you may have some false negatives. People may be very early in the course of infection, and it just doesn’t trip the test.”

Aronoff added that a mass-testing program is important for reasons that go well beyond the football field or training facility.

“It just may be really hard to essentially hermetically seal the game,” Aronoff said. “Even if they themselves are not highly vulnerable [players, coaches, etc.] to having a bad outcome from an infection, they may bring it home to people who really are. That’s the big concern.”

Based on player reactions circulating through Twitter, Aronoff is correct. A significant issue among players is keeping their immediate family members virus free.

Titans offensive linemen Dennis Kelly tweeted, “How does not listening to the recommendation from your own experts show you care for player health and safety? Health of the players and their families should always be #1 priority. @NFL has to be better.”

With camps on the horizon, it’s evident that there are still too many important factors missing.

It’s also evident that the NFL may not care. If this is the case, football may be a long shot this fall.

“Slogans & wishful thinking haven’t led our country through this pandemic,” NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith said, and it will not lead football on any level through this pandemic.”