Peter King is staying optimistic.
Although there’s a dark cloud of uncertainty hanging over sports thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, the NBC Sports football analyst is confident there still will be a 2020 NFL season.
“I do. I am pretty bullish on it,” King said Thursday on WEEI’s “Dale & Keefe,” as transcribed by WEEI.com. “If you listen to my podcast with Dr. (Anthony) Fauci, he believes that there will be football and he thinks also that there should be football. As do I. America needs sports, period.
“I think that all of reporting, all of the fact finding, all of the debate, all of the long Zoom meetings that people in the NFL are having and people with all these teams are having — that’s good. All the questioning, just like we’re questioning what about the test taking — all of that is good.”
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The NFL has been pressing on as if there will be a season, with free agency beginning as planned back in March and the draft being conducted virtually at the end of April. The regular season is scheduled to kick off Sept. 10, with the defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs facing the Houston Texans in a Thursday night opener.
“Three months with this disease is really an eternity, because just think two months ago I was going out to dinner and shaking hands with people,” King said Thursday, per WEEI.com. ” … So much changes in the span of two months, and the NFL really has three months before players have to gather and mobilize and start preparing for the season.”
Of course, even if the NFL season begins on time, it’ll likely look very different. For one, it’s hard to imagine there being fans in the stands — early in the season, at least — and TV networks might need to get creative with their broadcasts as a result.
For now, everyone pretty much is in wait-and-see mode, with the NFL on Thursday sending a memo to teams highlighting what needs to happen before facilities can reopen. But if you squint hard enough, it’s possible to see some light at the end of the tunnel.
