Titans Covid positives, first outbreak

[PatsDeb]

I don't get how moving the game to Monday night really helps. Aren't those exposed to someone with COVID supposed to isolate for 14 days, regardless of whether they have a negative test or not (because of the asymptomatic incubation period)? If you are the Steelers, do you really want to take the field against these guys on Monday?

 

[tuckeverlasting]

do we know for sure none of these are false positives. is goodell still using his boys in a new jersey garage as a lab.

 

[One-If-By-Sea]

I don't get how moving the game to Monday night really helps. Aren't those exposed to someone with COVID supposed to isolate for 14 days, regardless of whether they have a negative test or not (because of the asymptomatic incubation period)? If you are the Steelers, do you really want to take the field against these guys on Monday?

You isolate (shut it down as Kontra says) and wait 5 days until Saturday to start testing (5 days for the testing accuracy to be near 100%). The NFL tests on Sat, Sun and Mon and if the players are negative they can play on Monday evening. The Steelers should be safe. Of course the Titans will lose all of the players that test positive, and that is why the practice squad was expanded so the Titans can promote practice squad members and still field a 53 man team. Not ideal for the Titans but it is what it is in the COVID era.

 

[Bill Lee]

Seems to me they are effective. We are in week 4 and this is their first outbreak.

Again, we were discussing a hypothetical outbreak large enough to cause players to decide to not play because they feel their future careers are at risk.

A player can hire their own lawyer, but they are still bound by the CBA and the negotiations this past summer between Management and Labor. They won't stand a rat's chance in hell in court (and it wouldn't even make it to court in the first place since they would have to go to arbitration) blaming the NFL for a global pandemic.

I'm sure a lawyer would find a way to raise a claim of negligence or incompetence should there be a mass outbreak in the NFL.

Love having 2 Monday Night games. That should be a more than 1x per year occurrence. Hopefully that will work. I'm beyond mad that the Steelers might benefit from this. Ridiculous.

I doubt whatever network that holds the rights to the Titans game will just let BSPN take it over.

I don't get how moving the game to Monday night really helps. Aren't those exposed to someone with COVID supposed to isolate for 14 days, regardless of whether they have a negative test or not (because of the asymptomatic incubation period)? If you are the Steelers, do you really want to take the field against these guys on Monday?

Yes, it's hard to figure how/why this makes sense. NFL is not explaining itself at all.

My totally unsubstantiated cynical theory: NFL wants to show it's possible to play on Tuesday nights. Their main goal is to get to $25B in annual revenue. The best way to do that is to have more prime time inventory to sell, thus Tuesday Night Football.

As the old saying goes, never waste a good crisis.

Ref: NFL still marching toward Goodell's $25 billion revenue goal - ProFootballTalk

 

[Vindicate]

Yeah I don't know how you can penalize the team/players who followed protocols because they just so happened to be playing a team who didn't. Really no completely fair way to reschedule this game without it negatively affecting the team that did things the right way.

It could also be a complete fluke of a reason for why the Titans got it, too. Plane may have not been sanitized enough or some ****. Just hard to tell.

 

[Joey007]

The first couple pages of this thread went about as I expected.

What is with this jumping to conclusions every time we hear about positive tests? You really thought the NFL was gonna cancel this game outright? Make the Titans forfeit?

Goodness. Maybe we can have Ted Wells do a little investigating to see if a couple players went out to the local Buffalo Wild Wings after the game.

 

[Pat the Pats Fan]

could have been worse, the titans or squeelers could have been scheduled to play next thursday night. how the heck would that work out, can't play on Sunday, but back it up to monday or tuesday and then play again on thursday...the schedule eff up ripple effect would just snowball.....

 

[Kontradiction]

The first couple pages of this thread went about as I expected.

What is with this jumping to conclusions every time we hear about positive tests? You really thought the NFL was gonna cancel this game outright? Make the Titans forfeit?

Goodness. Maybe we can have Ted Wells do a little investigating to see if a couple players went out to the local Buffalo Wild Wings after the game.

