CULPRITS SHOW THEIR FACES
There’s no masking who’s been at fault in NFL’s COVID fiasco
The Broncos’ Vic Fangio was one of several NFL coaches fined $100,000 in September for not wearing a mask on the sideline. The Ravens’ John Harbaugh had his gaiter down around his neck later that month, screaming in the face of an official. The protocol violation elicited a complaint from the NFL referees’ union.
Fast forward to the NFL’s Week 12 COVID-19 crisis, and Harbaugh’s Ravens are dealing with a full-blown outbreak because Steve Saunders, Baltimore’s strength and conditioning coach, reportedly did not wear a mask, routinely wear his contract tracing device or report symptoms.
Meanwhile, Fangio’s Broncos had to play Sunday’s game with practice-squad receiver Kendall Hinton at quarterback because of several breaches in protocol among Denver’s QBs.
Backup Jeff Driskel tested positive, and it turned out QBs Drew Lock, Brett Rypien and Blake Bortles all had not worn masks while meeting with Driskel late in the week. They also were not forthcoming with the NFL about those facts, according to reports.
All of this is to say that leadership matters, and so does a lack of leadership.
I am not condemning Fangio and Harbaugh as people, but to me it is no coincidence they set a poor public example of how seriously to take this virus and that someone on their team or staff followed suit.
In a lot of ways, the NFL is just like the United States at large when it comes to handling the coronavirus: there are plenty of individuals, including people in positions of authority, who have worked hard to raise awareness and set a good example.
But without leadership, the system breaks down. Without leadership, the country and the pandemic have spiraled. Hundreds of thousands have died, and the nation remains stuck in an unprecedented health crisis.
Likewise, without leadership, an NFL team increases the likelihood of spreading this virus with lackadaisical or defiant behavior, as well.
It is all quite ironic, of course — yet surprising to no one — that so many NFL owners have financially and politically supported a president whose mismanagement and ignorance of this crisis is now jeopardizing the businesses and bottom lines of their football franchises.
The list of NFL owners who have supported and enabled this administration’s malfeasance in some way reportedly includes the Patriots’ Robert Kraft, the Cowboys’ Jerry Jones, the Jets’ Woody Johnson, the Bengals’ Mike Brown, the Bucs’ Ed Glazer, the Broncos’ Dee and Jimmy Haslam, the Dolphins’ Stephen Ross, and the Cardinals’ Michael Bidwill, according to USA Today.
Now here they are trying to jam through a season to avoid maximum revenue losses in the middle of a pandemic that their own politics enabled — when the people who have the most to lose by playing are their employees, not the owners themselves.
Just like Fangio and Harbaugh, these owners certainly care about the health and safety of their employees and have prioritized that in their protocols and plans to try to complete the 2020 NFL season. But it’s a simple fact that the NFL owners’ off-field interests have created this collision course with their on-field bottom line.
And not every organization is enacting and enforcing those protocols strongly enough to give us confidence that this season is definitely going to be completed. More drastic measures may be required to do so:
The Daily News is told that the NFL still fully intends to play a 17-week regular-season schedule plus playoffs. Ownership even approved adding a Week 18 if needed to get that done. The league could eliminate the extra week prior to the Super Bowl or push the game back a week.
It’s possible the NFL creates playoff bubbles for host city teams in hotels, as well. The league has considered that postseason strategy from the beginning, and calls are growing louder for that to happen after this week’s COVID-19 crisis in the league. But that requires collective bargaining with the NFL Players’ Association to institute.
The NFL and the NFLPA, though, erred in not forming some sort of bubble from the beginning.
The league pointed to the enormous undertaking of getting hundreds of employees per team into some sort of sustainable and functional bubble, understandably. The players didn’t want to leave their families, especially during such a stressful time.
But the downside was continuing to operate freely within a country that has become the Wild West when it comes to taking the health of the person next to you seriously.
The NFL’s protocols and guidelines for their individual teams are well thought-out. The teams all have dedicated professionals working around the clock on this.
There are countless people at the league and team level, from commissioner Roger Goodell on down, who have worked enormously hard to prioritize health and safety in order to complete the 2020 season.
But the league’s slow trickle of increasingly stringent protocols begs the question why it wasn’t this strict from the get-go. Anyone with their finger on the country’s pulse could see this virus wasn’t going anywhere and was going to get worse as flu season and the holiday and winter arrived.
The league’s slap on the wrist for the Tennessee Titans’ early season ignorance of protocols set a bad precedent that didn’t nip lax behavior in the bud. The NFL’s constant releases of new memos is better than ignoring the problems, but they often come off as reactionary rather than proactive.
Take this week’s edict that all NFL teams were forbidden from working in person on Monday and today: last week, the Ravens had four players test positive on Sunday’s gameday, but they were allowed to continue preparing for their Thanksgiving night game, and their facility reportedly did not close until midday Tuesday.
They’re in the middle of an outbreak. But now this week, the NFL is heading off that possibility in Week 13 by keeping teams home. It is a reaction to the crisis, not a proactive measure.
It has been refreshing to see the league come down hard on repeat offenders such as the Las Vegas Raiders and New Orleans Saints with heavier fines and draft pick losses. Again, those are examples of lax leadership: Raiders coach Jon Gruden and Saints coach Sean Payton were fined early in the season for ignoring in-game mask rules. And their teams followed their lead.
I am not excusing players from irresponsible conduct, either. But my point is it starts at the top with the most recognizable and powerful people that everyone looks and listens to. ike Tom Brady, arguably the greatest quarterback of all-time, who flaunted the NFL’s protocols again on Sunday and strutted to midfield with no mask to shake hands and converse closely with Chiefs QB and reigning MVP Patrick Mahomes.
Punish Brady. Make an example out of him. Because sending the message that this virus isn’t a big deal on national television is a problem — though unfortunately, at the moment, it is also quintessentially American.
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