The Ringer NFL Show - Accounts of Sexual Harassment Within the Washington Franchise, Plus a COVID-19 NFL Update | The Ringer NFL Show

Episode Date: July 20, 2020

Kevin Clark is joined by The Athletic’s Lindsay Jones to discuss last week’s report in The Washington Post in which several women described sexual harassment and verbal abuse within the Washington NFL franchise (1:35). Later, they discuss the outstanding issues regarding the NFL’s COVID-19 safety protocols for the upcoming season (25:52). Host: Kevin Clark Guest: Lindsay Jones Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Ringer podcast network. It's Liz Kelly. This week, we launched a new show on the network called The Ringer Fantasy Football Show. Coming from the guys who brought you the Dannessy Football Podcast, Danny Heifitz, Danny Kelly, and Craig Horlebeck will guide you through the fantasy football season, providing analysis on big picture conversations like weekly matchups, trades, and daily fantasy. The show will run every Monday and Wednesday throughout the rest of the summer, and we'll be helping you through the regular season as well. So follow and listen to the first episode of the Ringer Fantasy Football Podcast. out now for free on Spotify. It's the Ringer NFL show, part of the Ringer podcast network.

I am Kevin Clark, joined today by athletic NFL reporter Lindsey Jones. Lindsay, all the news is bad, but how are you? I'm great. I'm just waiting to find out if we're going to have football

in any sense to write about and talk about, you know, starting in the next couple days. I mean, look, the Texans rookies and chiefs rookies are, like, reporting to camp as we speak. It's crazy.

Yeah. And I saw a report. that from Tom Palliser, the Chief's health plan has been approved, one of three teams that has been approved so far. That's, there are not three teams in the NFL. And we'll leave it at that for right now. And we'll get back to the COVID stuff. When I say all the news is bad, I say that because we're tackling two subjects today.

The Washington football franchise and the COVID situation in football, all of the negotiations around the deadline for training camp, why the NFL let it get to this point, why rookies are reporting without an agreement, why players are speaking out. But we'll start with Washington. If you missed the story on Friday, 15 employees of the organization and two media members described to the Washington Post, sexual harassment, and verbal abuse. Before the story came out, the team fired personnel executives Richard Mann the 2nd and Alex Santos and longtime radio host Larry Michael retired last Wednesday.

All three, as well as several other former employees, were named in the Post story. Here's a quote from Emily Applegate who worked as a marketing coordinator in 2014 and 2015 for the team. It was the most miserable experience of my life. and we all tolerated it because we knew if we complained, and they reminded us of this, there were a thousand people who would take our job in a heartbeat. You know, I thought there was a really good column by Claire McNair, one of our staff writers of the ring over the weekend, where she basically said, you cannot chalk this up as another problem for the Washington franchise, because at this point, there have been so many

missteps, so many problems that they all seem to run together. This is not that. This rises above almost everything else. The two that were the most serious were the New York Times report a couple of years ago, but the cheer was just awful. And this one that is just, it is, it is unconscionable. And there is obviously an awful culture in D.C. There are problems that need to be fixed that are just, it's mind boggling.

It's gotten to this point. Lindsay, when you first read the story, you thought what? I thought that the women who went forward to the Washington Post on the record were extremely brave and talked about things that are not a huge secret to women who work in and around sports and specifically within the NFL. I was extremely sad. I was angry. I was disgusted. But I wasn't surprised. I think surprise would be kind of the last word that I would use to describe the way that I felt when I read it. Because, you know, this is, I think that the, what these women talked about

about what they experienced in Washington was awful and was an extreme example. I think Washington is one of the most toxic franchises in the NFL and in all of professional sports, but it's hardly an isolated incident. And obviously, I view this through the lens of being a woman who covers the NFL and has covered the NFL for a long time.

I've been a beatwriter and a national reporter since 2008. So, you know, I view it through the lens of covering the NFL and what the two female reporters who went forward on the record what they experienced is stuff that me and my female colleagues talk about all the time.

I mean, it's constant for us. It's a universal experience for women who cover the NFL. And I'm grateful for them for going forward. And the NFL never had its me too reckoning when so many other parts of American society and American business did. The NFL did not have it.

And maybe this will be the start of that for the NFL. I'm not sure it will be. I don't necessarily believe that the way that Washington is going to handle it. I don't have a lot of confidence in the way that Snyder, Daniel Snyder and the people he's hired will handle this and will change their culture moving forward as long as he is running out organization. So we'll see. But, yeah, I mean, it was a really damning report.

And it needs to be taken seriously, both by everybody within that Washington organization and with the NFL as well. So before we get into a couple of events, thing, especially the future of the franchise and what that looks like. I'd like to go back something you said, why don't you think? Because we saw a Me Too reckoning in so many different industries, but we did not see it in football where obviously there is a problem. And we know that even more after last week. Why wasn't there that when every other industry, you know, two or three years ago was getting talked about in that vein? Yeah, I think, you know, it's still just a really difficult

place for women to come forward. You know, I think there are pieces of the NFL. Specifically when the league office, you know, when you look at their staff, the makeup of the NFL league office over the last several years, there has been a concerted effort to hire more women in senior leadership roles. And, you know, they do a lot of activity in social activism and social responsibility. And I think there are well-meaning people within the front office, or the league office and senior leadership. I don't think that is translated to the clubs. And it is very much an old boys network where there are still so few women that are within all of these franchises, very few women in senior leadership within these franchises. And, you know,

