Beane said it’s a scenario no team wants to be, but it’s good to work through to be prepared for the season.
“It’s a good fireball for our coaches who will miss some guys today as well as teammates,” Beane explained. “Maybe some guys who ran with the twos are running with the boys now. So, it’s going to give boys a chance to maybe step up, at those particular positions, and it’s giving our coaches the chance to ask themselves, ‘What? if this happened on game day? How would we react? ‘
“Of course it can change game plans, depending on which players you’ll miss on either side of the ball, so it’s a shame. I know some of these guys, these players, I’ve talked to a few of them who want them here. “They are frustrated. But this is the process we are doing, and we still have to be careful.”
Quarterback Matt Barkley explained that the team found out that the exercises were pushed back an hour via text, and after seeing that some players were missing from the team meeting, they assumed it was related to COVID-19. Barkley said the team was ready to adapt quickly to have a productive practice.
“Given the circumstances of this year, just having the thoughts, I think to myself that I always had as a backup of always being ready, right?” Barkley said. “And always being ready to go is what I had to do. So today I’m just thinking of a test drive of what it could look like, if that were to happen during the season. I really do not know any details about who, how and what. “But in hindsight, it looks good. But if that happens, you have to be ready to go.”
Even though some players today lacked practice because of what is thought to be a lab problem with test results, Beane and head coach Sean McDermott still have confidence in the system they have used.
“I just saw it when something went wrong in this lab, it sounds like, and we’ll adjust,” Beane said. “Everyone will do things differently. Hopefully these guys who had these positive tests, and who need to sit out today, hopefully they can be negative on their next test and be able to come back tomorrow and join the team.”
