Tim Benz: NFL dancing through raindrops of covid-19, but a bigger storm is coming
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This was bound to happen.
Now the NFL has to brace for being unable to stop it. Or wish it away.
Before this week, the covid-19 pandemic had been an ominous rumble of thunder in the distance. Now it’s become a daily rain cloud over the league.
At least the floodwaters haven’t arrived.
Yet.
They could soon. And the NFL doesn’t appear ready to admit its vulnerability.
Delaying Sunday’s New England Patriots-Kansas City Chiefs game may not prove to be a big deal. Moving the Steelers game against the Tennessee Titans from Sunday to Week 7 is more involved but feasible.
But now the NFL has set a policy. It’s saying coronavirus infections are not just a team-to-team problem. They are a league problem as well. And the league is going to do whatever it takes to help a team that has been infected — and by extension also protect the scheduled opponent from being infected.
Maybe that’s buying the Patriots an extra day when they find out that their starting quarterback, Cam Newton, can’t play because he has been infected. And if the Chiefs now have to work on a short week going into next week’s divisional game against the Las Vegas Raiders because their practice squad quarterback also tested positive, so what?
Maybe that’s preventing the Titans from having to play the Steelers with a depleted roster and coaching staff and virtually no practice time. And if the Steelers have to essentially lose their bye week, and the Ravens have to reschedule to theirs, so what?
Also, who cares whether the Steelers have to go 13 weeks without a bye, get three straight road games and have to face the Ravens after Baltimore has a week of rest?
“We understand the nature of this environment we’re in in 2020, so we are just adjusting accordingly,” Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said last week.
Got it. Clubs with no positive cases, such as the Steelers this week, will just have to grin and bear it.
“I think we’re all understanding of the situation. It’s not a lack of understanding. It’s just that we live in these seven-day cycles,” Tomlin added later.
Yeah, and as those seven-day cycles proceed through the calendar, it’s going to get harder to reschedule games around bye weeks. The league was lucky the Titans, Ravens and Steelers had such easily manipulated schedules. Soon, teams’ byes will begin to evaporate.
Eventually, a team will have some positive cases in a week when they—or their opponents—will be scheduled for a Thursday night game the following week. That’ll prevent them from being pushed back to Monday or Tuesday.
Eventually, the league is going to have to reconcile the idea of declaring forfeits or pushing back the end of the regular season. That means pushing back the playoffs and Super Bowl, too.
Eventually, the NFL may have to come to grips with the fact that an unbalanced 8-7 record for Team X, a 9-7 record for Team Y and a 9-5 record for Team Z may have to be weighed against one another to figure out a playoff spot if games can’t be rescheduled.
Eventually, those expanded practice squads are going to have to come into play, and teams are going to have to compete with starting players sidelined because of the coronavirus protocol.
Days of reckoning soon are going to arrive for commissioner Roger Goodell. In the not-too-distant future, a team is going to have positive tests midweek like the Patriots and Titans. Goodell is going to have to decide whether it’s worth having that team plow ahead and play as the college teams have done or whether they are going to show “an abundance of caution” and be willing to erase games over a positive test or two.
It should be the former.
Short of the NFL putting teams in a bubble like the NHL and NBA did, the threat of asymptomatic players was always there. With players coming and going from practice facilities, we all knew some guys who tested negative may still have the virus.
This shouldn’t be a new part of the analysis.
So, for now, the NFL can dance through the raindrops as it sees fit. Understand, though, whatever “precedent” the league is setting isn’t really a precedent for what’s to come. Just because the Titans were afforded a break by circumstance before playing the Steelers in Week 4 doesn’t mean the Steelers will be afforded the same break if circumstances are similar by Week 7.
If they play at all.
Which is far from a guarantee.