so many of the bad actors that, you know, that were, that we learned about in the Washington Post story and that women who cover this business know about in the 31 other franchises, they continue to kind of move from job to job, get promoted because they're part of this voice network. And there is just a real culture of fear of not wanting to come forward. And, you know, I know for me personally, as, you know, I've been afraid to say anything. You know, I never want to be the story. And that's why it was really incredible that two female reporters, Riannon Walker, my colleague at the Athletic and Nora,

your colleague here at the ringer said something because we never want to be the story. And I think that's a big part of it, at least from the media side. Yeah, I was obviously, Rannon's piece on the athletic last week was incredibly powerful and everybody should read it if they haven't. And Nora, obviously, I'm, you know, Her bravery was incredible, and obviously we all support her. And yeah, I mean, from what I, from what I've gathered over the past couple of days,

and I like your perspective on this, Daniel Snyder's response to this has been, so Syphilfisher reports this. He did not address it much beyond the public statement on the virtual owners meeting, and it, quote, left a few owners and executives feeling overwhelmed. Is this the kind of thing, Lindsay, where after they fire three people, it's almost business as usual, or do you think that the Washington team, which has never shown much propensity to change anything beyond being a constant tire fire, could there actually spur real change? I think there's two parts of this.

I think Ron Rivera is the right guy from a football perspective. And he's been through this in Carolina when Jerry Richardson ended up having to sell the team because of very serious. serious and credible accusations of a variety of kinds of harassment, from sexual harassment to, you know, a lot of racial insensitivity to maybe, we probably should just flat out call it racism that occurred within that organization. So, you know, Ron Rivera did a real, I think he did a good job of managing that. And he's been pretty progressive in terms of the people that he's hired, the people that he's put around him, the culture that he's created within the football side. Yeah. So my question is, how much power does he have now? And, you know, I think we've seen him take, you know, have a larger role in terms of, you know, football decisions and the players that they drafted and signed and these sorts of things. But I do not get the sense from Daniel Snyder that he has won sorry, actually sorry for any of this that has happened and believes that anything was actually wrong.

I mean, there were no accusations directly against him in terms of sexual harassment. But it was clear, there's no way that he or the very senior people. either currently working for Washington or the people who are since gone because they have had massive amount of turnover at the top of that organization over the last several years. There's no way that any of those men could say that they didn't know what was going on. And he allowed it to fester. He encouraged it. And I don't, I guess I'm just very skeptical that he is the person who is going to oversee a cultural

overhaul within that organization. I'll say this. Either he knew about it, which is. I mean, if you read the story, he almost has to know about it. Or he didn't know about it, which makes him the dumbest person in America. And neither of those two things are good options for him. And I just think that either he just has no idea what's going on in his organization, or he was letting this happen. And so I think that this is this, even though there were no direct accusations against him,

this is a reflection of the culture he's built and the culture that he has. instilled in that organization. I mean, I saw a quote this morning. So they hired a new business guy, business head, Terry Bateman. And Les Carpenter had, Les Carpenter had gotten a quote about when they fired their last business head, Brian Lafamina. And it was, quote, is from an ex-employee.

You could literally feel the negative energy in the building that day. Everyone felt so crushed and devastated. The feeling was we literally can't stay here. Okay. the turnover here in Washington is unbelievable. And there is almost, Snyder has so micromanaged everything to the point that there's no stability in this franchise. Nobody knows anything.

Ben Fisher from Sports Business Journal said that Ron Rivera has essentially been doing business-side stuff to fill a power vacuum. Okay. And there's a couple of things to unpack. Number one is that I remember really early in 2012 when I was first on the beat. that someone I know in the NFL was like, Washington just called me asking for job candidates for a certain role. And I said, what would you do? And they said, well, I gave them three names. And then I called those three people and said, do not take this job. And like, that's kind of all you

need to know. But I guess the question is with Ron Rivera specifically, do you feel like he's been trotted out as sort of a human shield a little bit. You know, he's such a good guy that the fact that he had to make these statements going above and beyond what Daniel Snyder was talking about. I mean, it just really feels like he's been put in an unfair situation because the rest of the franchise is so unstable. Oh, I 100% agree about that because, and look, he hasn't even gotten to coach a single football practice yet.

He hasn't even been able to get all, you know, I don't think there's actually. No, I mean, not in person yet. I mean, I think there's probably guys that he was able to meet in person in, you know, January and February when they were coming through the building for, you know, when it was still open before COVID shut our country down. But no, he has not been able to put together a full team meeting. He has not, you know, let alone coach an actual football practice or an actual game. So, yeah, I mean, I think there is some of that.

I think he's being put in a very, very difficult situation. You know, I do think he's capable of handling it. You know, if there's anybody in the NFL who is, I would, you know, I probably bet on Ron Rivera. But I do remember, you mean, even back in January, when he was the first hire. I mean, because he was fired by Carolina in what, it was like late November, early December.

So he had a couple of weeks. And obviously, the Washington job was the first one that was open. You know, it was open through most of last season. And I just remember thinking, why, Ron? You're going to have your choice. There's going to be other places that you can go that are going to have better ownership, a more stable quarterback situation.

