Butler on Football and Pandemic: ‘I Trust My Brothers’

Trust will be the key, as Saints safety Malcolm Jenkins said on CNN on Thursday.

GREEN BAY, Wis. – The fate of the 2020 NFL season will come down to trust.

Will Joe Player, a young and wealthy individual with plenty of time on his hands and an air of invincibility surrounding himself, go home and stay home after the football workday is over?

“We kind of end up being on this trust system,” Saints safety Malcolm Jenkins said on CNN on Thursday. “The honor system, where we just have to kind of hope that people are social distancing and things like that. And that puts all of us at risk. Not only us as players and who’s in the building, but when you go home to your families. I have parents who I don’t want to get sick. Until we get to the point where we have protocols in place and until we get to a place as a country where we feel safe doing it, we have to understand that football is a nonessential business and so we don’t need to do it. So the risk, you know, has to be really eliminated before we, before I would feel comfortable with going back.”

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The COVID-19 pandemic has cut away at the fringes of football thus far. Free agency was different but it happened. Ditto for the draft. Offseason practices were canceled, replaced by Zoom meetings and playbook tutorials. The league will not allow fans to sit in the first rows of seats, meaning no Lambeau Leaps. On Thursday, the Pro Football Hall of Fame announced the cancelation of the Hall of Fame Game and induction ceremony.

LeRoy Butler, the legendary former Green Bay Packers safety and inventor of the Lambeau Leap, said he’d put his trust in his teammates and play without a second thought.

“I would have no issue with playing,” he said on Wednesday. “Before I would even set foot in the building, they’re going to assure me I’m going to be safe. Not only that, I trust my brothers that they were being safe, as well. Plus, we’ve got the best doctors that you’ve ever seen on-site. I would have no issue playing. Matter of fact, I wouldn’t have an issue playing in a mask. In fact, I would encourage putting a mask on under my helmet and just go play. I’d want to make sure that my opponent is just as safe. I would definitely wear a mask and go play. Once the ball’s in the air, we’ll just play football.”

Chances are Jenkins isn’t the only current player who is uneasy about playing football in the midst of a pandemic. While Butler said he’d play, he wouldn’t be upset if some of his teammates chose to stay home. "Any guy who says he’s not wanting to play, I would not judge him at all. He’d still be my brother." In fact, Butler said he’d make sure those players are paid, no different than a player on injured reserve.

“I’m dead serious. If it was Reggie White or Brett Favre saying, ‘Man, I don’t want to play because I have underlying conditions,’ I would respect that. I would respect that,” Butler said. “I wouldn’t text him and say, ‘You’re a coward. You should play.’ No, I wouldn’t do that. This is real life. If you’ve got high blood pressure or asthma, you probably shouldn’t play. That’s an individual decision.”

Football is the ultimate team sport, coaches like to say. That will be more true than ever this year as the NFL tip-toes into the great unknown. For those players who decide to show up for training camp, which perhaps could start on July 28, they’ll have to do the right things to not only keep themselves healthy but their teammates, as well. More than ever, to borrow a favorite coaching phrase, the greatest ability will be availability.

“You test these guys daily, not twice a week. Test them daily,” Butler said. “Then, you’ve got to know where each guy is when they leave. Are they going to be with their family or are they out in the city? You can’t do any of that this year. You’ve got to go home and stay home. You can’t go out drinking. You can’t do that.”