Colts ’20 vs. COVID-19: Who wins this NFL season?

The Indianapolis Colts will battle the coronavirus to complete their 2020 season.

What is the over/under on the Indianapolis Colts and the whole NFL completing the regular season and playoffs?  How will the NFL make this work? Why isn’t the NFL saying how?

The Colts’ training camp is underway, along with 31 opponents’ camps, and the NFL is pumping out an ocean of the usual information — except how this whole season will play out in a pandemic.

When it comes to coronavirus versus commerce, does the entire leadership of NFL HQ have a concussion? Will the NFL’s Caesar fiddle while Jim Rome burns?

"“What we’re seeing today is different from March and April. It is extraordinarily widespread.” Dr. Deborah Birx, White House Coronavirus response team, August 2, 2020"

A small sample list of what can go wrong (will go wrong):

Scenario 1:   A spark in the haybarn.

John Doe is a Colt. Whether staffer or player, it doesn’t matter. John Doe takes the protocols very seriously. So does his partner, Jane. So does Eddie. Eddie is not part of the Colts NFL bubble, he merely stocks shelves at a grocery store. However, his brother Brandon likes to go clubbing, and exulting in his youth and ignorance, Brandon doesn’t think about others. Brandon infects shelf-stocker Eddie, and Kerry Jo, John’s partner’s mom, masked and hand-washing,  picks up a  carton of OJ at Eddie’s store, gets infected, then three days later hands her car keys to John Doe.  Now an invisible, silent fox is in the hen house. And our John Doe does not present symptoms.

Now John Doe, in the short time between his testing, only infects four Colts players before he is quarantined. The four players infected, however, are in very close quarters on the line of scrimmage in practice and play.  Talk about a lack of social distancing. The line of scrimmage personifies “in your face” confrontations:

Have you seen, on a freezing cold day, how far your moist breath travels before it dissipates?

Between testing, each of the players only infects three other players before they are quarantined along with Typhoid Mary (John Doe). But that’s 17 members of the team, in just one incident.  Do they play the next week using their practice squad? Or is the game re-scheduled? If so, how?

If you think this is fear mongering, check out what is already happening in Major League Baseball, with way fewer physical interactions than football — and way less intense ones. If you think discussing health issues is necessarily political posturing, the questions below may change your mind.