Some very likely could; others may not be able to. I was mostly pointing this out as a secondary, complicating factor in the answer to “why doesn’t the NFL just put everyone in a quarantine?”
If you’ve ever watched any of the ESPN bowl games, empty stands aren’t much of a stretch. Some of those ‘jerkwater bowls’ play to very sparse crowds. And they still can be entertaining.
No, I meant having to pick up the tab on giving them full time salaries.
Possibly so. I hadn’t realized that the NFL actually had about 2 dozen officials under “year round” salaries in 2017 and 2018 as a pilot program, and that there were more officials than that who were interested. But, the league had killed the program for 2019, when negotiations between the league and the union broke down. It sounds like it’s actually the league which is pushing for full-time status, and at least some of the officials who are against it, and I’d guess that that’s because they’re happy with the current arrangement, which lets them focus on their other careers.
Also, note that only about 20% of officials were enrolled in that full-time program; even if more than that 20% were interested in joining it, there is likely still a significant fraction of the officiating crew who would not want to do it.
Zero chance unless they allow forfeits to become the norm. There’s no way that all 32 NFL teams will entirely avoid an outbreak in their locker rooms. One team will catch it, there’ll be 20-30 positive cases. They’ll need to quarantine them, they’ll need to forfeit, and they might even need to cancel their previous opponent’s upcoming games until they can all be re-tested and/or quarantined for a little while to make sure it’s not still incubating. Imagine in this happened to a playoff team?
I want football, and I kind of want to watch the trainwreck happen out of sheer boredom, but no way this works out.
@Omniscient just above.
Agree that “stuff” is going to happen. So the NFL will have to deal with the equivalent of MLB rainouts; short notice unpredictable cancellations. IOW some games won’t go off as scheduled and will need to be redone later, or be treated as byes, or as forfeits, or as some combo thereof.
If they built, e.g., 2 weeks of gap between the last planned regular season game and the first playoff game they could recover from each team losing 2 games to sickness of themselves or of their opponent.
IMO the league really doesn’t want to make an illness turn into a forfeit. Just like players playing injured or concussed, that just leads to massive incentives to play sick, fake tests, etc. An unplayed game needs to be free of advantage or disadvantage for both teams involved.
The larger question to me is how the audience will react to however the disease spread within NFL actually pans out.
Will the public turn away in disgust as teams battle on while the disease keeps spreading, much as some fans have turned away in disgust over TCE? Or instead will the public embrace the spirit of battling the hostile elements just as they love watching games held in blizzards?
No way to know now, but if league management was smart they’d be listening very carefully to how the public is reacting and then jump quickly to get out ahead of whichever way the crowd is going.
Assuming of course the whole darn country isn’t back in lockdown by then.
If there’s an outbreak, with multiple players sick, it won’t be 1-2 weeks missed. It’ll be probably 4 at least. Infected people with a mild case take 10-14 days to recover, but some people have it linger for 3-6 weeks. After they recover they’ll need to remain quarantined and have multiple negative tests afterwards so that’s an extra 3-4 days before they are deemed “non-contagious” and can return…assuming they have the strength, which many don’t. If multiple players are sick, they all won’t get sick and recover on the same timeline, so their cycles won’t be in sync. And an NFL isn’t going to return to play the second everyone gets back…if their entire team is out all week returning on say Friday, they’ll skip the weekend game and start prep for the following week.
When there’s a outbreak, and there will be multiple - you can count on it, that team will either look like a replacement squad for a month or it’ll be a bye week for their opponents and they are out of the playoffs automatically.
Probably most problematic, adding 2 weeks at the end of the regular season does you NO GOOD if teams turn up sick in weeks 15, 16 or 17 or later.
It’s gonna be a disaster…
I suspect that the following presages what will happen to the NFL:
MLB kicked off their delayed/shortened season this past weekend, and it only took a couple of days for them to already run into a serious issue due to COVID. Over the weekend, the Miami Marlins announced that three players had tested positive; this morning, it came out that they are up to 14 people (between players and staff) with the virus.
The Marlins have cancelled their game tonight, and it appears that the team, for now, is remaining in Philadelphia (where they had played over the weekend). The outbreak has also forced the Phillies to cancel their game tonight (as the Marlins had been using the visitors’ facilities at the Phillies’ park).
MLB is apparently holding an emergency meeting today to plan next steps.
https://www.si.com/mlb/2020/07/27/marlins-coronavirus-positive-test-players-coaches-game-canceled
Between the MLB news and the positive COVID test for the Vikings’ head trainer (who also happens to be the team Infection Control Officer), it’s not looking good. I think Oakminster had it right:
A few staff and the odd player tests positive, then there’s one team with enough positive tests that a game is postponed, then a few more games are canceled the next week, and then they pull the plug on the whole thing.
I wouldn’t mind seeing forfeits, just for the historic novelty of it. They’ve never happened before in the NFL.
There is absolutely no way there will be an actual forfeit, i.e. one team taking a loss because they can’t play and the other team gets a win. If the game can’t be made up, the game is canceled and both teams will end up with one fewer game on their record. The risk of a forfeit would encourage shenanigans like hiding results or not testing.
Tom Brady is never going to play again, is he? What happens to the Buccaneers then?
A flood of players are starting to opt-out. The Patriots already have 6 out. I imagine we’ll be seeing a lot more over the next few days:
Yeah , I was thinking about that. I was wondering if the Pats might be a bit of a victim of their own success, and that enough people on the roster might have enough of their championship hunger satiated to pass on a single season.
At this point they need a bubble, or there can’t be a season. But that is a hard game to bubble. The grass fields just can’t take the abuse of multiple games every week. And you can’t fully stagger through out the week, because of recovery time. Is there anywhere with enough high quality Field-Turf fields for a single bubble? Or two or three areas?, Much beyond that it is back to not even having the facade of bubbling.
I think that, if the NFL decided to use bubbles, they’d have to radically restructure the schedule. I’m not at all sure that there’s any one city (in the U.S. or elsewhere) which could host 16 games over a weekend, so you’re looking at multiple cities/bubbles.
So, assuming several bubbles, you’d probably need to limit games to be played within the bubble; a 16-game season is probably also unrealistic. The NBA, NHL, and the U.S. soccer leagues are doing bubbles, but they’re essentially playing tournaments/playoffs only, not a full-blown season. And, as teams get knocked out, they (and their players) can leave the bubbles to go home; most teams will only wind up in the bubble for a few weeks. A full NFL season in a bubble would require isolating 3000 or so people (players, staff, officiating crews, etc.) for over four months.
I’m not a Buccaneers fan, but I was looking forward to seeing Brady and Gronk have one last rodeo. I agree with you, it probably won’t happen. The only benefit, FWIW, is that Brady get’s to be a lifelong Patriot.
Don’t be fooled. Patriots opting out is all part of Belichick’s master plan to tank this season and draft Trevor Lawrence.
Buffalo sends their rookie home from training camp after five players test positive.
More and more players are testing Covid-positive now. Would suck for the Chiefs to be derailed by a total NFL season cancellation in the midst of what looks like a solid Super Bowl repeat year.
There’s no indication that they’ll cancel the season. So far most teams are clean.
The Titans, however, are looking at forfeits. If the NFL has to go that route, so be it.