Saints' Malcolm Jenkins says NFL shouldn't return amid coronavirus, views football as 'nonessential business'

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The NFL is planning to start its season on time amid the coronavirus pandemic, but New Orleans Saints safety Malcolm Jenkins isn’t on board with the decision unless things change.

Jenkins, who views football as a “nonessential business”, says it isn’t a wise decision to return, and he added that there is a lot of risk right now with everything going on worldwide. The NBA will make its comeback at the end of July at Disney’s ESPN Wide World of Sports in a "bubble" that will isolate players and team personnel. And the MLB is expected to start at the end of July as well. But the NFL can’t replicate such a plan because of the size of its league, which includes many players, coaches, and other staff members.

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“The NBA’s a lot different than the NFL because they can actually quarantine all of their players or whoever’s going to participate, where we have over 2,000 players, even more coaches and staff,” Jenkins said on CNN.

“We can’t do that. And so we’ll end up kind of being on this trust system, honor system where we just have to hope that guys are social distancing and things like that, and that puts all of us at risk, not only us as players and who’s in the building, but when you go home to your family,” Jenkins added.

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Jenkins continued: “I have parents that I don’t want to get sick, and I think until we get to the point where we have protocols in place and until we get to a place as a country where we feel safe doing it, we have to understand that football’s a non-essential business, so we don’t need to do it. The risk has to be really eliminated before I would feel comfortable with going back.”