- The Titans have been the NFL team hardest hit by positive COVID-19 tests.
- Since late September, the Titans have had around two dozen players and staff members test positive for the coronavirus.
- The Titans’ Tuesday game against the Buffalo Bills is still on the schedule as of Sunday afternoon.
The NFL released a memo on Sunday detailing a number of COVID-19 related schedule changes. For now at least, Tuesday night’s game between the Tennessee Titans and Buffalo Bills is not one of them.
There was a good deal of expectation that the Titans/Bills game could be rescheduled after the events of Sunday morning. After they had just reopened their team facility on Saturday the Titans had to close it down again after a staff member tested positive for COVID-19. The NFL is already snooping around in Nashville trying to determine if the Titans violated league COVID-19 protocols so it would be reasonable to think that Tuesday’s game would be rescheduled.
So far that hasn’t happened. The NFL’s goal is to get the game in the books partly to avoid further complicating their schedule down the road and partly to capitalize on the opportunity to have another prime time regular season game.
As of 3 PM Pacific on Sunday the NFL hasn’t provided any further explanation on why they think the Titans/Bills game should be played despite another positive COVID-19 test. Bills’ team reporter Nick Wojton speculated that it was due to a coach testing positive and not a player. Furthermore, word is that the coach in question hasn’t been around players:
The NFL has not released an official announcement as to why it still wants the Bills and Titans to play on Tuesday still despite the latest news from Tennessee. Speculation insists that the reason might be because a Titans coach, not a player, tested positive for COVID-19 on Sunday. That coach reportedly hasn’t been around players, so the league appears to be banking on no further new positive coronavirus test results on Monday or Tuesday ahead of kickoff.
It looks like the league is semi-confident that there will be no new positive tests among players. It appears logical to assume that should a player or players test positive the NFL would revisit the decision to play the game on Tuesday. Then again, without any context from the league ‘logic’ might not play into the equation.
