Does the NFL have a flu policy?

The Game Room
1

It was reported today that 12 players on the Cleveland Browns were unable to practice yesterday and were sent home due to illness from the flu. Leaving aside the Browns ineptitude jokes for a minute, what will the league do if a team has too many sick players to field a team for a game? Is there a policy or plan in place? If so, what is it? How many bedridden players does it take to postpone a game?

2

A swine flu policy, anyway:

‘‘If a club has at least six players unable to participate as the result of confirmed or suspected cases of swine flu, it can receive roster exemptions for those players and promote players from its own practice squad to replace them. A club can receive a max of eight such exemptions. They must be medically confirmed cases of swine flu.’’

3

Interesting question. They can always get folks from their practice squad, but I suppose the team could file some kind of grievance with the league.

4

When was the last time (if ever) an NFL team has had to forfeit a game due to not being able to field a full team?

5

According to this(scroll down), there has been only one forfeit in an NFL game, and it was not official; it was in 1921 and because of a snowstorm, not illness, and was not recorded as a forfeit. There was a forfeit in 2006 by a pro team, but it was an APFL team.

6

I don’t think the NFL would ever postpone a game because of players being unable to play. However, they have postponed games when a hurricane blows through town and blows the roof off the stadium. This is actually a new policy, adopted after the NFL opted to not postpone a game for hurricane Katrina. The public outcry was pretty loud after that, so a couple years later when the Texans stadium was damaged by a hurricane, their next week’s game against the Ravens was postponed for around 10 weeks. Because NFL teams need at least 4 days (preferably 7) between games, they can only really postpone games by shuffling bye weeks around. It’s not like baseball where you can just drop in an extra game between the end of the season and the beginning of the playoffs.