The NFL and its players have for months underestimated the need for a post-season bubble, but rather reflect on the importance of players and teams that followed the COVID-19 safety protocols to finish the season.
The approach generally worked. On Sunday, the league concluded a regular 256-game regular season, apart from a few postponements and rescheduled matches caused by COVID outbreaks of varying degrees of severity. However, starting the playoffs and playing the Super Bowl in early February would always be the toughest challenge for the NFL, especially with COVID matters rising across the country.
And with so much money at stake and TV contracts to be honored during the most important point of the season, one can not help but wonder: would the same league that hates to adjust its schedule be willing to , gasp, his game postponed for a week due to a significant COVID outbreak?
The truth is that we still do not know it. But we may find out soon.
How the Browns’ outburst toppled the NFL playoffs
From Dec. 27 to Jan. 2, there were 34 new positive tests among players and 36 new positives among other staff, the most the NFL has had for a seven-day period since the season began.
And on Tuesday morning, the league came closer to the unknown when the Cleveland Browns, who had reached the playoffs for the first time since the 2002 season, received five positive Tests (including head coach Kevin Stefanski), causing their team facility to close. Tuesday and probably Wednesday.
Over the past few weeks, the Browns have placed 17 players on their COVID-19 reserve list. Contact tracking is ongoing, and players and staff members will continue to be tested before their tilt Sunday night in Pittsburgh.
What if more players and staff members are positive? What if things get worse? Is there a chance the game could be postponed, which could disrupt the play-off schedule and the Super Bowl timeline?
The answer, says DeMaurice Smith, executive director of NFLPA, seems a resounding … we’ll see.
“The only thing I can say is that there have been no talks about the postponement of the playoffs or the expulsion of the Super Bowl that I have had with the league since the playoffs started,” Smith told reporters on Tuesday. .
That does not mean it can not never happen.
‘You know me, I’m always wary of someone saying we’re going to get X, Y and Z off the table. “I do not really know what that means in a global pandemic,” Smith said. “It seems to me that we have come to where we are, because we have kept many options on the table.”
Therein lies the rub. If the outbreak in Cleveland worsens or another team suffers more severely, Smith acknowledged that many of the same contingencies as were used during the regular season to keep the season on track – to postpone games, exchange games, and so on. . – be available longer because these are the playoffs.
“We’ve been trying to be incredibly flexible all year – we’ve seen some games shift, and some games need to be rescheduled,” Smith said. ‘But the reality of where we are now in the playoffs and given the tighter window … we probably do not have the same degree of contingency to play during the playoffs before the Super Bowl, so we emphasize that it is an even increased vigilance will require ”
So, yes, the situation in Cleveland could indeed serve as a wake-up call for the other 13 playoff teams in the league.
Browns’ Tretter matters against the play-off bubble
Meanwhile, the league and its players have yet to determine if the game card game between Pittsburgh and Cleveland can be played according to schedule. In this regard, Smith insisted that the union will continue to make decisions that are motivated by what is in the best interests of players and staff.
By their own standards this season, it simply means asking if the outbreak is contained in the team. If so, the match went on according to schedule – the competitive balance was doomed. Denver, for example, had to play a Week 12 game without a true quarterback, just because the outbreak was determined to be limited.
“It was a tough scenario for the Denver Broncos, with none of their quarterfinals,” Smith said. ‘I think it would be somewhat unfair if you change the rules later on the road, just because it’s a playoff game. So what we want to do is make medical and database decisions. I think it is very smooth to make decisions in a different way. ”
So, it seems the only way the Browns’ upcoming playoff game can be moved is if they are COVID situation is not contained, acknowledging a possibility that the Browns Center and NFLPA President JC Tretter.
“As far as competitive advantage is concerned, this is not how we are going to make decisions,” Tretter said. ‘We need to continue to make decisions through the health and safety lens, and we need to continue to contract tracks, continue to find out where they come from, and as we learn further this week, I think we’ll has a better answer. ‘
Depending on how the week unfolds, calls for an after-season bubble of fans and observers could increase. But even as his team faces a situation where it may be forced to play its long-awaited playoffs for a short time, Tretter still does not think teams would have been better off with a post-season bubble.
“The bubble, I don’t think, was ever an option that would have worked, especially a voluntary bubble,” Tretter said. ‘Again, I think if you follow the test today, if we played out the bubble scenario where we bubbled out on Sunday after our game, those five guys who tested positive today would have turned positive in the bubble, and one of the reasons why we closed the facilities to ensure that we are not all together.
‘I would therefore argue if we bubble up, all we know now, and bring us all together under one roof, now we have five people who become positive inside the bubble, and I think that makes us more susceptible to negative outcomes than to to separate us from each other, live away from each other and keep as much distance as possible. So I think the voluntary bubble would not help us with how things went. ”
What people should rather take from the current COVID situation of Browns, Tretter noted, is that the virus is treacherous.
“I think what it’s proving is that this virus, even if we do the right things, is so contagious that it does not offer you full protection,” Tretter said. “It simply came to our notice then.
‘You can see that coach Stefanski, who had an incredible first season as head coach, brings us to the play-off match and will not be able to be there with us. An old like [guard] Joel Bitonio, who has played in Cleveland for so long and likes his first to play in the playoffs and missed out. It’s hard, and I feel with them. ”
However, the beating continues in Cleveland, where contact tracing continues, and if the best-case scenario plays out for the league, the virus is finally curtailed, TBD contingencies are unnecessary and the Browns will only be forced to shorthand their biggest game in two decades.
Little sums up the 2020 season better than that, though Tretter keeps the faith.
“We are winning this game and hopefully players and coaches can come back next week,” Tretter said. “It will be great for them to still have the playing experience.”
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