As training camp is about a week out, the NY Giants are taking advantage of their home real estate and enacting smart safety precautions.
While the NFL as a whole has a massive problem on its hands in the coming months when it comes to attempting to safety resume play during this pandemic, the NY Giants will enjoy a special advantage that most teams around the league will not.
With rookies due to report in a few days and the rest of the squad in just a week’s time, despite many pontificating that there will be no season at all, that date is coming on fast and we’ll be in a whole new world when it comes to how practices and eventually – and hopefully – games will be played.
Since the NY Giants – not the Jets – are the owners of the Quest Diagnostics Training Center which is just about at the end of their home stadium parking lot, Big Blue will be able to navigate these new waters better than most.
For reference, the New York Jets’ training facilities are 30 miles away, making it much harder for them to properly conduct a practice under all these new provisions.
According to the New York Post, Ravens head coach John Harbaugh called the NFL social distancing guidelines, “humanly impossible,” and he just may be right. Still, with the team’s home base only a couple of hundred yards from the practice facility the team will have a much better chance at getting as close to following those guidelines as possible.
What safety precautions are the NY Giants taking?
For starters, the NY Giants will take advantage of all of the locker room space they have at MetLife Stadium, including space usually reserved for visiting teams, and even the smaller locker rooms meant for XFL and high school teams.
I doubt any other NFL team will be able to enjoy that advantage in addition to only have to travel across a parking lot to get to their official practice and office facilities.
With all the offices between MetLife and Quest, executives, personnel men, and scouts will be able to safely social distance as well while keeping a close eye on the team.
This, combined with quarterback Daniel Jones leading workouts all summer should inspire NY Giants fan that Joe Judge, Dave Gettleman, and the rest of the organization have done as solid a job navigating these difficult circumstances as one could hope.
The team has already begun testing returning NY Giants employees, although it is unclear how the whole testing and handling of positive tests among players will be handled — that’ll be the biggest hurdle for all teams to figure out, although the mandate will obviously come down to the NFL.
With this latest COVID flare up across the country, the season appeared to be in at least some doubt after commissioner Roger Goodell was making all the right moves during the beginning of the pandemic.
Now, with training camp just days out, NY Giants fans have reason to believe that we will in fact have a season, and we’ll be as well prepared to deal with the complications as any team.