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NFL COVID-19 PROTOCOL

Another Titans player has tested positive. No Vikings player has tested positive. Because of the incubation period picking up the virus by testing, it would be wise to delay the Titans next game until at least Monday (barring any further positives).
 
The NFL has formally announced that the Titans game will be rescheduled to at least Monday or Tuesday. And, of course this is pending no more positive tests.

As the Vikings have not had any positive tests to date, the Texans game is to be played Sunday as scheduled, barring any new positive tests.
 
Texans' Bill O'Brien on false positive tests: 'A unique three days'
Sep. 30, 2020

At midnight, the night before the Texans' road game Sunday in Pittsburgh, the team learned of two presumed positive COVID-19 tests for players.

The Texans suddenly had a coronavirus crisis to deal with and needed to do contact tracing and point-of-care testing at 5 a.m. to confirm the tests were actual positives. Subsequent point-of-care testing Sunday morning revealed that they were false positives and the retests for multiple players were all negative.

"It's been a unique three days," Texans coach and general manager Bill O'Brien said Wednesday. "We were in Pittsburgh. We were notified around midnight in Pittsburgh that we had two members of our organization that were positive. We then had to go to the Kinexon contact tracing to find out how many people they had been around.

"We had to wake up several players at 5 a.m. to get tested, point-of-care testing, and found out that those two tests were false positives. So, I think this is a situation that's unprecedented. There's no excuse. I'm just giving you guys the facts of what's gone on the past three days. I don't think it's a major, major story, but these are the facts."

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This embarrassingly poor process is not surprising when "the show must go on" no matter the potential consequences. A positive test is obtained..........then the morning of the game a negative test is obtained..........and the players are determined to have experienced a false positive. A false positive is very uncommon..........a false negative is relatively quite common..........yet, without waiting an additional test the next day to try to more accurately determine the true COVID status of the players, the players are declared clear to play in the game just several hours later.
 
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The Titan/Steelers game will not be played in week 4 at all.

The NFL announced that the game will be rescheduled until later in the season. The league said the decision was made after 1 more Titans player and 1 other team personnel member tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday. This is after 8 positive tests on Tuesday and 1 other player tested positive on Wednesday.
 
CloakNNNdagger said:
The Titan/Steelers game will not be played in week 4 at all.

The NFL announced that the game will be rescheduled until later in the season. The league said the decision was made after 1 more Titans player and 1 other team personnel member tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday. This is after 8 positive tests on Tuesday and 1 other player tested positive on Wednesday.
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I'm reading that the best chance to reschedule the game would be week 7. Pittsburgh is scheduled to play Baltimore that week but if they push that game back a week (into Baltimore's scheduled bye week) then Baltimore could just have their bye a week earlier.

So..

week 4 - Pitt/Tenn byes
week 7 - Pitt/Tenn game, Balt. bye
week 8 - Pitt/Balt game

..easy peasy.
 
Most of the positive COVID Titans players were not just asymptomatic and happenstance picked up by testing.................they were experiencing flu-like symptoms.
 
This is what I have been critical about the NFL COVID-19 Protocol all along................the timeline of exposure to incubation period to ability to pick up a positive test.

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The NFL’s major COVID testing flaw has been exposed. But is the league willing to eliminate it?
Charles Robinson
NFL columnist
Yahoo Sports Sep 30, 2020, 5:46 PM


Is the NFL truly doing ‘all they can’ to combat COVID-19 outbreaks?

Not long ago, false positives were the NFL’s biggest COVID-19 testing problem.

In early August, one failure forced Detroit Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford into a brief and wholly unnecessary quarantine, ultimately proving it was possible a healthy player could miss a game due to a last-minute testing mistake. Just a few weeks later came the tidal wave of 77 positive tests in one weekend, all mistakenly triggered by an offsite contamination that suggested the system was only as reliable as the laboratories processing the results.

In less than a month, these two incidents revealed flaws that would require serious troubleshooting. But they were also considered largely survivable because the system had failed in the direction of caution. The rationale? It’s safer to make the mistake of flagging COVID infections that don’t actually exist than to miss flagging the ones that do.

As far as the fallibility of the NFL’s testing system goes, overprotecting in a pandemic can be written off as the cost of doing business. But under-protecting? Leaving a gap in the system of defense? That is the kind of flaw that keeps the lights on deep into the night at the league office. Much like the last few days, when the league’s most serious COVID-19 testing flaw was exposed by the Tennessee Titans in one word.
Incubation.

More specifically, the 3-7 day period when a person can become infected with COVID-19 and still pass point-of-care testing. It’s a reality that creates the problem the NFL faces now, where a person can test positive for the virus on a Saturday and create a late-week hole where the newly infected (to whom they may have spread the virus) unknowingly slip through testing barriers by virtue of an undetectable incubation period.

Incubation period is now most pressing flaw with NFL testing

This has always been a creeping flaw in the league’s testing system. If someone tests positive for COVID on Saturday, how can a team determine if others are in an incubation period before a Sunday kickoff?

