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A precautionary shot went off in the NFL arc on Saturday when a New Jersey lab returned dozens of positive COVID-19 tests to the groups. Most, if not all, turned out to be “false positives,” but still sent groups for answers. Many were forced to cancel or replace educational plans when they re-evaluated players, coaches, and staff.
The good news, of course, is that the positives were “false.” It’s also a smart sign for the NFL that it temporarily detected the challenge and was able to temporarily retest everyone the next day.
But here’s the bad news: believe it if it was a regular-season Sunday.
Or Super Bowl Sunday.
“My query would be immediate, if you realize that this is a lab problem, would a service point verification on the game site, if negative, allow the player to play?” Buffalo Bills general manager Brandon Beane said Sunday morning after several of his players, including quarterback Josh Allen, were excluded from the practice due to positive controls. “And I don’t have that answer, but that’s the query we’re going to have to see how the league would respond.”
The NFL doesn’t have an answer yet. This is just another damaging front in the war that’s very confusing than the NFL, and the game in general, is fighting as everyone tries to play through the very serious COVID-19 pandemic. The ultimate life problem, of course, is to keep everyone safe and healthy, and so far the NFL has done a smart task in that regard.
But that’s far from the only challenge the league will face this fall.
The fact is that the prestige of the COVID-19 tests in the United States is appalling. The NFL has a merit because of its wealth, with access to tests with a frequency that cannot be had in the rest of the world. But their tests are still subject to the same flaws: flaws they never imagined would still exist when the league is so positive about the game in the spring of 2020.
At the time, league officials were confident that the test formula would now be perfected, that reliable and immediate testing would have this pandemic on his heels. This has not been the case, obviously, so now they have to deal with the challenge of ‘false positives’. And, worse, they should also take into account the factor of false negatives.
So believe out what it would have been like this weekend if it was week 1 of the normal season, rather than a lazy summer weekend with no pre-season games. Imagine the Jets learning on Saturday night, in the middle of a virtual team meeting, which 10 players had tested positive for, less than 24 hours before the start of the match. Not only do they deserve 10 backups, but they also deserve a quick contact search that would almost in fact call into question the prestige of dozens of other players.
And at least 10 groups were attacked this time, according to an NFL source. The Pittsburgh Steelers kept six players out of practice on Sunday. The Minnesota Vikings have retained eight players and one coach. The Bills let the players miss practice. The Cleveland Browns canceled their practice.
If it was the normal season, everyone would have woken up on Sunday morning without knowing if they would be allowed to play.
The challenge goes beyond that too, because what check do you think? The positive or the negative? NFL protocols state that players who test negative twice before being allowed to return to the field, however, to push a player back, they will use quick controls that have proven to be less reliable. Then the question arises of what to believe in. This time it was simple. By some estimates, the NFL had about a hundred “positives” fired on Saturday night, a warning sign given that they had a little more overall during their first full month of verification. When the maximum of new checks becomes negative the next day, the anomaly was easy to see.
But what if there were only a few players? Or just one? What if Jets Quarterback Sam Darnold was positive on Saturday night to get the negative effects required on Sunday morning’s quick trials? Can you accept it as true with the negatives? Should they quarantine him as a precautionary measure, along with all the other coaches, players and staff he’s been close to all week?
Remember, those aren’t just balancing decisions on adjustment day or competition. These are life-and-death decisions, and they are not hyperbolic. Some segments of society would possibly refuse to see the truth, however, here are real dangers of fitness at stake. Many NFL coaches, and more NFL players than you think, fall into the “high-risk” categories. It has been shown that professional athletes in good physical form may also have poor physical form due to COVID. And then there’s the possibility of transmitting the virus to their families and friends, which will be more complicated when the semi-bubble of the educational camp explodes and everyone returns to their normal “normal” life in the season.
If you don’t think there were players and coaches rightly terrified after receiving the news of their “positive” check on Saturday night, you just don’t live in the genuine world.
Fortunately, doctors who help the NFL make this season’s big decisions live. But there’s no doubt that the lines will become blurry when the games really start. No team needs to lose a key player in a great game opposed to COVID. So what will they do when a healthy player in a different way is positive? Will it be just the effects of negative tests? How many tests will be in a position to pass just to get the desired effects?
And will the calculation of decisions replace in the playoffs, or even with a place in playoffs in playoffs?
It can be dangerous, if not chaotic. If it had been in three weeks, the NFL would have had to struggle with the option to cancel a handful of games, and then be informed later that it did not have to cancel any of them. Dr. Allen Sills, the NFL’s leading medical officer, made it clear this week that the league is preparing for all sorts of contingencies if positive tests begin to appear.
But it’s a new world, a new reality, and the fact is that no one knows exactly how those things will be handled. No one knows where this virus is going. No one knows what disorders this will create, especially in outdoor sports. Major League Baseball is the canary in the coal mine, with tests, positive and negative, that dirty their schedule of cancellations and create what will actually be a scenario in which not all groups will play the same amount of games.
If this weekend is a sign, it’s also the long term of the NFL, because there will be more positive, true and false tests to come.
“(Probably) is bigger than it does now than in three weeks,” Beane said. “But it turns out that every few weeks, every single week, anything happens, and then who knows what the next curve will be?”