It was a "pretty tough week" for the NFL on the COVID-19 front, as while no games were moved or postponed, there were 13 teams that put "at least one player on the COVID-19 list from Monday to Friday, and at least two other teams" were impacted, according to Albert Breer of SI.com. However, NFL Chief Medical Officer Dr. Allen Sills said there is "zero evidence of transmission player-to-player on the field, either during games or practices." He called that an "important and powerful statement," adding it "confirms what other sports leagues have found around the world." Sills: "I don't think we're at the point where we'd say it cannot occur, but none of us have seen yet, and that's certainly encouraging." Sills said that the majority of the latest cases in the NFL have resulted from the fact that "players live in the same country as the rest of us, and things have gotten worse in some communities." He said, "There are three things that create high-risk contact, and that's meeting, eating and greeting. ... I do think clubs are really focused, and we've been focused as well, on how we reduce that number of high-risk contacts. And reducing meetings is certainly a good strategy to doing that -- in-person meetings, I should say." Sills added, "You will see some players who will miss games because they had symptoms that we simply couldn't distinguish, whether it was COVID or other viral illnesses. And in some cases, it may turn out not to be COVID, and yet they miss games anyway, just because you have to be so cautious. I do think it's gonna get harder." Despite that, Sills believes it is still "realistic" to conclude the season in full (SI.com, 11/9).
There has been zero evidence of transmission player-to-player on the field either during games or practicesGETTY IMAGES
STILL SEEING PROTOCOL VIOLATIONS: YAHOO SPORTS' Charles Robinson notes many teams yesterday "appeared to break key portions of new protocols the NFL set forth last week." Yesterday became the first full run of COVID-19 protocol changes that the NFL "rolled out Tuesday, via a sternly worded memo circulated to every team" that "warned franchises it would now be mandatory for players and personnel to wear masks during pregame and postgame social interactions on the field." A multitude of teams yesterday "appeared to fail that new standard during postgame interactions that the league deemed to be 'additionally unnecessary risk.'" That brings into question "how the NFL will back up a portion of Tuesday's memo." The Raiders' "repeat violator" fines included the docking of a sixth-round draft pick and a fine of $500,000 for the team and $150,000 for coach Jon Gruden. Those sanctions "raised eyebrows across the league, particularly among front-office executives who believe the league will continue to escalate fines as long as some teams either ignore protocols or continually violate them out of ignorance" (SPORTS.YAHOO.com, 11/9).
HALFWAY THROUGH: In DC, Mark Maske noted as the NFL passes the midway point of the regular season, the league "trudges onward." The playing of tonight's Patriots-Jets game will mark "four straight weeks with little to no disruption of the schedule, on the heels of two weeks that included rampant rescheduling." The NFL and NFLPA said that under their testing program, "more than 550,000 tests were administered between Aug. 1 and Oct. 31 to players, coaches and selected team staffers, with 63 players and 99 coaches and staffers testing positive." Protocols have been "adjusted as the season has progressed," but perhaps the most significant tweak to the sport's extensive protocols "came when the NFL decided recently to mandate five-day quarantine periods for those categorized as high-risk close contacts to an individual infected with the virus." Sills said that the decisions about which contacts are classified as high risk are "based on time, distance, whether a mask was present and how much ventilation might have been involved." The new approach has amounted to a "trade-off, creating more roster-management complications and competitive issues for teams in exchange for decreasing the likelihood of an outbreak." The NFL said all along that it "expected to have coronavirus cases." But its recent ability and willingness to deal with positive test results while keeping games on schedule "has not gone unnoticed" (WASHINGTON POST, 11/8).
IS ISOLATION ENOUGH? In Chicago, Jason Lieser notes the Bears took the field yesterday against the Titans "after the team flew with a player who tested positive for coronavirus." The Bears isolated OL Lachavious Simmons "from the rest of their traveling party and put him on the reserve/COVID-19 list three hours before kickoff." All other players were "reported to have tested negative when they took the rapid point-of-care test, which gets a result in less than an hour, Sunday morning." That is "far from an all-clear for the Bears, though" (CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, 11/9). In N.Y., Pat Leonard noted since Oct. 12, while the NFL has had 21 teams "place one or more players on the COVID reserve list, the league has not moved a game." Instead, the protocol is to "immediately isolate positive tests and to conduct contact tracing to determine and isolate close or high-risk contacts." The goal is "to prevent the spread of the virus among the teams." The NFL's position is that its protocols are "strong enough to mitigate virus spread if players, staff and teams adhere to them" (N.Y. DAILY NEWS, 11/7).
HARD TO RESCHEDULE GAMES NOW: NBCSPORTS.com's Peter King notes the league has 123 games left in the last eight weeks of the season, and rescheduling them during the season "will be exceedingly hard." Only 10 of the league's 32 bye-week slots are left. The NFL will not have a team play two games in a week, so that means that if any of the 22 teams that have used their bye have a debilitating outbreak, the NFL "would either force the team to play with a major influx of practice-squadders OR have to push a game to potential Week 18 on Jan. 10. Or perhaps not play it." One of the reasons the league is considering adding an eighth playoff team per conference at the league's virtual owners meeting tomorrow is "to account for issues that might arise if two or more contenders do not play a full 16-game schedule." With the outbreak at a record high, and the byes almost gone, it "seems logical to expect real disruption to the schedule soon, either forcing a Week 18 or chipping away at team schedules so they don't all play 16 games." King: "I'm told adding a Week 18 is more likely, at least as a first option" (NBCSPORTS.com, 11/9).
BALANCING ACT: In S.F., Ann Killion wrote everyone in football is "walking a tightrope, but no one knows where it ends." Killion: "Where the safe landing spot will be. When it will appear. Whether they can make it to the other side." For the most part, these leagues and conferences are "trying to do the right thing," but "as we've learned in the past eight months, without a true bubble, there's no way to be completely safe." Though the NFL has been "very, very big on statements and appearances to make everyone know it takes the coronavirus very, very seriously, it still can't get it right." The 49ers and Packers, both dealing with positive coronavirus tests, were "forced to play on Thursday night by this very, very concerned league." Instead of pushing the game back and giving time for more tests, the game was "all systems go because of television and ratings and dollars and things that had nothing to do with player health or competitive fairness" (S.F. CHRONICLE, 11/8).
