In the age of a worldwide pandemic, no one can accurately predict what is going to happen and when things might be going back to normal.
As some states around the country began to slowly open back up amid the crisis, Peter King says “the NFL has to prepare, and is preparing, for a very imperfect season.”
The league is moving forward with dropping its schedule on Thursday during a 3-hour special, but that doesn’t mean things will happen according to plan.
The NBC Sports columnist joined The Fan Morning Show earlier this week to further explain what an “imperfect” season could mean.
Via WGR550 Radio:
“Could it be that some team doesn’t play all eight home games? Or have to play somewhere else? You’ve already got the leading political county officer in Santa Clara county California saying that he doesn’t believe there will be any sports events in their county until Thanksgiving. That could change, you never know. But what does that mean for the 49ers? We just don’t know, it’s too early.
The one thing that I think you’ll be able to see with the schedule is that either the first two or four weeks of the schedule will very likely, in my opinion, be portable. That means, basically, that you could just move them to January if need be, if they needed to start the season late or whatever.”
King also brought up the season starting in October and still being able to keep the postseason and Super Bowl in February. He also spoke on the issues of testing.
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“As I figured in my column on Monday, if you were to say, ‘How much tests would it take for the NFL to get through this season with all the essential personnel and players and testing them, I believe, twice per week?’ I think there would have to be about 200,000 tests minimum for that to happen. So then you ask yourself, not only can you get the tests but is everybody in your municipality, your area able to get them who needs them?”
King continued:
“What happens one week if Friday afternoon, five of the tests on your team come back positive? And five guys have coronavirus? Well, you could say one of two things. Five of those guys then have to get quarantined for two weeks and the rest of the team has to carry on and play, which they might say.
But would it also be conceivable, that then if you have “X” number of players test positive, that that team can’t play for the next two weeks? So there’s all sorts of issues here that no one has really thought all the way through.
So that’s why I say this is going to be an imperfect season. Somebody’s ox is going to get gored. Something bad is going to happen to a team that nobody expects. Everybody can’t just fly off the handle. If Patrick Mahomes tests positive, well he’s got to go sit somewhere for two weeks and Chad Henne has to play.
Everybody has to take a chill pill this year because it’s going to be a very imperfect year, if indeed they play.”
We’ve already seen in the NBA where Rudy Gobert tested positive and they shut the season down, so you look past the fact that the NFL might be forced to do the same thing if more and more players test positive for the coronavirus.
