In An Intermittent NFL, Teams Mix to Adjust Their Routines


Athletes are creatures of habit, but NFL players are in their own league. In their busy lives during the season, nearly everything is strictly prescribed: sleep, meals, workouts, training sessions, time in the coach room.

So on Friday, NFL bowed to the rise in the number of players who tested positive coronavirus and three weekend games moved Monday and Tuesday did more than disrupt the TV viewing habits of fans.

In addition to the “Monday Night Football” game, the Cleveland Browns are playing with the Las Vegas Raiders on Monday after their game moved on Saturday. Then, on Tuesday night, the Washington Football Team will play for the Seattle Seahawks and Los Angeles Rams at the same time as the Eagles in Philadelphia.

Extra days off will give injured players more time to recover, and that’s a boon this late in the season when muscles, joints and bones ache from months of abuse.

But players and teams form rhythms as the season progresses, and last-minute changes to the schedule – all in the name of finishing the season on time and keeping the league’s television partners happy – can create turmoil for players and coaches.

Extra apps should be created, including more time to watch the video, which has the potential disadvantage of giving players and coaches too much time to overthink an opponent. Travel schedules were also interrupted: The Browns and Raiders kicked off at 2 p.m. Las Vegas time on Monday, an unusual time for an NFL game to kick off.

Matches at the beginning of the week will also give teams less time to pack up and plan for Week 16, when many teams are battling for the end of the season.

“The teams will be impacted next Sunday,” said Steve Gera, who worked in the front offices of the Browns and the Chargers for 10 years and now runs a sports performance company. “We’re in the back half of the season and you have a compressed timetable, so these games will have a bigger impact on teams trying to rest and prepare for the playoffs.”

The schedule changes are a function of the number of players on the league’s Covid-19 reserve list, which has ballooned in recent days due to the spread of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus. There are so many players on the Cleveland and Washington reserve roster that teams may have to start signed quarterbacks from practice squads.

Coaches also have to adjust their routines. Rams Coach Sean McVay says he treats Sunday like a typical Friday for planning purposes, and treats Monday like a typical Saturday in hopes of aligning the game plan and practice flow for Tuesday’s game. After facing the Seahawks, the Rams will play the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday, which will give their team as much rest as they would get if they were playing the game Thursday night after a Sunday game. McVay said the Rams emphasize mental preparation due to mixing.

“These are things we’re well equipped to do, especially late in the season,” McVay said in a phone call with reporters on Sunday. “It’s a real premium for maximizing over-the-neck information and reviews and stuff like that.”

Washington Coach Ron Rivera echoed McVay. His team’s schedule has worked well, he said, as he played with the Dallas Cowboys on December 12 and will face them again on Sunday night, a short week after the Eagles game. Rivera said the plans of their previous meeting still had to be fresh, and the players and coaches had the unusual opportunity to watch the Cowboys v Giants game on Sunday, a movie they would usually watch later in the week.

“Most of the work was done outside of the next game they were going to play,” Rivera said at a press conference on Saturday.

Gera said it’s difficult to track the impact of the mixed schedule on injuries because so few games were postponed in a given season. League games ported last year when outbreaks spread to teams. The teams played on Tuesday for the first time in a decade, and one game played Wednesday afternoon. Game quality seemed to be declining in these games. The San Francisco 49ers played both home games in Glendale, Arizona due to local bans on large-scale gatherings.

Still, the majority of games were played on schedule and this season the league has not had to postpone any game to Week 15.

Five of the six teams that changed their game played on Sunday the previous weekend, so these teams will have an equal amount of rest. (The Coaches played on Monday, December 13, so they’ll have one day less off Tuesday than their rivals, the Seahawks. But the Coaches are at home.)

Older players can also benefit from an extra day or two of rest, as injuries take longer to heal than their younger teammates, especially at this point in the season. The fact that this is the first season to feature 17 regular season games makes the rest a huge bonus.

While players complained about Thursday’s games and the effects on their bodies, At least one study looking at injuries from 2012 to 2017Rather than limiting the program to Sunday and Monday, it found that there was no appreciable change in injury rates from playing games on those days.

Coaches like to tell their players to play one game at a time and not think too far ahead. However, the six teams whose matches have been postponed have no choice but to look at the Week 16 calendar. For example, the Browns beat the Packers in Green Bay, Wis., on Saturday.

Last season, 15 games were rescheduled, including a handful that was carried away with the farewell weeks mixed up. When the postponed matches were played in the same week, the home team won in four of the six matches.

Accommodation for teams with a large number of players on the Covid-19 roster did not go well with players from teams not affected by the outbreaks.

“So we have to suffer and compromise our program because of another team error,” Eagles said. Rodney McLeod tweeted on Friday. “Make sense! Smh.”

Casey Hayward, a corner player for the Raiders, has hinted that the NFL is showing favoritism for the Browns because their center JC Tretter is president of the union.

McVay acknowledged that teams without the virus outbreak may be unhappy, but delays help keep games competitive because more players will be available.

“Can I understand why Seattle or any of the other teams that are ready to go? Absolutely,” McVay said on Saturday. “Nobody wants to have to play in a shorter week, but I think one of the great things about the NFL is that it’s built on equality, trying to create a fair playing field and great competition.”





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