Buccaneers Should Have No Covid Issues For NFL Week 1

The Buccaneers currently have four players on the reserve/Covid-19 list – Ndamukong Suh, Ryan Succop, Nick Leverett and Earl Watford.

These players must abstain from team activities for ten days, as per NFL and NFLPA regulations. 

This is already more concerning than last season. A major factor in their Super Bowl win was how the Buccaneers were able to keep the virus at bay.

Last season, only Donovan Smith, Shaq Barrett, Ronald Jones and Devin White missed a combined six games due to Covid.

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Head coach Bruce Arians last week said his players are banned from socialising on road trips. He’s clearly increasingly concerned about the potential of the delta variant to disrupt the season.

“The virus issue is concerning because everybody has very, very mild symptoms. Things that you wouldn’t miss a day of work with in your life. But now you’re out 10 days,” Arians said. “So that’s got me concerned … that it can be transmitted that easily. If I sneeze and I test positive — that’s the biggest concern for me right now.”

“Ten days is still the maximum so we’ll have everybody back, but now these four days off and retesting now with the new protocol, who knows?” Arians added.

Despite his concern, he still won’t force any Buccaneers players to wear a mask if they don’t want to.

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“No, that will be a personal thing,” Arians said. “Our guys are very, very smart on who to be with, where to be and how to handle themselves so whether or not they go to restaurants and those types of things — we’ll talk about that at a later date.

“It’s something we’ll talk about as a team,” Arians said. “We’ll definitely go back to last year’s meetings where we’re all spread out. Because our facility’s so good, we can do that. That’s the biggest thing. As far as masks — until I’m ready to wear one, I won’t require anybody else to wear one.”