Or you could just go the Mike McCarthy route and just learn about, you know, analytics and all that stuff for a year But I mean, why would you want to do that? That's just the way. I do think he's learned a little bit more banalikes, but he had the option to either take a better job or just wait a year. I mean, Mike McCarthy got the Cowboys job.

Yeah. If you have a reputation, the key is to protecting that. And when you go into Washington, you either, it is hard to keep your reputation in Washington. And he actually, I think that the expectations for wins and losses are actually quite low. but I think that it's hard over three, four years to actually build a culture, and that's going to be his biggest challenge. I think it's going to be really hard to turn that boat around, so to speak. Well, and so much of the building a culture and changing the franchise from within,

all of that stuff is stuff that's going to be kind of happening very much behind the scenes. He's going to be judged on whether this team wins. And if the fans come, well, eventually, it could be 2020. But, you know, if the business side of this team turns around and people have confidence, the Washington organization again and their fans start coming back to FedEx or whatever it's going to be named field. And, you know, while the working environment hopefully will change under his leadership, ultimately what's going to matter if he keep, determine if he keeps his job and what happens

to his legacy is if that team is going to win. And if Dwayne Haskins is a good quarterback and if Jack Del Rio was the right defensive coordinator, all these sorts of things. And, you know, Daniel Snyder still running the show there. And I'm just consider me skeptical is, I guess, probably. the best way to put it. Consider both of us skeptical on the entire thing. I want to get back very quickly to something you talked about. So you were quoted in the Washington Post over the weekend, as was USA Today columnist Nancy Armour, Marley Rivera from ESPN, Joan Neeson was in the story.

And something really made me sick to my stomach in the story. It was a quote from Nancy Armour. It was, as women, how do you ask for a phone number and make it clear that you're asking for professional reasons, not because you want to turn it into a 3 a.m. booty call. Every single woman new covers of sport has had that thought. The reason that made me sick to my stomach is because this is something that we all, we all ask for phone numbers. We have to. We all ask for email addresses. We all ask for a couple of different ways to contact somebody. And I've never had to think about how to explain this to someone. I just say, hey, if I have another question, can I text you? And I've never had to put that into context or perspective. And I guess reading that, I read

realize a lot of things. But I guess I would ask you, Lindsay, how does the culture change from here? And what are the, what do teams need to do? What a sources need to do? What does a league need to do to where, you know, one of the the key things in this story was Randon Walker talking about the combine and how much an interaction at the combine, which is where you meet sources, how much that interaction really hurt her. And I think that. you know, the owner's meeting, the combine, exactly what you said. Those are the places you meet people, but those are also bar scenes. Those are also, hey, let's hang out by the pool and have a corona scenes. And I am after, you know, these couple of stories, I have a new perspective on that

in regards to this. So how does the culture change what needs to happen? Yeah. So there's, I mean, there's a lot of, a lot to address, I think, within that. And obviously, this is kind of getting very inside sports journalism and the way that our business. business operates. But yeah, I mean, it's stuff that, you know, I think about on a daily basis. It's stuff that me and my female colleagues and peers throughout the NFL, we talk about regularly. I mean, I'm on, like, multiple group chats of group texts with other female reporters from around the NFL, specific to within the athletic. And then also, you know, my female colleagues from around, you know, around the industry. And not just exclusive to the NFL, but, you know, I think a lot of

what goes on with NFL reporting is very unique. And the way that these events, you know, they are very focused around the social networking scene at a bar. And the thing that Riannon wrote her first person piece that she published on The Athletic on Friday, it's so powerful. I hope everybody read that it is unlocked. It's in front of the paywall.

So please go read it. But there was a part in it that just really, I'm so glad that she wrote. And she wrote about how the harassment that she experienced at the Combine, at one of the bars in downtown Indianapolis, It wasn't just the embarrassment in the moment and the feeling of shame and what happened in that moment. It was how it affected her ability to do her job after that. It was the fact that she had been harassed by the director of player personnel or from the team.

And she needed to use him. She would have needed to use him as a source. And she wrote that she played small that next free agency in the coming months because she couldn't go to him or his top assistant to be sources about free agency. And so it's always trying to find these other avenues around. it and that's you know that's where this trickles down and you know I think unfortunately so often the focus when you talk about women working in sports media is oh it's it's all about the locker room and what's it like being in the locker room and you just want to be in this male space and it's their private area and they they should be able to be naked and not have to be around

it's not about the locker room and people who want to take it there it's a complete misunderstanding of what the issue is what the challenges are for women to work in this business so when you talk about what what can be done I think there's I think there's a couple things. And it's not this is an exclusive to sports media. I think this can apply to men who want to be allies who are working in any industry, whether you're working in a law firm or a bank or in a public school setting, whatever it might be, where, you know, women are not sex objects.

Your female peers, your co-workers, the women that work at other firms or at other newspapers or other media outlets, and the women who are covering business, It's not a sexual thing at all. And, you know, when we talk about how to ask for phone numbers, it's something that we consider all the time. And, you know, you just said it where you say, you know, hey, how can I get in touch with you if I have a couple other follow-ups? You have to make sure that it's always done within a professional setting.

But you think about things like, well, what time am I texting? What's the tone of this text? How am I responding if the text that I get in response is, you know, well, what are you doing later? or, you know, it's meeting sources for coffee and not meeting, not meeting at the bar. It's a lot of these sorts of things. And then, you know, I know that there's a lot of reporters and other, you know, members of NFL media who listen to this podcast.

