Steelers-ravens game postponed to Sunday afternoon
The Steelers-ravens game originally scheduled for Thanksgiving night has been pushed back until Sunday afternoon due to the COVID outbreak in the Ravens organization.
Seven Ravens players have tested positive in the past three days, including running backs J.K. Dobbins and Mark Ingram. Other staff members tested positive in recent days, as well. The NFL continues to do contact tracing in an attempt to contain the outbreak.
The Steelers had no comment on the league’s decision to move the game. The Ravens issued the following statement: “We appreciate the NFL for its diligence to ensure the wellbeing of our players, coaches and staff from both the Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers organizations. Protecting the health and safety of each team, in addition to our communities at large, is of utmost importance. We will continue to follow guidance from the NFL and its medical experts, as we focus on safely resuming preparations for Sunday’s game.”
It’s the second time this season the Steelers have had a game moved due to an outbreak in another organization. The Steelers-titans game scheduled for Week 4 was pushed back until Week 7, which eliminated the Steelers’ originally scheduled bye week.
The Steelers did not play a game in Week 4, but they prepared for much of that week with the expectation of playing the game. It was the first NFL game to be postponed due to the coronavirus.
Steelers players were looking forward to having a few days off after the Thanksgiving game, which would have served as a mini-bye week of sorts. After Thursday night games, coach Mike Tomlin usually gives his players three consecutive off days before returning to work the following Monday.
The news of the postponement was met with disapproval of Steelers players on Twitter.
Receiver Juju Smith-schuster tweeted: “First the NFL takes away our bye week because another team can’t get their Covid situation together, now they take away our Thanksgiving primetime game for the same reason. Smh.”
The Steelers won the rescheduled game against the Titans, 27-24, but the postponement was not popular among players.
“Of course we got the short end of the stick,” quarterback Ben Roethlisberger said.
Some of the frustration stemmed from the Titans
violating league protocols. They were fined $350,000 for those violations after the league office threatened forfeits could result if the violations continued.
Some games have been rescheduled due to outbreaks, while others have gone on as scheduled even though teams had players out with positive tests.
At the beginning of this month, the 49ers had two players test positive and another placed on the COVID list for being a close contact before a game with the Packers. That Thursday night game went on as scheduled.
League spokesman Brian Mccarthy said the high number of cases within the Ravens organization makes this game different. For the 49ers-packers game, the league was able to identify and isolate the cases and was confident that there was no longer a concern for a larger spread among either team.
“This is an ongoing matter with new positives among players and staff,” Mccarthy said. “There have been a total of seven player positive and additional personnel cases in the last three days. Delaying several days gives us more testing time and provides greater comfort and certainty than playing tomorrow when there could be additional issues that could affect both the Ravens and Steelers and the rest of their seasons.”
If the Steelers-ravens game cannot be played on Sunday, it could present a whole new set of issues for the league, specifically the Steelers and other teams vying for No. 1 seeds in the playoffs.
Earlier this month, the NFL competition committee met to discuss contingency plans if regular-season games were lost due to the virus. The committee discussed a plan to grow the playoff field to eight teams per conference and eliminate the bye for the No. 1 seed in each conference.
When the NFL expanded the playoffs in the spring from six to seven teams per conference, they instituted a new format that gave only the top seed in each conference a bye in the first round of the playoffs. In previous years, the top two seeds in each conference received byes.
The Steelers are currently the No. 1 seed in the AFC. The Saints are the No. 1 seed in the NFC.
Tomlin is on the competition committee. Earlier this month, he stressed the committee was only doing its “due diligence” in the event games had to be cancelled.
“If some things should develop — and that’s the key — if some things should develop, we are just doing our due diligence,”
Tomlin said on Nov. 3. “There’s a lot of people in New York that are working extremely hard behind the scenes to keep all options available to us. Our desire obviously is to play a complete schedule, I think 256 games or what have you, but we are putting some components in place that really highlight competitive fairness and we think answers the challenge if we end up there. But that is a big if, so our focus is working our tails off, not only in terms of staying clean and doing the things that we need to do procedurally from a COVID standpoint, but also keeping our eyes on what’s happening globally in an effort. Our desire is to play each and every football game.”
The decision to postpone the game also means the Steelers won’t be able to have as many fans inside Heinz Field. Gov. Tom Wolf issued new guidelines for outdoor sporting events earlier in the week, reducing capacity to 2,500. The new guidelines go into effect on Friday.
In order to meet the new guidelines, the Steelers decided to limit attendance for games to only friends and families of players.
The Steelers previously announced fans that bought tickets for the Dec. 6 home game against the Washington Football Team would be contacted by the team’s ticket office for credits and refunds.