The simple answer? The NFL can’t. Not with the type of point-of-care testing that exists now, which failed to show any positives inside the Titans franchise beyond the assistant coach whose infection was flagged Saturday morning. At that point, it’s a fair assumption that the Titans had incubating infections heading into Sunday’s game with the Minnesota Vikings, particularly given that five employees from the football staff and four players have tested positive for COVID-19 since Monday’s testing.

It’s a scenario that lays bare what the NFL has known all along: It can put up a litany of COVID barriers in every possible inch of the league, but if COVID gets inside with even one person, testing alone doesn’t guarantee a stoppage in the spread of the virus.

THE REST OF THE STORY
 
The Steelers-Titans game has been rescheduled for Oct. 25 (Week 7) The Steelers-Ravens has been moved to Nov. 1 (Week 8) from Oct. 25 (Week 7). The Steelers-Titans bye week is this week, Ravens' bye is Week 7 instead of Week 8.
 
The NFL is getting increasingly worried. They've sent out an additional memo stating that COVID-19 daily testing is to continue, including mandatory testing during bye weeks for all teams.
 
austins23 said:
I can't read the Twitter links at work, but if that's a tweet that Cam Newton tested positive for Covid-19, then yes. CRAZY! What do they do for the Sunday night game now? Does it get played or delayed??

I'm telling you, this Rona stuff is gonna screw up the season.
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Everyone else tested negative, so he's just out for the game himself and the show goes on without him..
 
Several additional Patriots players besides Cam Newton, coaches and staff who have been in close contact with the player received point of care tests this morning and all were negative for COVID-19. The problem is that the "point of care tests".........i.e., the 5-15 minute tests are notorious for false negatives............much less reliable the the nasopharyngeal tests.

CloakNNNdagger's Scientific Principle: If you don't want to find something, you use something that is less likely to find it.
 
This morning, three more individuals in the Titans organization have tested positive for COVID-19, including 1 player and 2 staff members, bringing the Titan’s number of positive cases to 16 (8 players and 8 other team staff).
 
NFL is willing to put teams in hotels for the rest of the season; will the NFLPA agree?
October 3, 2020, 12:55 PM EDT


Events of recent days make it more and more clear that the best way (perhaps the only way) to get all 256 regular-season and 13 postseason games played this year will be to put all teams in hotels, immediately.

Per multiple sources, the NFL gladly would do that. The question is whether the NFL Players Association would agree to it.
As one source explained it to PFT, the NFLPA balked during July negotiations at a Thursday-to-Sunday team-by-team bubble. The union likely would balk at a continuous bubble for the balance of the season.

The players may feel differently. Faced with game checks that will be lost for good if games are cancelled, staying in a hotel for the next three months seems to be an acceptable sacrifice. The NBA is doing it. The NHL has done it. If the NFL wants to have a full and complete season, the NFL needs to do it, too.

As another source noted earlier today, putting all players, coaches, and essential personnel in a hotel for the rest of the season should re-open the window on opting out, with some sort of financial benefit if they choose not to embrace staying in a hotel for the rest of the year. But even if another cluster of players decides to tap out as 32 bubbles form, that’s better than eventually having to cancel games or entire weeks or, as a worst-case scenario, to end the season prematurely.
 
banned1976 said:
Jay Glazer (@JayGlazer) Tweeted:
Saints had a player test positive for COVID. Team found out late tonight, after they landed Detroit. Players’ swabs being re-run now to confirm results. Several Saints players awating POC test at team hotel bc of possible exposure @NFLonFOX. New world we live in.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1312603230338052096
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Again POC [point of care 5-15 minute antigen] tests compared to nasopharyngeal mRNA PCR tests are notoriously known for false negative results. Yet the NFL continues to use it to quickly screen..........even in a scenario of already known potential exposures where more accurate positive test are mandatory..............all this so that they can try to justify playing a game within 24 hours later. This is in addition to ignoring the known COVID incubation period where the first several days post exposure, the virus is unlikely to be detected as a positive test, especially when using a POC test.

Even if the POC test was positive, and then the PCR test returned negative, a quandry would still remain. Was the POC test a false positive (still relatively unusual)..........or was the PCR test a false negative (still at least 10% of tests)? Without further testing, a negative test should not be considered valid.
 
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After today's game, I have no doubt that Gruden is going to hear from the League..........again.

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Two more Titans have tested positive for COVID today............1 play and 1 team staff member. I would suggest that this progression could jeopardize the Titans' week 5.
 
Two more Titans players tested positive.................and the reason uncovered is egregious.................Vrabel and the Titans should be strung up..............heavy fines, consideration to forfeiting next game, loss of draft picks, and/or hefty removal of available salary cap in 2021.
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Report: Ryan Tannehill among Titans players at workout
Posted by Darin Gantt on October 7, 2020, 2:29 PM EDT


The NFL and NFLPA are looking into allegations that the Titans had an unsanctioned off-campus workout last week when their facility was closed because of a COVID-19 outbreak.

And now, they have pictures to look at.