And so much of it is about our male colleagues. And call it out when it happens. Don't be part of the gossip circle. Don't assume that when your female colleague is, you know, maybe it's Prime 47 in Annapolis. And you see a woman over there talking to a general manager or an assistant coach, don't make jokes about how they're going to go back and sleep together. She's networking just the same way that you are. And 99.95% of the time being extremely professional about it.

So, you know, I think it's those things that are about being true allies. And one of the things that just really was frustrating last week before the Washington Post story came out was that there was just a ton of gossip going around about what the story was going to be. And it just shows how many men working in this industry, know about the harassment that goes on and have seen it firsthand, have seen it at the bars in Indianapolis, have seen it at the bars in Mobile during the Senior Bowl,

have seen it at the bars at the Ritz Carlton at the owners meetings. And while they might, you know, check on you immediately to make sure you're okay, that's where it ends. And, you know, there's no kind of accountability. And we need our male peers and our male allies to kind of step up and truly be,

truly be allies and not part of the problem. Yeah. And I think that it goes back. to kind of what you said about Rihanna's powerful piece where I think that if there were male colleagues who saw this, well, they want free agency information. So they're not going to call. And it just becomes this poisonous thing. And it's, it is horrible. And I can't, I'm happy this is all being exposed. And I hopefully, within sports media, within sports, it spurs real change. And I think that as we've both talked about over the past 20 minutes, this is not unique to the Washington football team.

And hopefully there's a reckoning with all of the teams where that needs to be addressed. Briefly, before we move on to the fact there might not be an NFL season, okay, that's going to be fine, is the name change because this is something we, I don't think we've even addressed on this show because of the constant churn of news. to me, the weird culture war they were fighting, Snyder and Bruce Allen and all these guys, the weird war they were fighting over the name is symptomatic of just a franchise that spends its energy on the wrong things. And I think that you look at all the mistakes that they've made, anything from handling RG3 and his injury to letting Sean McVeigh and Kyle Shanahan and Matt LaFleur out of the building without a second thought. Any of those things, can be explained away by the fact

they, A, don't prioritize winning in the way that most teams do. Not 31 other teams, but I would say, a good 23 to 25 teams prioritize winning. And B, that they just care about the wrong things. And when this name change thing came down the pipeline, what was your first thought, Lindsay? You know, I think it was, okay, finally he's going to do it.

But this was not some benevolent, moment by Daniel Snyder. This was not that he had this light bulb that went off, that he realized that the name of his organization was racist. It wasn't that he had this moment, this reckoning. It was financial. And that's what it is so often, is that finally, you know, it was FedEx,

and it was the other major sponsors threatening to pull out and to force, you know, enforcing this to change. And so often that's how, you know, major change happens, right? It's that there's some sort of financial impetus that's going to make it happen. And it was finally going to affect Daniel Snyder's, you know, his pocketbook and his bank accounts or whatever.

And, you know, when we talk about them not winning and not being caring about winning, it's because every time we see those Forbes list of NFL valuations come out, they're always right near the top. So while they were floundering on the field, they were an embarrassment, you know, in the news, you know, just constant misstep after misstep, he was still breaking in a ton of money. So why was he going to do anything differently? And it really finally, you know, it was not the Black Lives Matter, the movement that forced him to change. It was not, you know, movement within his organization.

It was not pressure from Native American organization. It was the fact that his biggest sponsors were finally forcing him to do something. So, you know, like skepticism, right? That's just where I always come down to when it comes to Washington. But these are not good intentions. They're going to change it, which is good. I'm glad that they're going to have a new name and a new logo officially. but I don't believe that he actually believes that they need to change

and he's only changing because he's being forced to for financial reasons. Yeah, well said. I mean, this was not just FedEx, but Nike pulling the products off, off the website, Amazon. And also, by the way, a lot of the revenue from that stuff gets shared with the other owners. And so if you're Jerry Jones or you're Stephen Ross, and just like, wait a second, we're losing 132 of our merchandise revenue because Daniel Snyder's battling some weird culture war.

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All right. So let's get to the COVID stuff. I guess it's all the COVID stuff at this point. One big, one big news cycle of COVID. I guess there's been a lot of those. All right. So Sunday was a pivotal day in football because a lot of players led by star cornerback Byron Jones apparently was organizing behind the scenes, tweeted essentially that the players want to play but they need safety protocols in place before that. As we said, three of 32 health plans have been approved, one of them being the chiefs whose rookies report today, I believe. There are pretty big outstanding issues. And there were some folks on NFL reporters online who are saying, you know, 99% of this stuff is done or, or, you know,

hey, they're at the one yard line or whatever. And I'm sorry, if frequency of testing is an outstanding issue, it's, you're not 99% done. If how many preseason games they're going to play is still an issue, you're not at 99%. There's a lot of stuff that needs to be hashed out. And I think it will be. It might be hashed out on Monday. But the NFL really, they wanted to be in a strong negotiation stance. And so they waited to the last second. And I think that that in this regard is kind of reckless. And I understand, you know, even the preseason stuff, Andrew Brant tweeted this this morning.

