TAKEAWAYS FROM HARD KNOCKS EPISODE ONE

BY ADAM GREENE

We are officially, as of this writing, less than a month away from kicking off what will be the strangest NFL season of our lifetimes. Most (if not all) games will be played with no fans as the teams try to navigate a contact sport when most of us are avoiding contact like, well, the plague.

What’s it going to take to get there? The premier episode of HBO’s Hard Knocks gave us insight for the first time in what it’s taken to safely open training camp amidst the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic. And it was harrowing.

You can watch the whole episode here.

This season the Hard Knocks crew is covering two teams; the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers, as they are local to the NFL Films’ offices and, because of the Southern California weather, easier to keep safe with a film crew lurking around. We’ll get back to that. Trust me.

If you were watching live Wednesday night, the show opened with Chargers head coach Anthony Lynn telling his team via Zoom that he himself caught the coronavirus during the offseason. That it was real, it was bad, and that he could not promise them that they would not catch it. It was a sobering moment and shows the real talent behind NFL Films and why they need to constantly be handed Emmys every single season.

As players from both teams submitted to testing as they showed up to camp, only one player, Rams rookie Terrell Lewis, tested positive. And this is the first thing we can take away from the show that can keep us hopeful that a full season can be played. Teams are testing players every day and these aren’t college kids. They’re professional athletes who’ve obviously been careful and taken care of themselves this offseason, using the good fortune and money they’ve made to stay safe. Thursday, the NFL released that they have just a 0.46 percent positive test rate league wide. That’s with every player and coach tested every day, a total of 109,075 COVID-19 tests.

But still, a few of them have it and have to be isolated. There are no reports of any serious cases, which is good. The NFL, if it keeps this up, will get to play.

But here’s the other takeaway and, frankly, it should impact your wagering as you start to lay your money down on potential conference and Super Bowl Champions. The Rams built an entire outdoor, open-air facility in which to work out and have meetings. The Chargers have that option to and as long as the weather is warm throughout the United States, every team will be able to do the same.

But it’s going to get colder. Teams outside of warm-weather areas won’t have that option come November and definitely not December. Lynn made a point during the episode and it was entirely true; teams that manage COVID-19 the best, that stay healthy, will get to play for a championship. That means simply that the warm weather teams, like the Rams, Chargers, Las Vegas Raiders, Houston Texans, Miami Dolphins, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Jacksonville Jaguars and a handful of others will have a significant advantage over the northern squads.

The hiccups being that the Florida teams are in Florida, currently one of the worst coronavirus hot spots in the world. But if they can stay separate for the actual population, stay in their team “bubble,” you have to really like the Buccaneers chances of going far in the NFC. Same with the Rams and New Orleans Saints. In the AFC, Houston’s December temperatures are in the mid 60s.

How important will it be, during the normal “cold and flu” season in the midst of a pandemic to be able to have those meetings outside in tents and six feet apart?

It could very well be the reason a team hoists the Lombardi Trophy come February.