According to Paul Kuharsky of PaulKuharsky.com, a group of Titans players worked out together at Montgomery Bell Academy on Sept. 30 despite the league saying not to, and quarterback Ryan Tannehill was among the group.
Guard Rodger Saffold suggested some degree of gathering, when he retweeted’s Kuharsky’s story and added: “Guys just don’t work out for fun this is for their lively hood, their family, their opportunity. Say what you want but I’m standing up for my team always.”

Students at the private school saw a group of adult football players going through workouts, and there are photos from a distance that makes it hard to indentify any particular players that way. But a source told Kuharsky he saw Tannehill there.

When the quarterback spoke to reporters by videoconference that day, he said it was important to stay ready, not knowing what was ahead of them.
THE REST OF THE STORY
 
Now, a new Patriot player has have tested positive...........Defensive Player of the Year Stephon Gilmore.

The NFL and the NFLPA better agree on a bubble of some sort............and quickly.
 
Stephon Gilmore and Mahomes, after their last game, hugged each other...............another break in protocol. All eyes will be on Mahomes.
 
CloakNNNdagger said:
Stephon Gilmore and Mahomes, after their last game, hugged each other...............another break in protocol. All eyes will be on Mahomes.
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Wow! That would be a huge story.

I won't be shocked if the 2020 season is either shortened or eventually cancelled. Only four weeks in and we are already at this point? There is only so much schedule juggling before they have to get drastic with it.
 
The following should confirm what I have been saying re. the total invalid approach to testing the NFL has taken in testing players and handling team exposures.

The CDC recently updated its recommendations regarding testing of individuals having an exposure but remaining asymptomatic. The new guidelines may be found here, and state that it is appropriate to test for COVID in individuals who have had a confirmed exposure. The CDC guidance does not provide guidance on timing of testing, although in other documents such as IDSA guidance (found here) the optimal testing window is felt to be 5-7 days after COVID exposure.
 
Report: No “serious consideration” of home-market bubbles
Posted by Mike Florio on October 7, 2020, 7:56 PM EDT

The NFL’s approach to the pandemic currently goes something like this: It’s inevitable players, coaches, and others will get it; it’s up the teams to keep it from spreading. That approach apparently won’t be changing.

The Washington Post reports that the league currently is giving no serious consideration to the possibility of implement a home-market bubble, which would entail putting all players, coaches, and other essential personnel in a hotel for the balance of the season.

The Post also reports that the league isn’t seriously considering pressing pause on the season, given outbreaks in Tennessee and possible New England.

There’s currently no serious consideration of the NFL pausing the season or going to so-called home market bubbles with mandatory hotel stays for players, coaches and team staffers when they leave team facilities each day, according to a source.

Regardless, there should be serious consideration given to one or both of those options, because the situation has gotten serious. The Bills-Titans game set for Sunday currently is in grave danger, and it can’t be delayed until Monday night because the Bills play the Chiefs on Thursday night. It also can’t be moved to a bye week because the Titans already had a bye.

So, yes, the situation already has gone off the rails. The train simply hasn’t crashed, yet. Maybe when it does, the league will do what needs to be done. Until then, it will continue to play a game of Russian roulette that it arguably has already lost.
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The word I have received is that it is the NFLPA that is dead set against any bubble. The millionaire players don't want to be inconvenienced.
 
The Raiders have 2 players who have tested positive in the past 48 hours. These players played in the Bills game. This situation is getting more complicated.
 
Today one more Titans player has tested positive, and another test that was previously returned as inconclusive from the day before is also now confirmed to be a positive.

In light of how Vrabel and the Titans have treated the NFL COVID Protocol, a major painful punishment will have to be seriously considered for the team and the members involved.............major punishment in terms of forfeiture of games, salary cap dollars and/or draft picks.
 
Since the Titans already had an unscheduled bye in Week Four, there’s no open week for Tennessee to play the game later in the year. Moving the game to Monday isn’t an option, since the Bills play the Chiefs next Thursday night. Forfeiture almost seems to be the most logical option remaining.
 
Double Barrel said:
Wow! That would be a huge story.

I won't be shocked if the 2020 season is either shortened or eventually cancelled. Only four weeks in and we are already at this point? There is only so much schedule juggling before they have to get drastic with it.
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It won't be cancelled if the "Titans" get the virus, but they will shut it down if the Golden Boy Mahomes gets it.
 
The Titans have tested positive for an additional 2 players today. Things are becoming much worse. There is now proof that there had been multiple unauthorized team workouts with significant numbers of participants while Titans players were testing positive.

If anyone heard the news conference that Vrabel gave some days ago when was asked about the Titans COVID situation, he became unbelievably sarcastic and aloof................[paraphrasing] "Oh yea, I've got about 150 memos sitting on my desk from the NFL telling what everyone should be doing"...............I expect that Vrabel will regret his attitude which translated into and was directly responsible for exactly what has happened and continues to happen now.
 
A Chiefs strength and conditioning coach has just tested positive for COVID. This now has set up one heck of a dilemna......much greater than that involving a player. These coaches spend significant periods of time with many players...........in enclosed areas. There will be a rush to contact tracing. But with the Chiefs/Raiders game tomorrow, in light of the incubation periods, the risks for playing the game becomes extremely worrisome.
 
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