NFL fighting futile battle against relentless foe
Gutekunst: ‘Guys are going to have to make the right choices’
The opponent wears no team colors, harbors no allegiances and pursues its target with reckless abandon.
It is everywhere, and as determined as the National Football League is to carry the ball the distance this season, COVID-19 will be on its heels. The game may be able to stay a step ahead for a little while, but unless it can create an impenetrable barrier, the virus will catch up.
And then it will bring down the 2020 season. The NFL can take every measure known to mankind short of the “bubble” environment the NBA is using to keep the virus out, but it’s a pipe dream to think the season can go on without its seams tearing apart.
As long as our communities are rife with infection, the players are at risk. Several public health experts who have studied the novel coronavirus expressed doubt the NFL could avoid a spread that would cause teams to quarantine large portions of their roster, given their current plan.
“We have to get this disease under control in our population before we can expect to have any hope of controlling it in settings like football teams or schools or anything like that,” said Brian Labus, assistant professor of public health at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “So, really getting this outbreak under control is the first priority.
“And obviously that’s outside of the authority of any professional sports, right?”
The NFL is taking great measures to keep the virus within its authority once a player steps inside its work facility.
Some of the measures it is taking are:
• Daily testing of anybody who enters the facility
• Electronically tracking every player’s movement to aid in contact tracing
Disinfecting any surface that has had human contact Mandating mask usage indoors Replacing many in-person meetings with virtual meetings
The NFL has produced several videos that have taken the public inside a team’s facility to show the lengths to which it has gone to keep the virus out.
In one of them, Minnesota Vikings trainer Eric Sugarman speaks to how far the team has gone to keep the virus out but admits it will be what happens outside the facility that determines the fate of the season.
“We’re going to be safe in our building, but I’m going to go home at the end of the night and I’m going to see my children and my wife,” Sugarman said. “Players are going to go out, maybe to a restaurant or whatever is allowed in their state and then bring that back into our building. We all have a responsibility.”
In theory, having that sense of responsibility sounds good.
But days before Vikings players were to report, Sugarman tested positive for COVID-19.
The longtime trainer said in a statement that his family had tested positive as well. It’s possible none of them had taken part in high-risk activities, yet they still contracted the virus.
Baseball demonstrated the dangers
The NFL may be able to test daily and receive results quickly (usually in 24 hours), but that doesn’t mean the rest of society will know if it’s carrying the virus. If players, coaches and administrators are leaving the controlled work environment, they are as much at risk as any of us, more if they live in a hot spot like Wisconsin.
“One of the biggest challenges of the pandemic continues to be our lack of testing resources and integrating contact tracing in the community,” said Sadiya Sana Khan, assistant professor of medicine (cardiology) and preventive medicine (epidemiology) at Northwestern University.
“There is such a huge limitation to being able to know where those percentages (of positive cases) are before it becomes a problem. We’re realizing too late in every situation. Major League Baseball is an exact example of this.”
Khan was referring to the 18 Miami Marlins players and two staff members who tested positive while on the road. The outbreak inside the St. Louis Cardinals organization came after a trip to Minneapolis and resulted in the team’s entire series with the Milwaukee Brewers being postponed.
Like the NFL, baseball is allowing its players to mix with the community. It is testing regularly. There are strict rules regarding travel to other cities, and players are encouraged to wear masks whenever possible.
But anyone who has watched an MLB game has witnessed many players and coaches going mask-less and some of those wearing masks pulling them down to speak, which medical experts have said defeats the purpose of covering the nose and mouth.
And while there are mask-wearing mandates in 32 states, it doesn’t mean the players are wearing them when they’re around family or in a restaurant or with a small gathering of friends.
Now take 80 young men on 32 teams (2,560 total), some of them with cash in their pocket and most of them with an ingrained feeling of immortality that allows them to survive such a brutal game. Are you really going to be able to keep them from taking risks?
What happens away from the field?
If the NFL must use massive fines to stop players from using their heads when they tackle, imagine what it’s going to be like keeping them from drinking in bars, eating meals in restaurants, attending family gatherings and being social around town.
“For us to accomplish the things we want to accomplish this season, guys are going to have to make the right choices when they leave the building,” Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst said. “I’ve always believed football is the ultimate team game, and this year more so than ever. It’s going to be dependent on how each one of us, not just the players but everybody in our building, makes good choices when they leave the building.
“At the same time, we’re going to have positive tests.“
Players can be fined or stripped of salary if they violate NFL rules that prohibit them from attending social gatherings of more than 15 people and religious services of more than 25% capacity. Maybe living in Green Bay, where the nightlife isn’t as enticing as it is in Atlanta, Los Angeles or Miami, is an advantage.
But it only takes one slip-up for the whole thing to go wrong.
“People want to return to normalcy, and normalcy is not real safe right now,” said Steve Meschke, a professor in the University of Washington school of public health.