The owners know that some players want one preseason game and then others won zero. And you can figure out who that is. The younger players want to prove themselves or make the team want preseason and the veterans don't. And he said, owners know this. That's why they want to divide and conquer. That's the game plan. And I just don't know why NFL owners are doing the normal NFL owner thing, which is trying to beat the players in negotiation, whatever the cost,

during a very serious problem when, truthfully, it would be very easy for very bad things to happen. Yeah. And I think there's a large group of players that understand that that is, how the NFL owners operate. It is the divide-on-conquer thing. And that's why we saw that very concerted media, social media push yesterday on Sunday morning from so many players. And, you know, this off-season, you know,

has been defined by COVID and defined by the social justice movement from players. And players' voices have been more powerful than ever. And I think they saw that they were able to get at least some concessions out of the NFL regarding social justice and the Black Lights Matter movement by banding together and using their collective voices by social media. So there was a little bit of that. But yeah, I mean, it's so tricky because, you know, I think the NFL has always, you know, going back to March when we first started,

you know, when they first started trying to plan and were adamant that they were going to have a season and talking about having a season with fans, they've had this very optimistic view of what the country was going to look like several months down the road. And, you know, I think. do it. It's still like, oh, 25% of stands. Yeah, they still think they can have fans in the stands, which is wild. Like, in the summer, they were like, full stadiums, full steam ahead.

I mean, this is the only way to describe this is arrogance. So, yeah, I think it's arrogance. I think there was a lot of naivity about what the country was going to be, what was going to look like. You know, just this really, you know, they didn't want to admit any sort of contingency plans. I don't think it would have been wrong to admit that, look, we have to acknowledge that the season is going to be different. And that, you know, the way that they built the schedule and that they could have built the schedule in that you could have locked off the first four weeks. But they did not do that.

They made it so you can kind of tinker with weeks two and three. You could potentially push everything back, you know, and push the playoffs and everything into January and February. But they really didn't. It's like they never, they just had these blinders on about. the potential that this country was not going to recover by fall. And I think they also, there was a, I think, a pretty significant miscalculation about, well, one, how the country was going to behave and how COVID cases were going to take off and move into these.

That's a simple podcast. Right. Yeah, I mean, but just remember, I mean, it wasn't that long ago that, you know, the teams and the universities in Florida, for example, were like, come to Gainesville. It would be great. You can, all these NFL teams. teams can move into games.

A couple of leagues listen to that, to that advice to come to Florida. Which, I mean, yeah, it's wild, right? And they're trying to, you know, but like they can, the NBA can do a bubble. I mean, we'll see if it works. But the NFL, that was a non-starter. That was never anything that was going to be discussed with the league. You know, the NFL has 2,000 plus players, hundreds of, you know, coaches and staff people. And this is, you know, they're trying to go through a five-month plus season here.

you know, what you need for football is so different than what you need for, for basketball or for some of these, you know, even like major league soccer. So, you know, I think when we talk, when we look at these different reports, I think you have to kind of break them out into the different pieces. I do believe it's accurate to say that they're, you know, 99% done on testing protocols. And that's the thing that has to come first because these players literally are flying into these cities right now if they don't live their,

year round. But yeah, they're flying into Kansas City. They're flying into Houston. Rookies from all 32 teams are going to be reporting on Tuesday. And they need to have those testing protocols in place first. Like how often they're tested? Yes. Yeah. It's just it is so, they're doing the NFL owner thing. They're not doing daily testing. Peter King reports it's not even going to be instant results. It can be 24 hours. And we'll get to that in a second. But I mean, they're doing, they're clearly doing that so that the big give

among ownership will be both preseason and daily testing which both of which should have been resolved months ago and I know 100% yeah I guess I guess what I'm saying

is the NFL owners will never change I think I think you're right about that I think that's a pretty good I think that's a pretty good assumption to make but yeah I mean I expect that we'll have like the testing protocols finalized here within the next you know several hours I mean we're recording this at lunch

time on Monday. So it could be at some point on Monday or by Tuesday. But the thing is, is the players have a lot more questions than just how often are we going to be tested. You know, it was very clear from what players were tweeting about on Sunday that they are involving their families in this. And they want some sort of, you know, guarantees, which is difficult because nobody knows anything about COVID, right? I mean, we, you know, if COVID's an iceberg, we're only seeing the very top of like what this disease is capable of and how it's transmitted and what it does to children and how children translate or transmit and, you know, it's all the same conversations that probably should be happening around schools we're having around professional sports,

which is, like you said, a whole different podcast. But, you know, the league has very much focused really since, you know, March, but especially in the last couple of months that they've been really trying to ramp up about training camp, has really focused on what happens within their buildings and what the protocols are for when a player arrives at the building, what's sort of screening and testing and, you know, sanitizing mouthguards and creating these new face shields, these locally face shields and all of this sort of stuff. But not having any control over what happens when guys leave.

