Questions about the season abound as Duke football players return for workouts
Given his faith in Duke’s testing, tracing and social distancing protocols, David Cutcliffe’s concerns about his football players’ health centers on their time away from the team.
As they return to campus for offseason conditioning Sunday, his players aim to allay their coach’s coronavirus-centered concern.
“Duke is a different place,” senior offensive lineman Rakavius Chambers said Friday. “Each of the guys that Coach Cut and the football staff recruits, they come to Duke knowing that they have to follow the team rules and the team standards. Being a senior leader, I feel it’s important that I be an example and set those standards. So I’m not out not social distancing. I’m not out without a mask. I’m always washing my hands and practicing good hygiene.”
Gone from campus since the pandemic hit in March, abruptly ending spring practice and forcing classes to be held online the remainder of the spring semester, Duke’s athletes are finally being allowed to return.
The football players are first up, scheduled to arrive Sunday to go through testing and isolation to ensure they are not infected with COVID-19.
As players began returning to college campus around the country last month, outbreaks and clusters of COVID-19 infections have cropped up around the country. Clemson was hit with an outbreak last month. On Wednesday, North Carolina announced it was pausing its football conditioning work for one week after 37 tests among its athletes, staff and coaches came back positive.
The 65-year-old Cutcliffe said keeping athletes safe outside of the team activities is a large challenge.
“It’s probably the most difficult thing we are going to face,” Cutcliffe said. “We may have them, in a normal circumstance, four hours a day is the max once school starts. That certainly will be the biggest issue.”
Cutcliffe said he’s spent many hours trying to come up with a plan to combat this. In the end, he’ll trust his players to do the right thing.
“This may be naive of me, but I’m putting them in charge of that mitigation,” he said. “I’m not going to follow them around. I told them we’re not putting a chip under your skin to GPS you. There has to be responsibility on some 22 and 23-year-olds to help. They know what each other is doing. Don’t kid yourself. They know.”
The players already have in-depth knowledge of the protocols they’ll be expected to adhere to when they arrive on Sunday. Cutcliffe and the team’s medical staff held a 90-minute Zoom call with the players’ parents to answer all their questions.
“That’s a long time for Coach Cut and our training staff to just sit down and talk about what our protocols are going to be,” Chambers said. “I really appreciated that and I know my mom did as well.”
On Sunday, players will report to Wallace Wade Stadium where medical staff, with no coaches present, will conduct symptom monitoring and testing for COVID-19. After moving into his dormitory room, his parents will depart and the player is quarantined there until the test result comes back negative.
A team meeting via Zoom is scheduled for Sunday night.
Players will go through physicals and assessments with medical staff after that to begin the process of getting into shape for football.
Redshirt junior defensive lineman Chris Rumph said Friday the team’s culture will make it easy to comply with guidelines to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
“Our team is different,” Rumph said. “We have a different culture than normal ACC, SEC teams. We really want to play football and we are going to social distance. I have 100 percent faith in the whole team, hanging out with each other. Some of those other teams might have been going out partying, hanging out with people outside the realm of the football world. But the Duke gang we have here, we’re all brothers. Hanging out with each other is not a punishment or anything. We are all taking this very seriously. We are all going to be around each other and make sure we take the right precautions so we can play and have no positive tests.”
If the coronavirus spread isn’t slowed, the upcoming football season is in jeopardy. The Big Ten Conference already announced Thursday its schools won’t play nonconference opponents in any fall sport.
ACC Commissioner John Swofford said Friday the league will determine later this month if its plans for the football season will change.
Cutcliffe believes this season will be interrupted one way or another by COVID-19 outbreaks. He’d like the ACC to go ahead and decide on a conference only schedule because, he said, playing schools with similar testing protocols will lead to more certainty.
“It concerns me not for us,” Cutcliffe said. “It concerns me about who we are playing. Are they involved in the same testing and the same protocol? I think that’s what the Big Ten basically said (Thursday). I think at this point, that’s extremely important.”
Duke is scheduled to open the season Sept. 5 at home against Middle Tennessee. Its first ACC game is Sept. 26 at Pittsburgh.
The players want to play as many games as possible, of course. But one said following protocols is about more than football.
“I don’t really think it’s about the season,” Rumph said. “It’s about practicing social distancing and doing what the government tells us to do, because at the end of the day, the whole country is a big family. We’ve got to keep each other safe, practice social distancing and get back to normal eventually, hopefully.”
This story was originally published July 10, 2020 at 5:06 PM.