Could the NFL play the 2020 season in a bubble?

If you think the NFL will use the bubble in the 2020 season, think again.

The NFL could play its 2020 season in a bubble, but it’s probably not practical at this point.

While life in the sports bubble seems to be working out wonderfully for the MLS, the NBA, the NWSL and the WNBA, not going the bubble route has the 2020 MLB season already in jeopardy of continuing not even one week in. Players will catch this virus outside of the bubble, so baseball and presumably the NFL will have to learn how to manage risk to combat the coronavirus this fall.

NFL training camp begins on Tuesday and the regular season starts in a handful of weeks. While the league has built in a few contingency plans to adjust to the coronavirus, there is no feasible way they’ll be able to play their 2020 season from inside of a bubble. There are too many logistical issues to make that feasible, but there are plenty of ways the league can be smart about it.

Don’t count on the NFL going the bubble route for its upcoming 2020 season.

If the NFL were to go the bubble route, the league would need a handful of host cities to pull this thing off. A 16-game season might be possible, but the league would need to get rid of the two competitive balance games on the slate and make up the two elsewhere. If a bubble is going to work, the league will need to minimize as many different teams playing each other as possible.

For the sake of argument, let’s try these two bubble scenarios on for size: Two bubbles, one for the AFC and one for the NFC, and four bubbles, one for the North, South, East and West divisions. Finding a “centralized” location among the 16 games in each conference will be immensely challenging. Then again, 22 NBA teams and 24 MLS teams did make their way down to Orlando.

The host city will have to be one with an indoor stadium and one that has proven it can host Super Bowls, as it’ll be hosting eight-to-16 teams, depending on how many NFL bubbles we want. Let’s say the entire AFC convenes in Houston, Indianapolis or Las Vegas and the entire NFC meets up in Atlanta, Dallas or New Orleans. Any of those six cities are capable of serving as a host city, initially.

If the NFL went conference-only like the Big Ten and the Pac-12 are doing in college football, everybody would play everybody in their conference once and have a second game vs. a hated rival. You could still get the Baltimore Ravens vs. the Pittsburgh Steelers twice, as well as the Chicago Bears vs. the Green Bay Packers twice in this scenario and potentially get all 16 games in.

The issue with the conference-only bubble route is players on the Miami Dolphins or the Seattle Seahawks may be on another side of the country for months on end. Another issue is having enough practice and training facilities. While NRG Stadium and Mercedes-Benz Stadium could handle eight games a week (not all on Sunday, obviously), what about available practice time?

Scheduling would be easy with conference-only, but one bubble city and one stadium per conference may be too challenging to pull off. It’d give us a Fall Classic feel to it, though. What about grouping all eight teams from the same “geographical footprint” and using four bubbles across the country? How would that work? What would a 16-game schedule look like there?

In this scenario, Detroit or Minneapolis would serve as the host city for the AFC North and NFC North, Atlanta, Houston, Indianapolis or New Orleans could serve as the host city for the AFC South and NFC South, Dallas would have to host the AFC East and NFC East, and Las Vegas or Phoenix would host the AFC West and the NFC West. These are the only NFL domed stadiums.

In one of these four, eight-team bubbles, everybody would play everyone twice and that would get you to a 14-game schedule. To get to 16 games, maybe you play your most hated rival a third time, because who wouldn’t love to see the Atlanta Falcons play the New Orleans Saints thrice a year? As for the 16th game, maybe a third game vs. the other division for competitive balance?

In that scenario, the Saints would face the Houston Texans three times in the NFL South bubble, as would the Carolina Panthers taking on their 1995 NFL expansion big cat brother Jacksonville Jaguars a third time. This is a bit more feasible because you’re only having four games a week at one NFL domed stadium that was built to host Super Bowls, Final Fours and other major events.

A major downside to going the four-way bubble route is once the weather changes. The AFC North and the NFC North will be at a major disadvantage, as there’s no southern climate to potentially practice outside, while the other six divisions could use that to their advantage. We’d also have to assume 16 teams are getting into the playoffs with the top two from each division getting in.

Then again, you could have a true Final Four experience, with teams like the Kansas City Chiefs coming out of the Las Vegas bubble, the Philadelphia Eagles coming out of the Dallas bubble, the Baltimore Ravens coming out of the Minneapolis bubble and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers coming out of the Atlanta bubble. Move to a new location, quarantine for a bit and we’ll get a Super Bowl.

While there is a way to theoretically do this, it’s going to take too much coordination for 32 NFL teams to pull this off. We know the host cities will hold up their end of the bargain, as the NFL trusts them. The problem is staggering out 12-to-16 games a week when only two or four can go on simultaneously. Concurrent primetime games, or stacked primetime games, are a must here.

If you think the Buffalo Bills players want to spend five or six months in Dallas, think again.