The NFLPA has voted to cancel the preseason

The debate among league leaders and the NFLPA continued Friday when the player’s union voted Friday to cancel the preseason. This according to NFL Network’s Mike Garafolo.

After players continue to raise concerns about playing football this season due to the COVID-19 pandemic, NFL Players Association leaders decided to vote on what to do with the preseason and decided it’d be best to cancel the preseason entirely.

Part of the vote to cancel the preseason was a plan to have some kind of a conditioning program that would take place of the games and spread out in weeks.

The first stage would be medical physicals for all players upon reporting to camp, which would last three days, per NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero. The following 21 days would make up the second stage, a strength and conditioning program to prepare the players’ bodies for a return to football activity. From there, teams would move to a third stage that would resemble OTAs in which players would participate in 10 days of non-contact, non-padded practices before eventually shifting to a 14-day fourth stage that would be focused on what camp traditionally looks like, with potentially 10 total practices with a maximum of eight padded practices.

The NFL recently decided to scrap half of the preseason games, specifically Weeks 1 and 4. There has been no word on where the league currently stands with the union’s push to cancel all four games.

The Buccaneers and the other 31 teams are scheduled to begin training camp on July 28, but media members planning to attend camp will be under strict guidelines. Part of those guidelines includes limiting the amount of reporters covering practices as well as no in-person interviews until further notice.