Baltimore Ravens offensive lineman Orlando Brown Jr. told reporters Thursday he is concerned there might not be a 2020 NFL season because of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Jamison Hensley of ESPN.
He also told reporters he believed the Ravens and the NFL would only allow the season to go ahead as planned if it was safe for everyone involved.
With professional sports on hiatus at the moment due to the coronavirus, the question has turned to whether leagues like the NBA and NHL will be able to resume their seasons and whether leagues like the NFL and MLB will be able to start them. The MLB already postponed the start of its season, and while the NFL season doesn't start until September, state-mandated guidelines for social distancing could make that start date tricky, depending on their duration.
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump met with a number of league commissioners and team owners to discuss how they might resume play at some point:
The fear, of course, is that rolling back such guidelines prematurely could lead to a second wave of the coronavirus, which in turn could lead to more deaths and have the same negative impact on the job market and economy the United States is currently facing.
To date, there have been 658,263 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States and 32,186 deaths, according to CNN.com.
As of now, the NFL is planning to begin on time and hold a full season. The NFL draft is also going ahead next Thursday, albeit as a completely remote and digital event. The league has time to see how any efforts to resume playing in other leagues, if they are even undertaken, work out before committing to a plan themselves.
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