This year has not been kind to the sports industry with Season ultimately canceled or cut short the NFL seems to be next on the chopping block for the 2020 season. 

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the National Football Leauge has decided to cut Week 1 and Week 4 of Preseason games for every team for this Season. With that being said, players will still need to report to training camp on July 28 but will not play their first preseason game until the week of August 20th -24th following the second week slated to take place the week of August 27th - 31st. 

Rumor has it that the league will be making some changes to weeks 2 and 3 to ensure that each team has one away and one home game. In all, this would cancel 33 preseason games league-wide.

The change to the preseason schedule was a mutual consensus between the NFL and the NFL Players Association to allow team members to get Season ready due to teams not having the opportunity to practice on-field or use team training facilities while closed under COVID-19 restrictions. 

The NFL and the NFLPA are still in talks of how to properly reopen team facilities with an effective testing program to keep players and team staff safe while playing in the middle of a pandemic. So far, there has not been a date set for when the safety protocols would be announced or go into effect, but we are assuming that it will be before the first day of training camp set for July 28. 

In a joint effort to maintain player safety, NFL and the NFLPA have a shared database that keeps track of any NFL players and league personnel's positive test results. So far, it has been reported that at least 40 to 50 players and staff have tested positive that the league is aware of to date. 

Besides canceling preseason games, the NFL also announced that August 8th Hall of Fame Game had been canceled for 2020. 

To hear more about the latest in NFL and sports news, take a look here.

‍