The Broncos are having players walk through a sanitizing spray in an act of hygiene theater

We’re around five weeks away from the NFL’s scheduled season opener, and the league appears determined to move forward with its close-contact sport without a bubble.

While 50 players from 25 teams have opted out for this season, the vast majority of NFL players have decided to give football a go during a pandemic. And we’re already seeing the varying safety protocols teams have implemented at camps.

But it’s the Denver Broncos who have gone to a length that seems awfully unnecessary when it comes to preventing the spread of the coronavirus. The Broncos are having players walk through a sanitizing spray upon entering the practice field, and the team’s Twitter account framed it as a useful step to safely get to “work.”

I hope they didn’t pay too much for that spray machine because someone got ripped off.

According to the CDC, the primary means of which the coronavirus is spread is through viral respiratory droplets released when an infected person talks, sneezes, coughs, spits, ect., within close proximity of another person. Sharing an indoor locker room with 85-plus people, for example, would be a high-risk activity before even walking through the magic corona-killing mist.

The team’s lead reporter described the spray as a non-toxic solution, “killing microbes and pathogens instantly by forming millions of nano-crystalline structures.”

But a spray won’t do anything to prevent those pesky respiratory droplets. All of this was just hygiene theater.