JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – It took a few days before Jacksonville Jaguars cornerback Tre Herndon realized what was missing from training camp. And it was not the spectators.
It was the stench.
The smell of sweat mingled with dirt and grass, which used to cling to his shoulder pads and hit his nose almost every time he put them on before leaving for training, was gone. Instead, the pads smelled like they came straight out of the box.
“You don’t have that stench,” Herndon said. “You can sometimes smell this latest stinky practice on some of your towels, but they clean them pretty thoroughly, so they just smell like a fresh pair of towels.”
He has to thank the coronavirus pandemic for this. The Jaguars, like all NFL teams, have stepped up their cleaning protocols in an attempt to prevent the virus from entering team premises and infecting players, staff and employees. Part of this includes disinfecting the equipment used during practice.
Blocking sleds, blocking pads, trash cans, hand guards, QB mannequins. Spray one side. Flip. Spray the other side. Let dry. Equipment disinfection in the field is performed by equipment personnel using a knapsack sprayer filled with a disinfectant called Clorox 360. Soccer balls are sprayed with a product called disinfectant. for Hands Level 1 Health, which is 80% alcohol, as Clorox 360 would be too hard on leather.
This is only a small part of the overall cleaning protocols that encompass almost everything. Cloakrooms. Bathroom. Showers. The weight room. Desks. Meeting rooms. Almost everywhere people congregate, they are cleaned and disinfected daily.
“You can sometimes smell this latest stinky practice on some of your towels, but they clean them pretty thoroughly, so they just smell like a fresh pair of towels.”
Tre Herndon Jaguar Corner
Scott Trulock, the Jaguars’ director of player health and performance and their infection control manager, said three cleaning companies sanitize the facility daily and electrostatically spray Clorox 360 and cover more than 115,000 square feet.
To put that in perspective: A football field (including the two end areas) measures approximately 57,600 square feet. The cleaning companies therefore cover around two football pitches with disinfectant. The whole process, Trulock said, takes about eight hours. Everyday.
“While we know we cannot stop the virus completely, our efforts are focused on using every resource possible to clean affected surfaces, minimize close contact exposures and isolate any potential infection,” Trulock said. . “Mitigation of COVID is only possible with the contributions of every Jaguars player, coach, staff and administrator.”
It seems to be working. The Jaguars had 12 NFL players on the reserve / COVID-19 roster on August 3, but only one remains on the roster (offensive lineman Ryan Pope). The NFL said Monday it administered 58,397 COVID-19 tests to 23,260 players and 35,137 other staff from August 12 to 20, and no player tested positive. (There were six confirmed positives among the other staff.)
If that trend continues and the NFL is able to pull off a 16-game season, the people who work daily to clean the facilities deserve a lot of credit, Jaguars wide receiver Chris Conley said.
“You can definitely smell the cleaning product,” Conley said. “I just want to scream a lot to the people who have been in this building relentlessly day in and day out, early in the morning, hours before we arrive, late at night when we leave, and I just make sure it’s a safe. It’s not an easy job, and there are a lot of hurdles people have to jump through right now and they are trying their best so that we don’t notice.
“I want to thank these guys because without them we couldn’t play a season right now. It wouldn’t be safe for us to be in the building.”
Additional cleaning and disinfection is also an added benefit. Jacksonville coach Doug Marrone said the team had three players with non-COVID-19 illnesses. Last year around this time, Marrone said the number was 29.
And it looks like he wants to keep cleaning protocols in place permanently.
“I’m kind of like, ‘Why the hell haven’t we done this before?'” Said Marrone. “To some extent. When I got this report the other day on [three] colds … I was like, wow. And I’m trying to figure out, OK, why is that? Is it because we wash our hands more, that everything is disinfected – the building, the filters, the air circulation and all that? I think about all the colds I’ve had in the past, and it pisses me off.
“What you find in life and in everything that you do, you put the emphasis on something, usually you can get things done. Again, I think there are things that we discover and let’s learn in a positive way. We could all look at things negative, but there are things that we look at in a positive way that I think will be beneficial for us for years to come. “
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