Bucs coach Bruce Arians made a sobering prediction this past week when asked about navigating the NFL season in the middle of the surging coronavirus pandemic.“The players, they’re going to all get sick, that’s for sure,” Arians told the Tampa Bay Times. “It’s just a matter of how sick they get.”Players are tentatively scheduled to report to training camp July 28. A specified group of players, likely rookies and quarterbacks, may be permitted to begin July 21.Not surprisingly, many of the safety protocols and even the structure of the preseason still is being negotiated. Players are analyzing the risk, and in some cases, may want to opt out of the 2020 season if permitted.On Friday, Bucs left tackle Donovan Smith, whose first child is due in three weeks, questioned whether his job protecting Tom Brady’s blind side will leave him and his family unsafe. “Risking my health as well as my family’s health does not seem like a risk worth taking,” Smith wrote on Instagram . Smith, 27, has missed only one game in five seasons and is scheduled to earn $14.5 million this year. He is as valuable to the Bucs’ success as almost any player this side of a certain six-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback.Football is not a game that can be played while maintaining social distancing. In fact, the very object of the game, to impose your will on the opponent in an effort to advance the football into scoring territory, requires contact by nearly every player on every single play.The league is trying to limit contact between players, team personnel and media as much as possible once practices and games begin.The league plans to ban post-game conversations between players and will prohibit the exchange of jerseys, something that has nearly become a post-game ritual.The NFL benefited from being in the middle of its offseason when stay-at-home orders were being issued and coronavirus cases began spiking. Free agency went off as scheduled with Brady being the biggest prize. The NFL draft was held, virtually.But now it’s almost time to play and there is little agreement between the league and its players on the best way to do that. When talks broke off Friday, there were considerable outstanding issues that remained unresolved.• No agreement on the reporting date to training camp for players. The collective bargaining agreement calls for players to report 47 days before the first game. But obviously, even that is completely fluid.• No agreement on whether players, like Smith for example, will be allowed to opt out if they feel competing would be unsafe for them or their family.• The NFL wants to play two preseason games, Weeks 2 and 3 of the exhibition season. Players would like a six-week ramp up with no preseason games. They reference the increased amount of hamstring and Achilles injuries following the lockout in 2011.• There still is no agreement on whether a positive COVID-19 test would be considered a “football injury.”• The league would like to defer 35 percent of player salaries to account for the revenue expected to be lost in 2020.Some game-day protocols have been discussed.• On-field seating capacity will be limited. The Baltimore Ravens announced that they will have no more than 14,000 fans in attendance at M&T Bank Stadium. The Jaguars announced Friday that they will have only a 25 percent seating capacity for games at TIAA Bank Field.• Both teams will be required on game day to travel to the stadium by bus.• Media, of course, will be banned from the locker room and likely will conduct interviews by Zoom or another video application.• Coaches and players won’t be required to wear masks on the sideline, but other game-day workers in the bench areas will not be exceptions.• People with access to the field or bench will be screened pre-game. If they have temperatures above 100.4 degrees or think they have may have been exposed to COVID-19, they won’t be allowed to enter the stadium on game day.It gets even more troublesome for players, coaches and team personnel during the week.Physical distancing protocols mandate that players and/or staff remain 6 feet apart when in the team’s training facility. Teams are encouraged to promote physical distancing within the facility by displaying signs that discourage hand shaking and designate one way traffic in hallways.Locker rooms must be reconfigured to permit 6 feet of space between each player in the locker room. With more than 80 players in training camp, this may be next to impossible without additional rooms being utilized.Strength and conditioning workouts must be limited to small groups (no more than 15) of scheduled players to allow for physical distancing. The athletic training staff must require individual, staggered player appointments instead of setting a single time for large groups to arrive.On and on it goes, from how meals must be served in individual containers to whether players can face fines for breaking protocol by using ride sharing or being served inside a bar or restaurant.The information disseminated at practices will be different as well. A maximum of 10 media members, including from ESPN and NFL Network if they attend, will be designated by the team to watch workouts each day. They will also be tested.There’s another tier that includes some media among 30 attendees, which also includes some club personnel. No one can text or use social media during practice, so don’t expect real-time updates on how many kicks Matt Gay makes or misses.Whether negotiations become as protracted as talks between Major League Baseball and its players association remains to be seen. But if you stretch the yard markers, the NFL still is short of an agreement on how to play safely this fall.There’s no shortage of Tom Brady films about Tom Brady.In 2018, a documentary web series by producer Gotham Chopra called Tom vs. Time was released from Jan. 25 to March 12 on Facebook Watch. It followed Brady throughout the 2017 season, which resulted in a Super Bowl loss to the Philadelphia Eagles.Coming to ESPN in 2021 will be Man in the Arena: Tom Brady, a nine-episode series of Brady’s career and most iconic moments.This week, a short film about Brady’s career and life called Born of a Dream: A boy from San Mateo, was released by watch maker IWC Schaffhausen. It includes several actors who play Brady as a child, teenager and college quarterback at Michigan.In the four-minute film, available on YouTube, Brady plays himself in one scene in which he throws the winning touchdown pass during a torrential downpour.Director Rune Milton captures some of the most significant milestones in Brady’s life and career.“The end is probably what I remember most when we were dropping this freezing cold rain and it was probably in the mid- to low 40s that particular day and my helmet was soaked, my jersey was soaked and we’re in this scene at the end on the field performing in the last two minutes of the game, between every take we would all run to the warming tent because we were all freezing,” Brady said.If you know Brady’s story, there’s not much new here. In the B-roll, he talked about playing in Tampa Bay.“That’s been a big transition, is getting to know a new community, albeit during some very unique times,” Brady said. “But also transitioning my life and getting a lot of my personal life moved to a new place, entering into new professional relationships with people and having to do that over Facetime or Zoom calls. I think we’re all trying to do the best we can at this point.”