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.
Scenario Two: Coronavirus Chaos
Suppose it is a team the Indy Colts played a week prior that has an outbreak, with two to 20 men soon testing positive. How on earth do the Colts then practice against each other for their next game, let alone play the next team? Out of the Colts’ 16 regular season games, when could they reschedule just one game? Two games? Four? Eight?
Q: Do players get it yet? A: C’mon, man!
Look at the photos and video of new/old quarterback Philip Rivers checking into Colts training camp. Look at the Wild West bandana masking his face. That turtle neck not only looks like plain cotton, it looks like a cutaway t-shirt. I think it IS a t-shirt! The air gap around his nose is hilarious. A NIOSH-rated N-95 mask will catch over 95% of airborne particles. A single-layer cotton rag? Not so much. I so respect Rivers, but.. “C’mon man!” ‘Doctor’ Phil would be the first to say that ignorance is no excuse. Show me Rivers and other team leaders washing hands after every transaction. Show me pics where they aren’t wearing their mask like a chin strap (you too, fans!). Then I believe they will stay afloat for five months plus playoffs.
Scenario Three: Players Step Back for Good Cause
Most NFL players will practice the protocols because they are pros. They will learn that there is almost zero chance of them dying from COVID-19. They will also learn, however, via their Players Association and their own research, that there is a very real risk of long-term disabilities from the disease for healthy young adults: not just lung damage, but permanent liver, heart, tissue and/or brain damage.
Now you feel me? Because you understand how short an NFL player’s career is. You know that losing any lung capacity is losing the elite edge that makes a football player into an NFL player. And a multi-millionaire.
That is why the players refused to play one preseason game (good for them! Preseason games are only scrimmages anyway). Everyone has the same disadvantage heading into Week 1 of the regular season.
Which brings us to…
Scenario Four: States Forbid Inter-State Travel and Stadium Use
Yes, the government could simply step in here and render all this speculation irrelevant.
See MLB’s Toronto Blue Jays, whose home games are being played in Buffalo in a minor league stadium. Are teams going to take twice the number of jets for social distancing? An airplane is an incubator, a petri dish, a cruise ship — and a locker room.
Winning Scenario: Making the 5-Month Journey Through the Minefield
- If the NFL goes to school on earlier play in the NBA, MLB and NHL before regular season starts. NBA may even have higher risk of in-play infection, and they’re clean in the bubble. The NHL is already into their playoffs, using hub cities as the NBA is (and the NFL is not).
- If the Colts leadership leads. From owner Jim Irsay to GM Chris Ballard to Head Coach Frank Reich on down, the Indianapolis Colts have the leadership to set an example for the rest of the league. So can the fans. Stop complaining when other people are losing their mothers and fathers, grandparents and friends. If you can breathe without a struggle, you are blessed.
- If the media does their job and questions the NFL harder on health strategy. Props to Michael Gehlken on the Dallas Cowboys beat, who posed hard questions a few weeks back. We need someone in national sports news who will pop the NFL bubble. Peter King: C’mon, man!
- If Players practice full protocols, just like front-line health workers do it religiously, before a flood of infections washes away the Vanity Fair that is/was the NFL.
- Everyone accepts the anomaly season as games of chance, where all teams have to simply play each other. At Russian Roulette.
"“The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong…. time and chance overtake them all. — Book of Ecclesiastes 9:11"
Outcomes in a Nutshell
Q: If the NFL has a workable plan, why won’t they share it, and why it should work?
Until that question is answered, this is all we can reasonably predict:
By Halloween, the Indy Colts’ season will see light at the end of the tunnel. Either the Colts will be running towards the headlight of a runaway train, or running for daylight. Aim for the latter. Prepare for the former.
If NFL Sundays become silent, maybe we’ll rediscover other purposes for Sunday, like playing sports with our families, or just enjoying a day of rest, what used to be called the Sabbath.
Y’all stay safe.
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