Much has been made on all sides about LSU’s Ja’Marr Chase deciding to opt out of the season and prepare for the NFL Draft. But ESPN’s David Pollack wonders if it’s not all COVID-19 related.

“I’m just telling you, their offense ain’t going to be real good. You don’t go through all this stuff, and be at this point, and now go, ‘I’m opting out,’ unless you’re going, ‘Man, where is Joe Brady. Man, where is Joe Burrow,'” Pollack said on the CFB Podcast with Herbie, Pollack & Negandhi. “I guarantee you he is literally like, ‘Oh my goodness, this is not what I want,’ so I think that says something about LSU.”

Kirk Herbstreit responded and said the COVID concerns are valid, and saw Pollack’s point about, “looking around at practice, and saying, ‘Man, it ain’t going to be like last year.'”

Herbstreit added that the reasons for opting out are understandable.

“Who are we to blame them with the potential risk,” he said of players who opt out in general.

Herbstreit said this could start a trend in the future of established players who have proven themselves sitting out a season to prepare for the NFL.

“There may be guys because agents prey on that situation,” he said, and added that if your perspective is strictly through a business lens, you’ll never understand what that college experience is about. “Hanging out with your boys in your apartment playing video games. Going to class, going to games with each other. Messing around on the bus, guys being guys. That’s the camaraderie that everybody misses. And if you’re not really into that, then maybe you’ll start to see guys that, ‘Maybe I’ve already proven myself, I’m a first rounder, I’m going to go to Phoenix and work out in my third year instead of playing.'”

If it’s strictly a business decision, Herbstreit said they’re right, that it doesn’t matter if they play a third year or not.

“I just think that there’s a very different perspective that, hopefully, a large majority of the guys look at, as far as growing up and bettering yourselves in so many ways besides strictly making it to the NFL,” he said.