Testing the NFL:
The league has proved to thrive on efficiency. COVID-19 presents its ultimate challenge.
Testing. Testing. Testing. And fast. It has been evident for months that the NFL’s plan to carry on with a 101st season this fall will largely hinge on rapid-response testing for COVID-19.
Can NFL teams conduct tests every single day and get results within minutes?
Obviously, Roger Goodell & Co., as amplified this past week by NFL medical adviser Allen Sills, are pushing for that envelope. It’s much more conceivable that such testing kits could be more widely available in a few weeks when training camps open than they were when the pandemic shut down sports in March and tests for the general population were scarce.
If not daily testing, maybe it happens three times a week as concerns about pro sports teams taking priority over people from the general population has significantly waned. And hopefully the tests are reliable. COVID-19 Clearance, if you will, is the only way to reasonably hope that a full-contact, sweat-swapping sport will have a chance.
By the same token, NFL coaches are undoubtedly sweating the possibility that, say, four of their five receivers will test positive for the novel coronavirus on the eve of the season opener or some other big tilt. Talk about quick adjustments. That’s why the notion of increasing practice squads – if not the active rosters that were just bumped up with the recent labor deal – makes so much sense.
Brace yourself: Your favorite NFL team will roll with a so-called “COVID Quotient,” like an 88% clearance rate that will undoubtedly weigh on the point-spread updates out of Las Vegas.
Yet in a week when the NFL has had more public reports of players testing positive for COVID-19 than in any week since the pandemic began – six Cowboys and Texans, one 49er and last weekend at least two Buccaneers players and an assistant coach – it has also been evident the league and the players union are poised for rapid response in another sense: leadership.
Thom Mayer, medical director of the NFL Players Association (NFLPA), showed what that looks like on June 20 when he issued an advisory to NFL players that recommended they cease participating in the voluntary group workouts that have increased in recent weeks to make up some of the ground lost as team workouts this offseason were scrapped by the league.
The union can’t force the players not to gather for these workouts, but it can strongly suggest as much as part of its fiduciary duty.
Mayer wrote: “It is our consensus medical opinion that in light of increases in COVID-19 cases in certain states that no players should be engaged and practicing together in private workouts.”
They can’t say they weren’t warned. Shutting down group workouts for the few weeks before camps open – or at least suggesting as much and hoping for compliance from players, like the 20plus who were planning to connect with Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray in the Dallas area this week – is a smart move. The idea is that it buys more time to lessen the spread in the NFL community (and beyond), which should help the NFL’s efforts to ramp up in a few weeks.
All this, while Major League Baseball teams opening “spring training” in Florida and Arizona are suddenly shifting to return to their home ballparks for their camps.
Sure, as Goodell alluded to during a recent ESPN special, they can expect some positive results throughout the NFL 101 season. Yet the rigorous protocols the league has instituted to this point – even if Ravens coach John Harbaugh, among others, are having a frustrating time in deciphering how the measures will play out in real life with dozens of players in the mix – indicate that at least there’s a plan. An ever-evolving plan.
The NFL’s leadership, with Goodell at the forefront, has certainly had its issues in dealing with assorted crisis challenges over the years. There was Colin Kaepernick and the protest movement. Ray Rice and domestic violence. Deflategate. The NFL bungled them all.
Yet in this current crisis of the pandemic, Goodell has rallied his rep to a certain degree. He’s been deliberate in his actions, seemingly collaborated well enough with the NFLPA and the messaging has been good, all while the scope and variables of the pandemic constantly changes.
In another show of rapid-response leadership, Sills was quick to push back with a reply last week after Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert and member of the White House’s coronavirus task force, maintained that it would be hard to envision football this fall unless the players are contained in the type of “bubble” environment that the NBA is proceeding with.
Sills countered by dismissing the “bubble” approach as an option, emphasizing the rapid-testing and rigorous protocols at the heart of the NFL’s plan … although playing the game doesn’t mean staging games with fans.
It’s understandable to shudder with the news coming from the football programs at one college campus after another. It’s like a COVID-19 scoreboard: LSU, 30 (in quarantine). Clemson, 28 (positive athletics coronavirus tests, many from the top-ranked football team). Alabama, 8 (reportedly). Texas, 13 (at least). Houston, 6 (which resulted in suspending the voluntary workouts). Kansas State, 14 (and suspended workouts).
Is this a precursor to the NFL summer camps?
Maybe not. Or hopefully not.
The NFL is not the NCAA. Especially when it comes to leadership in this instance.
Granted, there are 32 NFL teams to get in line, compared to 130 colleges at the top Football Bowl Subdivision level alone. Yet the colleges sure looked to rush back to workouts too soon, while the NFL canceled all of its on-field work and kept its players largely out of team headquarters (except for injury rehab cases), while the NFLPA has taken it a step further and advised the players from staging their own voluntary workouts. The NFL is easing into the process of reopening, bringing coaches and other staffers back under the umbrella of strict guidelines. The deliberate approach that Goodell is driving seemingly allows for a better chance to reduce the spread when it will really matter in a few weeks.
When it wants to be, and when business dictates, the NFL can be so efficient.
Of course, that efficiency and the leadership that drives it will be pressed to prove its worth so much more in the coming weeks. After all, rapid response will be the key to the NFL season in more ways than one.