And, you know, so now they keep talking about like, it's a shared responsibility and blah, blah. And the players are like, no, it's your responsibility. Like, we'll show up. Our contracts say that we need to be there July 28th. We'll show up, but it's your responsibility to make sure that me and my family are going to be safe. And as of right now,

the NFL has not been able to provide real answers or any sort of assurances about that that'll happen and then what they're going to do if there's any sort of outbreak. And what we're seeing around the country right now, it would be extremely naive to think that there's not going to be an outbreak

in one or more of these 32 teams. So I want to go back to something you said, what you find interesting, is that you think that obviously the news cycle in just in life has been dominated by two things in 2020, social justice and and COVID. And in a way, what we saw yesterday was a bit of emerging of the two just from a football perspective in the sense that guys like Patrick Mahomes who have been speaking up on social issues now know how powerful their voices can be and they're using it. And Seth Wickershan made the point

yesterday that the previous generation Brady and Manning, they came together once on like what the texture of the new footballs would be. Like, that was the one time that they were like, we're together in this. And now you have legitimate superstars, Drew Brees, Patrick Mahomes, Michael Thomas, obviously not a star, but J.C. Treter has obviously been very outspoken. You're talking about Russell Wilson, talking about dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of guys who are becoming extremely prominent social media critics of the league and their safety protocols. Do you get the sense, because I do, that this could be the first. of many of those waves and that this this is going to sort of be evolving and you're going to see a

Patrick Mahomes or a Drew Brees or Michael Thomas or Russell Wilson speaking out throughout the year because I don't think I think this is all evolving so quickly that there's going to be issues all the time and I think that these players are just going to keep speaking out all year about what the NFL is doing what clubs are doing 100 percent I think that's going to happen it's going to be about social issues they're not going to stay quiet as long as Colin Kaepernick is still out of the league you know, health and safety issues for sure. I'll be very interested to see if, you know, the next time that there's, you know, a major officiating issue that's going on if these guys will, you know,

last year, whether it was Tom Brady one night watching Thursday night football complaining about holding calls and they changed it. Well, you know what? The rest of these guys could probably. Right? Remember he like solved the holding problem just by watching. Yeah, I forgot. Anything that happened last season feels like it happened.

It was like 18 years ago. It's fine. But yeah, I mean, I think they really, collectively are understanding their kind of power. And you know, it's NFL players are not always unified on things. Look, I mean, the, the CPA

passed by 60 votes last year. I mean, they barely got enough votes to pass that CBA and, you know, there are a lot of things that you can still criticize that CBA about, but imagine if they had gotten that done. Imagine like the world of, you know, what the NFL would be in as a whole

right now if there was no actual long-term CBA signed. But they are finding these issues that, you know, a majority of players do care about and that they can, that they're stronger together when they talk about it. And then the one thing that I'm also really kind of excited and encouraged by is that college athletes are doing this too. College athletes this off season have realized that they have voices and that they have power. So the next generation of NFL players are going to be arriving, knowing that they can use their voices and use their platforms in ways that maybe previous generations, it took them longer. You know, it's been really interesting to watch guys who are on their first contracts speaking up. You know, Patrick Bohombs was always going to get $500 million.

Yeah. But, you know, he was at the front and center of the Black Lives Matter video, you know, before he got his massive contract. And, you know, it's Seguan Berkeley and, you know, guys who have come into the NFL post Colin Kaepernick that are kind of leading all of these movements right now. and they're not waiting to become five-time, all-pros, and future Hall of Famers to stand behind something. And the rest of this old guard of quarterbacks,

this old guard of NFL guys, they should be grateful to what these young guys are doing right now and probably follow their lead. Yeah, it's just exciting, but I expect that we're going to see it a lot. I mean, what we saw on Sunday is not going to be the last time these guys are banding together to talk about health and safety.

Even with the college stuff, there's some, We're going to be some tangible changes. You know, Quincy Avery, who's the quarterback coach for Deshaun Watson's mother folks, he tweeted a couple of days ago or a couple weeks ago. Like, look, guys, a lot of college, a lot of your favorite college players, how we put it, have taken their last college snap. I mean, some of these guys is not going to put up with a ludicrous season if it's,

if it's delayed or if the schools are, you know, it's hypothetical. But if they're going online only for the regular student body, but trying to push through a college football season, I mean, some of the stuff might end up being so ludicrous. And by the way, there's no incentive to play because, spoiler, these guys don't get paid by the university. And it's going to be really interesting to see the activism at the college level as well. I want to get into Peter King's piece. So Peter King went to Minnesota Vikings camp to the last week, I guess, and kind of detailed what the COVID testing looked like. The COVID tester has taken Mike Zimmer's parking spot,

which is a phenomenal detail. Having seen all of this, And it looks like the Vikings have a great set. The Vikings, Lindsay, you've been to that facility. You know those folks. They're a very smart organization. They've thought through everything.

Their health and safety is actually, I mean, their training room, their health and safety. I've gotten a tour of that. That's just a real thing. They've thought through everything. And if anybody is going to be on top of it,

it's going to be them. I'm less optimistic about other teams being on top of it, but I think the Vikings are going to be on top. Yeah, I mean, I would have rather seen a tour of like the Los Angeles Chargers where basically like their training facility isn't a business part. Or Washington. Or Washington. Yeah, exactly.

Or like the old Oakland Raiders facility. But yes, sorry. There's a couple teams. I don't want to put anybody on blast because it's actually not that unique. There's a couple teams where like they meet in in like trailers. You don't see. Yeah. And it's like how are we going to have COVID?

