The 2020 NFL season has hit its first COVID-19 hurdle and how it handles this week could go a long way in determining just how long this season goes. Unfortunately, the two Sunday games I was excited to watch and planned to write about here (and bet a SGP on FanDuel since they’re fun) are not happening now.
The Titans have at least 16 members of the organization with a positive COVID test, so that battle of 3-0 teams with Pittsburgh has been moved to Week 7, which pushes the first Ravens-Steelers game a week later to Week 8. It’s the kind of scenario that was inevitable outside of a bubble, but also one like my example in this season’s predictions where the NFL actually lucked out with bye weeks allowing for a little change to get all 256 games on the schedule.
Will they be as lucky next time when it’s a near certainty there will be a next time? It’ll get harder each week, and that’s why it was a mistake for the NFL not to build in bye weeks at the midpoint and end of the regular season to add flexibility in making up games when this happens. Given the alarming number of injuries we’re seeing in games after an unusual offseason, it just makes no sense why the league wasn’t more cautious in its approach with the schedule. These are the most unusual times in NFL history, a league that started just after the terrible 1918 flu pandemic.
They also better hope the Vikings don’t have anyone test positive tomorrow on gameday after playing Tennessee last week. So far, Minnesota hasn’t had any positive cases. The Chiefs and Patriots each have a quarterback with a positive COVID test, but it’s thankfully not Patrick Mahomes for the Chiefs. Still, that puts Cam Newton out and casts doubt on this game, an important one in the AFC, even getting played this week. How did Cam get the virus and who else has he been in contact with? The NFL’s contact tracing system has to be working flawlessly to control this from spreading, especially for two teams with arguably the two best coaches in the league, both up there in age and more vulnerable to having a rough COVID battle.
The NFL clearly has a big problem in tests not being reliable enough or quick enough on game day to test everyone. A bunch of false positives on a Sunday morning could lead to a game being cancelled or holding out a lot of players who aren’t actually infected. That would be problematic. If they wanted to do a test that’s reliable, it apparently isn’t feasible to do one on Sunday morning and get the results back in time for kickoff. Again, our failures as a country in not getting the best testing in the world are coming home to roost here.
Playing this Chiefs-Patriots game on Monday or Tuesday is the current plan, but that doesn’t seem very feasible given the long incubation period the virus has in producing a positive test result. They could be putting multiple infected players on both teams on the field in this one, so I’ll be surprised if it actually gets played in Week 4.
That’s a shame because it was the real highlight game of the week. My best wishes to Cam Newton for a speedy recovery, but he will be one of the more interesting case subjects for the impact COVID can have on an athlete. While there hasn’t been any high-profile deaths in sports, not everyone has recovered well from COVID. Newton plays a more physical style than most quarterbacks in the league. Will he have breathing and fatigue issues when he returns to action in a couple of weeks? All of this remains to be seen as we’re in uncharted territory with the first NFL season during a pandemic.
Without PIT-TEN and NE-KC, we have a fairly bland Week 4 schedule remaining. In fact, I ended up picking all favorites and almost every one of them to cover the spread, which is as boring as it gets:
Would I be surprised with any upset? Sure, the Ravens not rebounding from Monday night and crushing the Football Team would be shocking. The Giants beating the Rams would also be up there, but other than that, nothing would really shock me.
I could see the Dallas defense laying another egg and Mike McCarthy doing something weird in a close game that Cleveland pulls off. I could see the Jaguars rebound from last week and beat what is still a bad Bengals team. I just happened to go for the sentimental pick of giving Joe Burrow his first win. It wouldn’t shock me if the Saints lost in Detroit with Matthew Stafford picking apart that defense, but I like to think Sean Payton can avoid a three-game losing streak in that one.
Then there’s the night games. The banged-up 49ers host the banged-up Eagles, and Nick Mullens is playing better than Carson Wentz right now if you can believe it. This game looks terrible but will still likely do way better numbers than the NBA Finals Game 3 with the Lakers up 2-0 on Miami. The 49ers may be down a lot of starters, but George Kittle and Deebo Samuel return to the offense. I picked the Eagles to cover just for the hell of it really, but usually each season there’s a couple of teams where I lose on for a month by thinking they can’t possibly be this bad only to find out they are. The 2020 Eagles look to be one of those teams. Houston and Minnesota have been that way too so far this year, and go figure, they play each other to see who will start 0-4. Assuming the virus doesn’t shut that game down, of course.
Then there’s Monday night where the Falcons take their historic losing ways to Green Bay against a red-hot Aaron Rodgers. The best hope is it looks like the 2014 MNF game (43-37) between these two where the Falcons at least put up a good fight before losing.
What’s turned into a boring NFL week on paper could turn into one of the most notable weeks in the history of the United States. Any day now we could awake to see shocking news, either about the president, the election, or if this NFL season is going to crumble before our eyes.
Things were likely to get worse before they get better, but we truly are living in uncertain times where breaking news (and doomscrolling) is keeping us on the edge of our seats. Football was a great idea to keep our minds occupied on something other than the pandemic, but as this week has shown, there is no escaping this thing yet. We can make the days go by faster debating if the Chiefs can go undefeated or if Josh Allen is actually legit, but COVID is part of everything now.
Somehow the world feels different since the Jets and Broncos mercifully left the field Thursday night, and while the game wasn’t bad enough for me to say it triggered the apocalypse, I’m pretty high on anxiety right now.
Find joy where you can tomorrow. Enjoy the last couple of basketball games if you’re a Lakers or LeBron fan. Anything else, I couldn’t possibly speculate at this point.
It is what it is.
Captain Comeback: NFL Analysis by Scott Kacsmar 