Despite everyone still under quarantine at home, the Arizona Cardinals have the green light to get started on 2020
We’ve had free agency, we are about to experience a virtual draft, and now the Arizona Cardinals will get their chance to officially get their 2020 season started. Oh, and yes, it will all be virtual.
Per Charles Robinson from Yahoo sports, the NFL will allow teams to begin to distribute their 202 materials to players in a virtual environment starting next Monday April 20th. Even though this is still different, it is something.
Offseason NFL thread...
— Charles Robinson (@CharlesRobinson) April 13, 2020
1. The NFL and players union have come to an agreement on the terms of a virtual offseason. Qualified teams can now begin distributing their offseason program materials to players - and players can begin virtual workouts to earn their workout bonuses.
This also means, per Robinson, that players will be able to begin virtual workouts. Sure, it’s not like everyone can come together but again it is something.
At this point the news that players can begin virtual workouts isn’t all that exciting to fans, or at least it shouldn’t be. To the players it means everything. It means they can work towards their workout bonuses.
Another interesting thing about the workouts per Robinson, is the players are going to be given a $1500 stipend for equipment. It’s not much, but again, it’s something.
It’s not likely going to be anytime soon that all 50 states will no longer be on lockdown, a requirement for teams to be able to come together again at team headquarters. This makes this even more important.
The league hasn’t canceled OTA’s yet but the annual gathering of players in May will likely be canceled before too long. It would be surprising at this point if any camps are held at all between now and June.
For now, its still full steam ahead for the draft next week. After that, the exciting news to come will be the schedule release, we think. It would not be surprising to see that get postponed once again though.
In years past the schedule has come out sometime this week, the week before the draft. News came out earlier this month the schedule would likely be released no earlier than May 9th.