Like this is clearly not a situation where like you have temporary room. and all this stuff, and, you know, temporary locker rooms are a big thing in some of these places. Oh, yeah. I mean, they're all over. I mean, even some of the nicest facilities, like the star in Frisco, which is one of the brand, I mean, it along with Minnesota are like two of the very newest training facilities. Their locker room is not large. It's kind of like very long and narrow and they have like very swanky, like, you know,

oak lockers and all of this stuff. But there's not room to spread these guys out. So even the nicest places, it's going to. be a big challenge to accommodate all of these COVID protocols. 100%. So Peter says, after having seen this, last point, I'm dubious about the NFL's ability to play a season in full. There are 10 teams in hotspot states, Florida, Georgia, Texas, Arizona, and California. The NFL is not playing in a bubble.

The chance that none of these teams will be ravaged by COVID-19 seems far-fetched. I hope I am wrong, but I doubt it. Peter King is as good a reporter as there is in our sport and in all sports and in all journalism, okay? I don't think Peter would say this lightly, and I think that he's, I think there will be 16 games, and I think there will be playoffs, but I don't think it'll be easy.

And I think you might have to have some built-in mechanisms where almost a little bit of almost what, like, the MLS has had, where it's like, oh, man, Nashville has got X amount of positives. They can't play this week. We're moving that game. You know, in the same way that, that, that, and this is very different, but listen, games get rescheduled for hurricanes, you know, acts of God, all that stuff,

or they get moved if there's a situation. It's going to have to be very fluid for the entire season to be played. I think there's going to be football, but I think there's going to have to be a lot of flexibility within that. Lindsay, what's your take on what this season looks like just from a structural standpoint with the looming kind of threat of an outbreak? Yeah, and there will be outbreaks.

I mean, I'm with Peter on that. I just think if we look around what's going on in other pro sports and then just within her country in general, just how many people are asymptomatic and are testing positive. I think I am very curious what these testing numbers are going to look like when 2,000 players show up to their facilities next week

because we know that while the players right now are arguing for, you know, significant safety protocols from the NFL and assurances that there won't be outbreaks, they haven't exactly been isolating themselves and quarantining themselves getting ready for the NFL season. I mean, we've seen them working out in groups without masks for months in in hotspots, in Dallas, in Florida,

you know, Tom Brady's infamous workouts that he was getting together, you know, there in Tampa. So I expect that we're going to see, you know, I mean, what were the NFL, our NBA numbers or something initially like 7%? I mean, we're going to be seeing significant amount of positive tests when the players first support. Yeah, you had that at the beginning of the bubble for the NBA and then they all sit in the bubble. And then they weren't a bubble, right? Yeah. The problem is if whatever the testing numbers are,

there's not a guarantee that those are going to get better because there is no bubble. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, because then they're going to be going out and they're going to be going back to their house, they're going back to their homes and going to the grocery store and maybe kids will be in school. And I think the NFL's ability to control outbreaks is going to be really, really difficult. I mean, they're doing, I know they're working through a lot of things that are going to help with their contact tracing and a lot of of fancy technology that they're going to be using that will hopefully help them, you know, mitigate or, you know, when one player test positive, figure out everybody else that they've been in contact with more quickly than kind of traditional contact tracing.

But we'll see. I mean, I don't know. But I think that given the amount of money that's at stake here, and look, it was at the root of everything we talked about with Washington or or in this podcast, money is going to drive everything here. Money drives everything with the NFL ownership. They are going to do everything possible to get to, whatever, September, 7th, September 10th, week one, that first one weekend, and make it a huge event. Welcome back to football. America's back to normal. And, you know, it's going to be this, you know, the national anthem and, you know,

this big thing about like this big American success story of, you know, playing football amid COVID. Yeah. It's going to feel real icky. It's what it's going to, I'm going to have the like conflict of feel. I'm sure you will as well. But yeah, they're going to have to be flexible. They keep talking about like, oh, we've moved games because of hurricanes or because the ceiling of the metrodome collapsed.

Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. You know, that they have been able to, you know, be flexible and move things. But they haven't built those mechanisms in yet. And I think there were a lot of opportunities that they could have done that already. And they haven't because they've been just so blindly focused on normalcy and having a normal NFL season when I don't think anybody, well, I shouldn't make broad generalization. like that about the American public. But I don't think a lot of people would have faulted them for acknowledging that this year is going to be very difficult and it's going to be different and making some smart, rational

decisions to build the schedule differently or to, you know, move some teams or change training camp locations, source of things that would maybe help mitigate some of these risks. The lack of reckoning with the reality has been the strangest thing. And I think for a team that tries to play on everything because there's $14, $15 billion in the line every single season, it's been a little bit strange to see them try to approach this as normal.

Marlon Humphrey, the Baltimore Raven Star quarterback has tweeted, quote, that corona test brought tears to my eyes instantly, LOL. So we're going to be saying a lot of that. The interesting thing to me in that piece is Richard Sherman tells Peter

that no one knows if they're going to be able to finish. He pulled players. Are they going to be able to finish the season? No one knows, but I feel like the way this league runs, which Sherman said, if the season starts, they'll fight tooth and nail to finish. I think that's an important point. The Super Bowl, I don't think this is exactly breaking news. The Super Bowl is lucrative for them and they're going to want to play it. Maybe it gets delayed a couple of weeks. Maybe at some point, I don't think anybody would fault them. Listen, the NBA and NHL and MLS were pushed back months. I don't think anybody would fault the NFL if even in the next couple of weeks or the next month, they said, listen, We're going to push the NFL, we're going to push the playoffs in the Super Bowl back three weeks just to give a cushion. And the best case scenario is, yeah, three weeks after a crazy season to rest and recover and all that. And there is no outbreak, right? That's the hope.