“There are certain practices you can put in place that mitigate things. But, you know, everybody’s going to cheat at some level, whether they knowingly do it or aren’t aware, like wearing the mask around the chin. it just takes the right place, right time to light the fire, and then you’re in trouble.”
A threat in every breath
You might think baseball and football have an advantage playing outdoors, and you’d be right. According to one medical study the New York Times cited, the risk of infection is 20 times greater indoors than outdoors.
But there’s still risk, especially in football where heavy-breathing athletes are constantly within six feet of each other on the playing field and on the sideline. Nowhere in pro sports in this country are athletes closer together in large numbers for an extended period than in football.
It’s not the sweat or blood of another player that can infect you, it’s his breath.
If a player contracts the virus but has yet to test positive, wearing a mask means the tiny respiratory droplets that carry the virus have a harder time traveling from his lungs to yours.
Even the NBA, where no one gets to leave the bubble environment at the Disney sports complex in Orlando, requires all players, coaches and staff members to wear a mask and maintain social-distancing rules once they leave their hotel rooms. They even have a hotline where people can tattle on someone who isn’t wearing a mask.
Football will require the same kind of diligence when players are inside the facility, but if they are shedding the virus and between tests, they could easily spread it on the playing field. The goal is to avoid a “superspreader” event where a small percentage of people shedding the virus are infecting a large number of individuals.
The NFL is testing daily until the positivity rate comes down to 5% or below in hopes of identifying everyone who has the virus and isolating them as quickly as possible. Through the electronic tracing they’ll be able to identify anyone who has had prolonged contact with the infected person.
The nature of the sport, however, means potentially more exposure to the virus than any other.
Close, almost-constant contact
“Football has a lot of players on the field at any given time, and sometimes there’s a lot of heavy breathing and close proximity,” said Laura Albert, a professor of industrial and system engineering at UW-Madison. “So, there’s definitely a non-negligible risk there.
“We know the highest levels of risk are where it’s crowded.”
Right.
Think about the line of scrimmage where linemen are plowing into each other down after down, snorting, breathing heavily, yelling directions at each other before the snap and talking trash after the whistle.
Think about the huddle where 11 bodies line up close for 60-70 plays a game, often with substitutions, which just adds to the exposure.
And think about the pile during any given running play when players are stacked on top of each other sucking up and expelling air countless times a game. And what about a goal-line stand?
The NFL has partnered with Oakley to create a face shield with an air filter over the mouth and is suggesting — not requiring — players wear them. It is seeking to develop a gaiter that could be slipped over the mouth and nose without constricting air flow.
Maybe it can work. But human nature will be testing the limits.
Players are going to get in heated arguments with opponents on the field. They are going to spit. They are going to get excited and pile on each other after a touchdown. They’re going to fire droplets out of their mouths like a cannon when their emotions get the best of them.
No sport is as verbal as the NFL. Plays are called in the huddle, audibles are made at the line of scrimmage, directions are given pre- and post-snap and a guttural roar after a touchdown or sack or big hit won’t be easily contained.
“When you look at all these things, there are a lot of ways things can go wrong and very few ways where everything can go right,” Labus said.
Fear of ‘super-spreaders’
Even if the league can minimize exposure on the field, it can’t stop the spread of coronavirus off it.
In general, it takes about five days for the virus to incubate and cause someone to show signs of illness. According to Meschke, studies have shown it’s possible for both asymptomatic and presymptomatic people to shed the virus before they test positive. Studies are coming in almost daily on how often that is occurring.
As the Marlins’ situation showed, a super-spreader event can happen just like that.
“It’s pretty concerning how quickly the system kind of broke down,” Albert said. “They went to significant efforts to make every aspect of their facilities and their movement processes very safe.
“That’s one thing that I really wanted to learn from sports, was would we have much better contact tracing since their lives are so controlled? And would we really be able to pinpoint transmission pathways that we wouldn’t normally in the population?”
There will be much the experts can learn from sports, but they have seen what has happened in communities around the country that have been inundated with positive tests and illness.
As of Saturday, Brown County, where the Packers practice and play, had the third-highest number of positive cases per 100,000 people in the state behind only Milwaukee and Racine counties. Community rates of infection matter and the Packers live in a state that hasn’t been able to control it.
It’s likely the season will be interrupted because some teams experience COVID-19 outbreaks that sideline entire positions. Some teams may play fewer games than others. The game could be shut down and resumed in the spring when a vaccine might be available.
How well the NFL adjusts — can it create a bubble system? — will determine a lot. But life outside the bubble has proved to be a challenge and the NFL is no different from baseball. Is the whole thing going to just collapse and become a disaster?
“I mean, this is the thing I can’t get my mind around with the sporting clubs,” Meschke said. “I know they want to be out there. I know everybody wants to see sports on TV again. But what do you do when half the team comes down with it?”