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How will COVID-19 impact coaching staffs?

Yahoo Sports' Charles Robinson and Terez Paylor discuss how COVID-19 will impact coaching staffs after Doug Pederson's positive test. Subscribe to the Yahoo Sports NFL Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Video Transcript

TEREZ PAYLOR: Some other news that happened over the weekend, which was important, which was Philadelphia coach Doug Peterson catching COVID. And look, he's running the team virtually. Du Staley is the l lead guy in the building now. This is an interesting test case for like right now how these teams are going to try to have to handle these positive tests.

CHARLES ROBINSON: What was interesting about the Peterson positive-- I thought to myself, this is why some of these people are like, hey, we got coaches that are congregating with each other, working close together, hugging players. And we're told not to do this stuff. And I thought, this is why. Because what if a Doug Peterson ends up with it and he's somehow in your facility and he's hugging guys or he's working close? Then all of a sudden that's how the outbreak happens.

Another thing that I thought was interesting was hearing a couple accounts of, so some teams didn't do the antibody testing at the start but some did. And it was interesting, hearing from a couple of people who said that there were folks who showed up were negative on the nasal swabs but, oh, the antibody tests came back positive. And I know the two individuals from these franchises who had the antibodies come back positive.

And they during the off season didn't get near anybody because they did the whole virtual off season. And I thought that actually probably saved an outbreak amongst the team because, if they hadn't done the virtual offseason, I can tell you this. These two individuals, not knowing they had COVID, finding out, oh, you must have had it because now you have the antibodies, they would have spread it. And so that kind of says, hey, this offseason that we just went through that we thought was, man, a lot of, jeez, we're doing a lot of like hurdles here, where all this distancing, it ended up working in at least two positions where people clearly had it and didn't get close to other individuals.

So hey, you see instances where this is working. You see the Doug Peterson thing. You hear about coaches that aren't distancing. And so you're like, OK, there are some soft spots.

TEREZ PAYLOR: I'll tell you this. The Peterson news, my thought here is that, if this hits a coaching staff and multiple members of the staff goes down, the organizations that have cheaped out on their coaching staffs are screwed.

CHARLES ROBINSON: Yes.

TEREZ PAYLOR: Because Doug Peterson is not in the building. Like, Du Staley is liked. He's running the day to day. But one thing fans have to understand is that not every organization spends the same amount of money on their coaching staff.

CHARLES ROBINSON: Absolutely.

TEREZ PAYLOR: Some organizations pay a lot of money for their head coach, but they give their head coach like, hey, here's your budget, you got to make it work. Meanwhile, some organizations spend a lot of money on the assistant coaches. And they let you hire the best staff possible.

I think now more than ever the organizations that have cheaped out in scouting, the organizations that have cheaped out as far as staff composition, you're going to want men in this building as assistant coaches that have been head coaches before, that could be head coaches, that are veterans, that are respected, that can step in.

And what we're also going to see, Charles, is wouldn't be stunned at all, if in the next hiring cycle, we see some of these coaches get hired and they start using how they did as fill ins. It's kind of going to be a test run for some guys.