Coronavirus Continues to Haunt Football

NFL under pressure as the coronavirus seeps into the league

The coronavirus pandemic finally breached the National Football League (NFL). We are four weeks into the 2020 NFL regular season, and the Tennessee Titans are the first team to experience an outbreak. 

Roughly 20 players and staff members from Tennessee tested positive for the virus over the last week, pushing the team’s Week Four matchup versus the Pittsburgh Steelers to Week Seven. An outbreak is worrisome to any sports league, but the NFL is especially vulnerable to coronavirus spreading due to weekly travel demands. 

The NFL’s chief medical officer, Dr. Allen Stills, reminded fans that none of this should come as a surprise. Even after Cam Newton, the New England Patriots’ starting quarterback, tested positive, the league reiterated they are prepared for coronavirus interruptions during the season. 

"This is why we have the protocols," Sills said. "We expect to have positive cases. We've been unbelievably fortunate to this point to have very few. But given how endemic this disease is in the population and given how easy it is to transmit, we expect we are going to have positive cases."

With Newton and the Kansas City Chiefs practice squad quarterback Jordan Ta’amu both testing positive last week, the two teams’ matchup was in question. Rather than postponing the matchup to a later week, the positive tests simply delayed the teams’ game by one day. No new positive tests arose for New England or Kansas City, so the Patriots were cleared to fly to Kansas City for a Monday night affair that resulted in a 26-10 Chiefs win.

With the MLB, NBA, and WNBA currently playing in postseason “bubbles,” the NFL currently represents the lone major North American sport to be playing a regular season and traveling throughout the United States. The idea of a bubble limits the possible threat and exposure to the coronavirus, but was a bubble ever realistic for the NFL?

Probably not for the regular season. With 32 NFL teams, a bubble would contain an excessive amount of people–from players, coaches and other personnel for every team. Rather, the league  urged players, coaches and personnel to remain self-disciplined and flexible in order to get through a schedule like never before. The possibility of a playoff bubble remains feasible if they are able to complete the regular season, yet the league is currently focused on keeping their players healthy until playoffs.

If positive tests in the NFL continue to mount, the regular season could be in jeopardy. The league set forth its plan to have a full, 16-game season, with inevitable question marks and displeasure from teams.

The Steelers were not happy with the postponement.

While some teams face scheduling complications, others will be faced with an on-field disadvantage. New England’s backup quarterback Brian Hoyer struggled on Monday night against the defending-champions in Kansas City, as the Patriots are unsure how long superstar Cam Newton will be sidelined or how he will feel after his recovery.

The positive tests and last-minute scheduling decisions in the NFL will not end this week. Fans should get used to it, as the season begins to shape out like we always knew it would.