The NFL's handling of the first coronavirus outbreak of the 2020 season is beginning to cast doubt on the league's credibility among some in the sport, according to a report.
Some NFL coaches are increasingly "frustrated" with the league's response to outbreaks affecting the Tennessee Titans, New England Patriots, and Las Vegas Raiders, according to a report by Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk.
The article said "there's a growing belief within the coaching community" that the NFL is more concerned with assigning blame to teams and players for outbreaks than it is actually preventing and minimizing them, the article said.
Specifically at issue was a Monday conference call in which a league medical official told teams that the league's protocols were in fact superior to a league-wide or regional bubbles.
Many teams took that to mean that the NFL will hold firm on what is currently proving to be an ineffective strategy for keeping the virus at bay throughout the season.
The coaches suspect that the league's hope is to play as many games as possible -- and to position themselves to fault players and coaches for not following protocols should the worst comes to pass, the report said.
"Some coaches believe that, indeed, the league will do whatever it has to do to get the games played — to the point that health and safety of players and coaches is taking a backseat to playing the games. They think that the league wants to be able to say, in the event someone gets sick or worse, that the problem wasn’t the protocols but the failure of one or more teams to follow them."
Both the NFL and the NFL Players Association were hesitant to agree to a bubble, according to Florio, for different reasons.
The players obviously didn't want to be confined to a single site for months on end, while the owners didn't want to make a sufficient concession that would likely be required to entice such an agreement from the players.
Several teams and coaches have already been fined for removing their masks during games, while the league and NFLPA were reportedly investigating the Titans outbreak.
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