Sean Payton talking on the phone about the numbers. Big numbers.
The New Orleans Saints have 179 other people – players, coaches and staff – designated as “Level 1” or “Level 2” according to NFL protocols for their role and proximity to the team. Payton, who in March became the first known FIGURE in the NFL diagnosed to contract COVID-19, tries to calculate the odds while reflecting on the merits of the “soft bubble” in which the Saints function as an educational field and in all likelihood in the season.
“Every night we have stories,” the head coach told USA TODAY Sports.
A “story” is a story of how a user is exposed to the virus.
“Hey, some stories are safe,” he added. “Some stories are long. The only assistant coach who had it, his nanny gave it to him in Florida. She in space when he there. So those stories can vary. But still, when you’re 170, man, it’s better to recognize, that it’s a lot of stories. »
During the season, Payton deduced that there would be nearly a million stories in the league. That’s why Payton and General Manager Mickey Loomis secured the Loews Hotel in downtown New Orleans for the team’s exclusive use camp, with players and staff able to stay there, with food provided and various pandemic measurements used, rather than returning home after painting days on the team. headquartered in the suburbs of Metairie Louisiana.
More than two-thirds of players on the 80-player list remain in the bubble, which is close to the isolation that is regularly built in the general hours of the education camp regime.
“All I’m going to do is just reduce the stories,” Payton said. “Listen, this is not foolproof. I said, “If you want to go home and see your children, come ahead.” It’s not mandatory. Even for the staff. But at least we check to mitigate the imaginable variables that come into play when returning home and at work “.
Notables who chose to stay in the bubble: Drew Brees and defensive cap Cameron Jordan.
“Cam and Drew, I’m going to give you a hard time, ” said Payton. “Hey, what was your story last night?” “
The Saints had two players, long snapper Zach Wood and supporter Kaden Elliss, who briefly appeared on the NFL’s COVID-19 roster last week. The list does not verify that a player has tested positive for the virus; possibly it would also come with players who were in close contact with a disabled user with the virus. In Wood and Elliss’ cases, Payton stated that they presented the property as “false positives” and were then removed after lacking the one-day paintings when several subsequent tests came back negative.
No Saints player, Payton said, has been with COVID-19.
“I’m proud and satisfied that we didn’t have a positive test, but you want to know something: just when you think everything’s okay, bam! We’ll have eight,” Payton said. “That’s how this guy works. Not that we understood. Dude, we don’t get it.”
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Payton has originally been thinking about the pandemic. When the NFL ordered groups not to use their headquarters during the “virtual project” in April, Payton installed another war room against the pandemic in a brewery owned by Saints owner Gayle Benson. However, the NFL crushed that plan and ordered all those responsible for resolving the team to make resolutions from home. And unlike the maximum groups, Payton has moved away from the low-season “virtual” conditioning program for players. Instead, he asked players to take care of their families, to remain compatible and to see them in camp.
Now comes the “soft” bubble, encouraged through the good luck of bubbles for the NBA, WNBA, NHL and MLS reporting 0 positive tests at certain stages.
“It tells us Array, ” said Payton. “And baseball tells us that, too.”
Allen Sills, the NFL’s leading medical advisor, encourages creativity in paintings through the Saints and other clubs that have incorporated measures beyond league protocols.
“On the way,” Sills said, “we’ll all have to realize Array … a bubble alone does not protect us if not everyone complies with all other threat mitigation elements.”
Sills repeated the standards: masks. Physical distance. Hand hygiene. The protocols, he argued, created virtual football bubbles throughout the league in painting environments. This is what happens after the paintings, with possible non-public options and field in the mix, which worries the groups and league officials more than what happens on the clock.
“Every time we let our guard down,” Sills added, “that’s when we become vulnerable.”
Payton knows the twists and turns are coming. Like other coaches, it recognizes the main considerations of seeing an epidemic-held position organization or the need to adjust whether a key player scores definitively this weekend. He complained about major league organizations that were closed for periods.
However, he insists that he is confident that the NFL season will succeed in the final line of a final season.
“The question is, “To what extent will our affair be interrupted?” said Payton.
At this point, it appears that about 2% of players in the education camps tested positive for COVID-19, based on the effects reported through the NFL Players Association. Sills did not verify NFLPA figures, saying the league is still analyzing verification data, with categories that can make the difference between newer and older instances that have resulted in positive effects.
In any case, the dynamics of the NFL environment will replace in the coming days with the start of full touch practices. Will this lead to much more positive tests? We’ll see.
Payton, meanwhile, has a prediction: “Every time the playoffs start, no matter what we’ve tried, it will fall dramatically.”
He thinks that the explanation of this can be discovered with the bubble technique. In other words, the Saints’ optional summer settings can simply be a style used in the league on the way to the Super Bowl.
“Do you think the week before the AFC and NFC championship games, the groups will allow positives?” Payton says.
“Allow” is a questionable selection of words, but he makes his point.
“Teams are going to ask for that Loews on their own,” Payton said. “And possibly it wouldn’t be a sweet forty. “It’s going to be a hard bubble. Dude, nobody’s going to miss the Super Bowl for COVID.”
Of course, there are a lot of things between now and the assignment that they then want to put in position for the NFL to keep its season afloat after canceling the pre-season.
Meanwhile, Payton has stories. He believes he hired COVID-19 from Saints Vice President Greg Bensel for a golf vacation in March. Bensel skipped dinner one night without feeling well; Payton then sat next to him on a small personal jet. Bensel later discovered he had COVID-19 antibodies.
At a recent team meeting, Payton confessed to his players.
“I said, ‘My story was transparent last night, until this morning. I stopped at McDonald’s drive-thru,” Payton said. “And the players went crazy.”
“But they gave it to me. I have the antibody. Not you guys!”
He hopes that it will continue to be for reasons that go far beyond football.
Follow Jarrett Bell from USA TODAY Sports on Twitter @JarrettBell.
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