NFL learns all the wrong lessons from COVID summer
Positional depth charts wiped out, coaches treating mask-wearing like concussion safety, and Lamar Jackson living the wildest possible iteration of the Madden Curse. Eight months into the pandemic and the NFL is still getting blitzed. Did it learn anything from everyone else?
Long before the Broncos recruited their next QB1 on LinkedIn, the league had, believe it or not, a head start on its pandemic restart.
Because the pandemic really grabbed a foothold in the United States around March, every other American sports league struggled to play ball through a public health crisis before the NFL ran a single play. Unlike every other sports leader working without detailed information on how the coronavirus could spread in pro sports, Roger Goodell was able to stage a season after watching everyone else bomb their endeavors from the socially-distant comfort of his couch.
The league could have treated this like science class, applying observations from every success and misstep its rivals experienced so that every player could safely smash their brains into silly putty. But now, CTE isn’t the only disease you can catch on the gridiron.
Consider Major League Baseball, which finally put itself back in the running for America’s Game by refracting our nation’s greatest failures. Carpet-bombing the sycophantic media and the hopeful public with reports of sanitized baseballs, high-five bans, and a wet rag to make sure pitchers didn’t lick their fingers helped MLB evade early scrutiny about the virus. But not the virus itself.
Meanwhile, rules on conduct outside the park – not guidelines, rules – and daily testing were neglected at the outset and only added after the embarrassment of multiple teams sidelined for weeks at a time.
The NFL boosted testing relative to baseball’s every other day debacle, but disregarded the theoretical goal of getting seven tests a week when registered nurses, more than a few of them football fans, are eight months in, still waiting for their first of the year.
Instead, a string of positive cases detected within a team doesn’t ensure a serious game postponement. Welcome to the era of Tuesday Night, oops, Wednesday Afternoon Football, even if a rolled-up Inspire Change banner needs to take snaps against the Saints. And like MLB, the NFL only tightened its protocols after dealing with an inglorious outbreak. Maybe it should have banned indoor gatherings before the nation started drowning in the third wave.
Baseball at least has the benefit of not being a contact sport, a privilege the NBA, WNBA, NHL, and more did not. The NBA was the first league to have a flurry of COVID-positive players, learning the hard way that limiting fan engagement and media access wasn’t enough to stop the spread. But, it adapted with strict bubbles safeguarded by long intake periods. Leaving the bubble meant isolating again before returning to play. The only fans in attendance, subject to the same intake screening, were wives and children of the players, not counting the glorified Zoom rooms at NBA playoff games beamed on LCD screens as a dystopian alternative for team pride.
The ethics of the bubbles were debatable, as basketball players in particular openly wrestled with distancing and distracting from the revolution finally being televised. Decorating the court with league-sanctioned social justice slogans may sell t-shirts, but Black Lives Matter hits different when it’s chanted in the streets. Unlike the Dodgers, though, the Lakers were able to lift their championship trophy without launching a superspreader event.
And even after seeing baseball’s October surprise, the NFL kept everything intact, going as far as the law allowed with its dayto-day operations. Regular travel across the country, in and out of areas saturated by the virus, with mask-wearing optional unless the local health authorities required it. If the Jets announced this response, every commentator in the country would be debating whether their plan against the virus was pure ineptitude or merely a tank job. (by the mere act of forgoing indoor, in-person meetings, the Jets have taken the virus more seriously than their peers beating them in the standings, which is all of them.) Regardless, Goodell’s recent memo to league owners confirms what every other decision they made implied: the NFL has every intention of playing a full 17game season, plus the postseason. Exactly as planned.
Which, again, provokes the question, was the NFL paying any attention to the dress rehearsals of this summer? Or is it so firmly committed to the latter part of trial and error so long as nobody with a Campbell’s ad dies?
The answer is more repellent than idiocy or ineptitude. The Shield was watching, but it wasn’t taking notes about controlling the spread of a virus, or publicly committing to helping suffering communities. No, the league learned what it already knew best: The show must go on. Forfeit is never an option.