Safety First for Eagles in Hopes of Playing Full Season

The Eagles are doing their part, but, as a Seattle player showed with his carelessness and selfishness, there are no guarantees that a potential outbreak can't happen

All it takes is one Kemah Siverand to put a halt to the NFL season.

As safe as the Eagles feel at the NovaCare Complex, their training facility in South Philadelphia, playing all 16 games regular-season games and playoffs hinges on the safety of the other 31 teams’ facilities and, of equal importance, each individual player in those facilities.

“We are family at the end of the day, said Jalen Mills during a videoconference call on Aug. 6. “We call ourselves a family to a man. To the left and to the right of us is our brother and we have to treat it as such. You don’t want to bring in anything as far as this COVID situation into your house and we have to treat this facility like it is our house. I’m calling you my brother, so I don’t want to get you sick.”

Siverand is out of a job and perhaps out of an NFL career after being caught trying to sneak a woman disguised as a Seattle Seahawks player into the team hotel this past week. Seattle did not fool around, cutting the undrafted rookie free agent cornerback from Oklahoma State in a heartbeat after seeing the incident on videotape.

Siverand’s selfishness and carelessness put others at risk. We saw it happen with the Miami Marlins on the first weekend of the restarted baseball season, and we could see it with the NFL if one player decides to put his interests first.

With rosters currently around 80 players, that’s more than 2,500 players who must behave themselves if a full schedule will be played without interruption.

“(We are) very aware that it is going to be a challenge,” said Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz during a Zoom call on July 30. “We’ve talked about it a fair amount, and you’ve gotta be a professional 24/7. Not just when you’re in the building now, but it’s how do you take care of yourself out of the building, and be smart, and handle your business. We are all in this thing together.

“I’m not dumb to know different ways that guys can still get it. Things might happen. You never know how this is going to unfold. We’re going to do everything that we can as a team to make sure, especially as leaders, to make sure guys are handling their business, not just in the building, but outside the building, who they’re around, what they’re going to do. So it’s going to look different and it is going to be a challenge, but we in Philly are up for it, and hopefully, everyone around the league is up for it as well.”

The Eagles, according to several players and coaches made available the past couple of weeks, all talked about how good of a job the staff at the team’s training facility has done.

Players are given “clean” packages every day with wipes, sprays, hand sanitizers, tissues, everything possible to keep them as safe as can be. They have beeper trackers to account for their movements so in case something happens the medical and training staff can tell who a player came in contact with.

“I feel safe,” said defensive lineman Fletcher Cox during an Aug. 5 Zoom call. “There are protocols you have to go through to get into the building. There are things we have to do before you even open the door. I feel really safe.

“When you go home, you just have to do the right things. You stay in the house, making sure you’re staying on top of things. I feel really good about the season. I think there will be a season. There will be ups and downs … and there are things we have to adapt to and get used to it. We know there are changes, and we can’t let that distract from our main goal, starting the season and finishing.”

Still, a team can do everything right, and a player or coach can still test positive. It’s what happened with Eagles coach Doug Pederson, who tested positive on Aug. 2 but was able to return 10 days later after self-quarantining and retesting.

The league worked hard for six weeks leading up to the opening of training camps, with both the NFL and NFLPA working hand-in-hand, to figure out the best ways to make a season feasible.

They are not isolated inside a bubble the way NBA and NHL players are, yet there has been some good news recently.

On Saturday, there were just 22 players remaining on the reserve/COVID-19 list, which is the fewest since the first day of July 26, when six players around the league were placed on it. By day two, 26 players were on it.

The Eagles had three land on the list – Lane Johnson, Nathan Gerry, and Jordan Mailata – but all three have since been activated back to the roster.

“I like to look at it as the glass full, so I’m optimistic that we can execute all the protocols, guys can stay safe, guys can stay healthy, but I’m also not an idiot,” said Wentz. “You just don’t fully know how everything is going to unfold, so, until something changes, I’m going to be here, I’m going to be working and I’m going to be ready to go just like all my teammates.”

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