Cancel Culture at work, my friend.

 

[Wheelman]

@Ian ok here is where I agree with you. They should punish the Raiders.

Raiders investigating after players attend gala without wearing masks

A handful of Raiders players, including Derek Carr, can be seen mingling with attendees of a gala event without wearing masks.

www.reviewjournal.com

They should suspend all players who attended that event for 14 days.

 

[mikey m]

That's why the only fair way is to - unfortunately - penalize the team with the outbreak and award the win to the opposing team if the game can't be played. It can't work both ways and again, the team who avoided the problem shouldn't be penalized because of the one that couldn't.

I would agree if we could know that the team protocols, if followed perfectly, would 100% prevent any possible infection of a player. But this certainly isn't the case. It's possible that the team that had an outbreak followed protocols more closely than the team that didn't have one. Unless it's discovered that the team with the positive cases clearly broke protocols in a specific way, or engaged in obviously risky behaviors, I'd have a hard time forcing them to forfeit the game.

 

[mikey m]

Actually I meant to write 'opt in' but I think you got it.

Sure, they knew the protocols, but they had a reasonable expectation of them being effective. If it turns out they are not (and we aren't there yet) then all bets are off. You're talking about people looking at (in theory) losing millions of dollars of potential future earnings if they get COVID and have a bad recovery. If things get out of control (they aren't now), it'd be a no brainer to sit out instead of putting that at risk.

The union would not need to be involved in a suit. Players got enough money to hire their own layers, ambulance chasers work on commission. Protocols are in place but they could assert that NFL was negligent in their specification, their implementation, their enforcement.

At some point the risk of such would make NFL really consider if they are making a mistake continuing the season.

Be real, the flip side of that is thinking that a story featuring three unnamed NFL players and five staffers from one team catching a life threatening virus two days after playing in a game would get little traction.

The NFL is lucky this is a small market and not particularly successful team. Could you imagine if this was one of the best teams, or a major market team, or (god forbid) our team? Would you really expect people to say "well, there's contingencies in place, let's move on"?

In the NFL's favor, I'm sure they explained all protocols to the players as well as the fact there's always a chance of an infection in a such an environment, and allowed them to make the decision for themselves. If they did this and followed the guidance of medical experts in creating and implementing the protocols, it would hard to charge them with negligence, based on my limited knowledge of the law. Also in the NFL's favor, while the players can afford some good lawyers, the NFL can afford better ones.

I would think most people are pretty understanding of the state of the pandemic at this point to not freak out if the the Cowboys had a game rescheduled.

 

[Boogs]

They will all recover in 4 days anyway.

I wonder if they even have symptoms.

 

[Sciz]

Titans/Steelers will be postponed until later in the season, according to Schefter. One player and one staff tested positive for the Titans today.

 

[Uptown]

 

[amfootball]

Bummer. Tough break for Steelers.

 

[amfootball]

From Florio:

No word was given on when the league might look to play the game, but Week Seven looks like a good bet. The Titans were scheduled for a bye that week while the Steelers were set to play the Ravens. Baltimore and Pittsburgh both have scheduled byes in Week Eight, however, and they could move the Ravens bye up a week to account for this week’s change in schedule.

 

[203Pat]

Bummer. Tough break for Steelers.

 

[Ross12]

@Ian ok here is where I agree with you. They should punish the Raiders.

Raiders investigating after players attend gala without wearing masks

A handful of Raiders players, including Derek Carr, can be seen mingling with attendees of a gala event without wearing masks.

www.reviewjournal.com

They should suspend all players who attended that event for 14 days.

Obviously not wearing their masks as required is stupid, but I question why they are at a "gala" type event at all. Seems like poor choices in priorities here.

 

[Bill Lee]

Bummer. Tough break for Steelers.

Sure, but it is TEN that is now at four players (or five, depending on what Schefter is saying) that will need to go on to the IR-COVID list and be replaced with inferior players.

 

[Kontradiction]

I see the NFL chose the full ****** route again.