Let's be honest about what the NFL is doing with its COVID response

The NFL is playing its full slate today, and appears ready to do so the rest of the season — come what may (and what will come is more COVID-19 infections, surely.)

The league is soldiering on even though there’s a team that *literally* does not have a QB who is eligible to play. That’d be the Denver Broncos, who are prepared to trot out an un-drafted receiver at the position.

Another team, the Baltimore Ravens, is preparing to play on Tuesday night. They were supposed to play on Thanksgiving, but a Covid-19 outbreak squelched that matchup with the undefeated Steelers. Baltimore currently has six players *who made the Pro Bowl last year* on its Covid-19 list, including last year’s league MVP Lamar Jackson, and 20 total (though that number could grow.)

By day's end, the Ravens are in line to have 22 players on Reserve/COVID-19 list. They also have 10 total guys on I.R. or other injury lists.

— Jeff Zrebiec (@jeffzrebiec) November 29, 2020

The Steelers have their own outbreak to manage, too — including a positive test for cancer survivor James Connor.

And, oh yeah, the San Francisco 49ers need to find a new place to practice and play home games because contact sports are no longer allowed in the county where they usually do business.

Meanwhile college football teams are forging ahead without a head coach, or with decimated rosters. And college basketball coaches are literally taking to Twitter to beg for opponents.

We are very much in the throes of the worst of the coronavirus pandemic — the U.S. had 205,460 new cases registered on Nov. 27, Thanksgiving, and while that number was 151,245 a day later, hospitalizations were up to 91,635 for a 14-day increase of 38 percent.

Collectively we’ve probably not paid as close attention as we should have in recent weeks. There’s the general fatigue of worrying about this. There was the election. There’s the holidays to look forward to. There’s word that the vaccines will work, and could be available in the foreseeable future. And of course there’s an entire movement within the government, led by a president who needed urgent and advanced medical care to make it through Covid-19, downplaying the seriousness of the virus.

All of which makes for just the right conditions for the NFL to simply plow forward. Think about this: The league has already mandated that teams shut everything down on Monday and Tuesday because it is assumed that players gathered with family for Thanksgiving. But those players are still working today.

That …. does not make any sense. This coronavirus can take anywhere from a few days to two weeks to incubate before symptoms appear — it also takes a few days for enough virus particles to appear in your nose and mouth to be detected by a PCR test.

A two-day pause will have negligible impact, then, on slowing overall spread. This isn’t so much a mitigation strategy as it is a public relations one — which is so often the case with the NFL.

Reporters who work for the league’s television network — or for a broadcast partner — have been quick to put the sheen on these decisions.

This was coming. As COVID-19 cases from around the country rise, the NFL will be proactive. https://t.co/CQp7zSBfSI

— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) November 18, 2020

The above tweet literally tries to say the NFL will be proactive by … reacting to basic math.

Worth a reminder: the NFL is now on Sunday of Week 12, and it has yet to cancel a single game this season.

— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) November 29, 2020

Rigidly sticking to a schedule during a season like this is probably not actually something to boast about!

This approach is all made possible because sports leagues have not gotten truly unlucky, yet. Ryquell Armstead has been dealing with coronavirus complications for months — but he’s a mostly anonymous running back for the Jaguars. Brady Feeney’s condition was so worrisome that his mother pleaded online for others to be careful and take this seriously — but he’s a freshman offensive lineman at Indiana.

There are many who look at how things have unfolded with the non-bubble sports — those bubbles really worked! — and conclude that this is ultimately a workable situation. But with each new infection, there’s a chance that a player loses his season. Or career. Or, in the absolute worst case scenario, his life.

Each new infection means there’s another vector for a virus that has killed almost 270,000 Americans while straining a medical system that is already overwhelmed in too many places.

Beyond that, sports on TV gives us a feeling of normalcy, which, as the New Yorker recently pointed out, encourages resulting dangerous behaviors like gathering at home or a bar.

Finally, continuing to play pro and college sports is creating incredible demand for tests — so much so that some nurses are unable to get tested.

What?

Of course I’m going to publish this and then turn my attention to games, and we’ll write stories about the NFL for the rest of the day and then we’ll podcast about it, too. We’re part of the engine that keeps this going.

But let’s acknowledge that the decisions being made now are rooted in a desire to continue generating the revenue that comes from these games. Everybody knows they’re supposed to say player safety is of the utmost importance, but that’s not what we’re watching play out.

Infected players and coaches, teams that can’t practice as usual, rosters built on newly elevated practice-squad players … all of it has been deemed worth the risk.

Not because we’re at a safer place on the curve. Not because we’ve figured enough out about a novel virus to plunge forward. Not because we understand things now that we didn’t before.

Just because there’s money to be made while the optics of still pushing forward don’t look quite as bad as they should.