Falcons running back Todd Gurley says that if the NFL and NFL Players Association can’t come to an agreement on a viable plan for playing football safely in a pandemic, the other alternative is not playing at all.
“It’s really not structured right,” Gurley said on Tiki and Tierney. “There’s not a proper plan in place that I’m comfortable with. I don’t have a wife. I don’t have any kids. But you have to look at guys on the other side who have pregnant wives, kids and a wife that they go home to every single day. I just feel like in general we just need to come up with something a lot better than what they’re giving us. Everything they gave us is pretty last minute. We should have been able to have answers weeks ago, if not months ago.”
Gurley said he’s prepared to sit out entirely if there’s not a good plan in place to play the season safely.
“You have to be prepared to not play or be prepared to have a half a season,” Gurley said. “If they don’t do things right, we won’t have a full season. It’s just how things have been going so far this year. Hopefully everything goes well, but I don’t see how. It just doesn’t sit well right now.”
The league and the union are in the midst of negotiations to get a plan that satisfies everyone, but it is disheartening to know that the league had months to deal with this and waited to the last minute to handle the most important part of trying to play a sport during a global pandemic.
