No afternoon delight
NFL set itself up for days like this
NBC’s Al Michaels whined in October about having to wear a mask in the broadcast booth during a 49ers game in Santa Clara, Calif. So it was appropriate he was not doing play-by-play of Wednesday’s awkward 3:40 p.m. Ravens-Steelers kickoff, pushed back due to Baltimore’s coronavirus outbreak.
But Michaels’ absence also was important because it gave the national audience Mike Tirico instead. And Tirico refreshingly capped Pittsburgh’s 19-14 victory with the most poignant and relevant question:
“Do you think we should have been here and should have ended up squeezing this game in?”
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said Wednesday that the league’s “fundamental principle” managing coronavirus is that “health and safety will take precedence over competitive considerations and business interests.”
However, kicking off despite 11 straight days of positive Ravens COVID-19 tests through Tuesday says otherwise.
The Ravens’ Wednesday morning point of contact tests all came back negative, so NFL chiefs medical officer Dr. Allen Sills declared: “We can say with confidence that there is no active infection among the players, coaches and staff on the Ravens sideline.”
“We postponed the game to ensure we had confidence that the virus was contained,” Goodell added. “Our medical experts believe they have sufficiently traced the virus, identified at risk personnel, and that we can proceed with the game.”
Still, Sills said himself that there is often a “lag time” between when a person becomes exposed to the virus and when that person turns positive and becomes infectious. The fact is while medical experts know more about this virus now than we did in March, there is a lot we still do not understand.
“When you think about contact tracing and transmission, you have to look at the incubation period,” Sills admitted. “We all know that when someone is exposed to the virus, you don’t turn positive immediately.”
Steelers center Maurkice Pouncey went on the NFL’s COVID-19/reserve list just two and a half hours before kickoff. Some Ravens players also were still unsettled about having to play, understandably, given that at least 30 people in the organization had tested positive (and experienced symptoms) or been quarantined as high-risk close contacts. Interestingly enough, though, Sills took the opportunity on a conference call to pin the blame on the teams and not the league or players’ union for any slippage in containing the virus.
“Let me be very clear: our protocols are not failing; our compliance is an area where we can continue to improve,” Sills said. “Any protocol is only as good as the compliance that you have.”
Certainly, he is correct in this sense: the protocols are clear and Ravens head strength and conditioning coach Steve Saunders blatantly violated them. It is also impossible to believe that Ravens head coach John Harbaugh was
unaware that Saunders did not wear his mask regularly, if those reports are true.
Harbaugh of course prompted a grievance from the NFL referees’ union himself earlier this season for screaming with his mask down in the face of an official on the sideline. And frankly, as frustrating as it was to watch a football game missing so many stars, including reigning MVP Lamar Jackson, the Ravens made their own bed.
On the other hand, the NFL could have had stronger protocols and requirements at the beginning of the season. The league and the players’ union instead chose to do this piecemeal.
Their so-called “intensive protocols” now should have been their normal protocols as of Week 1, if they were going to play the games at all. Instead they’ve escalated it each week with memos.
Not to mention that if the NFL wants compliance, it can start by disciplining Tom Brady, the face of the league, for routinely flaunting the league’s post-game mask rule on the occasions he does grace an opposing quarterback with a handshake.
If Sills wants to blast compliance as the problem, the NFL can’t let Brady or anyone play by their own rules. If Brady can get away with it, why should anyone else abide?
Meanwhile, the league’s owners already agreed to the possibility of creating a Week 18 of the regular season if it’s required to complete games postponed by the virus earlier in the season.
That is available to the NFL to use, seemingly for exactly a situation like the Ravens’. But if the league is willing to jam in this game on a Wednesday, on the heels of an outbreak, rather than pushing it to Week 18, it would seem disingenuous to believe they will use it at all.
The one question Sills especially did not have a satisfactory answer for on Wednesday, in fact, was why the NFL had allowed the Ravens to re-open their facility the Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving despite four gameday positives the prior Sunday.
All Sills could say was that the Ravens were operating under “intensive protocols” so their in-person work was far from “business as usual.” But clearly what the NFL was trying to do was proceed with the Ravens-Steelers Thanksgiving Night game, and you can see why:
The Cowboys-Washington Thanksgiving Day game averaged 30.3 million viewers, the most watched broadcast of any kind since the Super Bowl. There was money and exposure on the line.
Unfortunately, the Ravens’ outbreak instead ballooned, and three postponements led to a Wednesday afternoon game because the night slot was taken by the lighting of the Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center.
The league moved the Ravens’ Thursday night game with the Cowboys to next Tuesday, and the Steelers-Washington game from Sunday to next Monday to adjust.
The NFL also then suspended all in-person activities for teams around the league this Monday and Tuesday in a reactionary measure to limit a similar spread.
Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger said that “it’s mentally draining to prepare for a game and then not know when it is,” and he clearly wasn’t pleased about the game being pushed for the Ravens’ sake while it put Pittsburgh on a short Week 13.
“Well we have a couple hours and then we have our second game, our doubleheader, whatever we have,” he said of the five-day turnaround to Washington.
This was just the third Wednesday NFL game since 1941. On Sept. 5, 2012, the Cowboys opened the season by beating the defending Super Bowl champion Giants, 2417. And on Sept. 22, 1948, the Rams won at home, 44-7, over the Lions.
Hopefully there are no more Wednesday games in the league’s immediate future, though. Outbreaks should lead to games getting postponed into the distant future, or cancelled. Again, it is fair to question whether the league should still be playing at all.
Goodell made clear that while postseason “bubbles” are possible, it will not happen in any central location. It would simply mean stricter rules for isolation and home cities.
Wednesday certainly didn’t go off without a hitch. Several players on both teams went down with soft tissue injuries. Sideline reporter Michele Tafoya’s microphone wasn’t even working pregame.
Goodell went on with Tirico at halftime to make sure the national audience heard his assurances. ut at the end of the afternoon, Tirico summed it well enough to say: “You can have criticisms. Some of them are legitimate. (But) you do credit the people in the league who are sacrificing, a lot of the players, just to give us the game and some entertainment, to be candid about it.”
And analyst Cris Collinsworth added: “You just wonder how much longer it can go.”
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