Could the NFL create a bubble?

[Xenos]

Saints trying to do a pseudo bubble:

https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2020/08/02/lamar-jackson-ravens-nfl-fmia-peter-king/

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The Saints are creating a bubble. Look around. See the landscape. Baseball, not in a bubble, might be on the verge of collapsing. Basketball, in a bubble, looks smart and might play to the title cleanly. Football, with Matthew Stafford sidelined in the COVID protocol, goes “Hmmmmm.” The Saints are trying to do something about it. The organization is inventing a semi-bubble. Beginning Wednesday, the team has contracted with the Loews Hotel to rent four floors of the fashionable borderline French Quarter hotel, so that most of the team’s 100 Tier 1 and 2 employees (all but some of the team doctors, cafeteria workers and security people) and many of the players would be able to quasi-quarantine in the luxe hotel till opening day. “It’s not a bubble,” coach Sean Payton told me Saturday night. “It’s a sequester. The message from the league is, ‘The show must go on.’ If so, we’ve got to do everything we can to be sure that happens.” The Saints have about 180 employees including Tier 1 (coaches, GM, personnel people), 2 (facilities, doctors, support staff) and players (80).

The team is fortunate; through the first round of testing—three tests per player—the team had zero positive tests. But Payton knows that might not last. He thinks about 150 of the 180 team employees/players will end up in the hotel through the first week of September. No one will be forced to stay. Payton equates it to coaching, trying to figure a way to limit the number of positive tests so the Saints have the best chance to play, and to win. “Isn’t that what we do for a living?” he said. “It’s like creating a game plan with a likelihood of success. We’re just trying to increase the odds of success.”

 

[Xenos]

Matt Birk’s idea:

https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2020/08/02/lamar-jackson-ravens-nfl-fmia-peter-king/
 

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Matt Birk has a good idea. The former Ravens and Vikings center is a partner in a new company called React, which produces what it calls “Pandemic-proof Contact Sports Schedules.” He told me React will have three versions of an NFL schedule this week that will feature 10 regular-season games, not 16, and would start later, with 11 to 14-day gaps between each game. That would allow for one of the key React ideas—two-day isolation periods for players and coaches and staff around each game, while allowing them to have time with family as well outside of the isolation periods.

I asked Birk about the league playing 160 games instead of 256 in the regular season, meaning less TV money. “Not necessarily,” Birk said. “In a normal season,” he said, “you have five TV slots per week—three on Sunday, one on Monday, one on Thursday. On our schedule, you’d have seven TV slots—a doubleheader Thursday, a doubleheader Monday and three on Sunday.”

For the 10 games, Birk proposes a full home-and-home division slate, which would take up six games. The other four could be on the baseball model: East versus East, North versus North, to limit travel. I don’t see this being embraced by the NFL, or even strongly considered, until or if the league has some outbreaks, a la major-league baseball and the league might have to consider fewer games. 

 

Edited August 4, 2020 by Xenos