The worst case scenario would be you need those three weeks to play rescheduled games. Maybe you need more. But I just think that trying to say we're going to play all of these on time, we're going to play the Super Bowl in Tampa and the first week of February, all this. stuff seems a little bit. I wouldn't say misguided because they haven't acted on it yet, but it's optimistic at best. Andrew Whitworth, who had COVID and had his entire family get it as well. And I believe nine for nine is the ways he put it as kind of a tongue-in-cheek joke. He says, I don't feel great about the chance chances.

Not that it can't be done, but it's going to be hard this year to have a high quality of play and play to the finish. How do you keep the games fair when teams have key play? player is going in and out of the lineup. I think that this is, you know, Philip Rivers made the point of the conference call a couple weeks ago. What happens if someone tests positive the week of the Super Bowl? Tom Pelliser and I talked about those, those options and those contingencies last week, but this is going to be a really, really complicated season. And I just, you know, to peel back the curtain a little bit, you know, I was talking to my editor about story ideas, you know, the next

couple of months. And this time of year, it's like, hey, I'll do some of Matthew Stafford or, hey, you know, let's go down to hang out with Deshaun. And it's like, there's one story right now. And I guess two stories, you know, COVID and then obviously the social justice part of it, which will continue. But this isn't a let's catch up with Matt Ryan type of year. Yeah. Yeah, there's no training camp tour.

We're not going to be driving across the country and, you know, sitting down with, yeah, quarterback and head coaches around the league. I mean, this is, yeah, we're sitting here on Zoom right now. This is going to be our training camp tour. It's going to be very different. But yeah, I mean, we're in the exact same boat, too, where it's, you know, COVID is going to impact every bit of the NFL season. And even things that we think are just about football are going to be about COVID. And it's going to be about the teams that are able to succeed despite all of these complications.

It's going to be the guys who are replacing guys that get sick. I mean, what about when, like, there's going to be a head coach who gets it. And, you know, there's a lot of over 65 high-risk coaches in this league. it's going to happen and it's going to be how well and how quickly does the NFL adjust and God forbid somebody gets critically and critically ill

and that's I think kind of the elephant in the room here is that that could happen and I'm not sure and maybe that's what the players have started speculating about and started talking about through their tweets on Sunday was like I got to keep my

keep our family safe because I think it's a really, really real chance that somebody in the NFL sphere, whether it's a player, a coach, an assistant coach, a scout, a parent of a player, you know, a spouse of a player, somebody is going to end up, somebody will probably end up dying from this outbreak. And we saw it in the NBA. Carl Anthony Towns's mother unfortunately passed away during that break. And I think that as the outbreak grows across the nation, this will continue.

This is how the virus works. Is that there are deaths. And I feel like I don't know, you talk about the at-risk folks. I mean, I don't know the numbers on over 70 coaches or over 65 coaches or whatever. But I think it's kind of what you're saying. You know, I mean, luckily Andrew Whitworth's entire family recovered. But there are a lot of people, the NFL players, coaches, and executives are connected to that are going to get this virus throughout the fall, and how does that play into the season?

Yeah, and they don't have answers for that yet. They don't have answers for what's going to happen if, you know, if there's three offensive linemen who test positive, does the entire group need to be quarantined? They don't have answers for if somebody's wife gets sick and then can the player, because they're going to set this opt-out date of August 1st. It's hard to have set these hard and fast rules, deadlines right now when this virus. Russell's wife is pregnant.

Russell Wilson's wife is pregnant. And what happens if there's a medical emergency in the Seahawks, let's say this is all hypothetical, obviously. And he's just like, I'm bailing on this week. I don't know if he would. Go ahead. Well, no, it's a hundred percent. And there's probably hundreds of players whose wives are pregnant right now across the league.

And did you see the tank, the story about DeMarcus Lawrence? I did. This week where he's debating whether or not he's going to report. He missed the birth of his first child because he was at, his rookie mini camp and kind of did the like, I have to be here at rookie mini camp. So he phacimed in for the birth of his first child. And for years, has regretted that he missed the birth of his first child for football. And now he's saying, I'm not going to miss the birth of my child again.

And if because of football, I have to be quarantined and I can't be around my wife and go to the hospital and be there for my child's birth and maybe I'm not going to play football. And this is one of the highest paid defensive players in the NFL, you know, a very key person on the Dallas Cowboys defense. And I think we're going to start hearing more and more stories about that. And this is the leverage point that the players have, too. They don't have a ton of leverage. We can talk about this all the time, right?

That the owners are not fair negotiators here. You know, they don't negotiate nicely here. The only leverage that the players have is the threat not to show up and not to play. And so they're starting to push back on that. And I think they're very serious and very real concerns that they have. Lindsay Jones, next time we'll have you on for some some good news. Next time is good news.

We're going to have an emergency pod and just talk about it. We'll have a great time. Thank you for joining us. I'm just a Debbie Downer, right? Yeah. No, I mean, when we started that we talked about this last week

to do the Washington stuff and then obviously the COVID stuff, you know, became more of focal point on Sunday. And so we just stacked bad news on bad news. So that's it. Lindsay Jones, NFL reporter with you. I thought thanks for joining us.

Thanks, Kevin.