The Dallas Cowboys are taking advantage once again of the luxury hotel attached to their team headquarters, moving the coaching staff into rooms at The Omni Frisco amidst concerns over rising COVID-19 numbers. The news comes on the same day that the NFL announced that, starting Saturday, all 32 teams will be required to operate under “intensive protocol” for the remainder of the season.
Those moves have come too late, though, for several Dallas-area residents who have tested positive for the virus. According to WFAA’s William Joy, eight people from Tarrant County have told contact tracers that they recently attended a Cowboys home game at AT&T Stadium in Arlington.
The results do not necessarily mean that the fans contracted the virus while at the stadium, Joy writes, “only that they told tracers they had attended before later testing positive.”
Per local health officials, one person attended the October 4 game versus Cleveland. Three attended the following week’s game against New York. Three more were at the Week 6 Monday night game with Arizona. One fan had attended the Week 9 contest when the Cowboys hosted Pittsburgh. That game saw over 30,000 live fans, the most to attend any game thus far in 2020.
New: 8 people who tested positive for COVID-19 in Tarrant Co have told contact tracers they recently attended a Dallas Cowboys home game this season according to county officials.
Cowboys lead the NFL in attendance. Jerry Jones said Tuesday he's planning for more fans.
(@wfaa)— William Joy (@WilliamJoy) November 18, 2020
The news could well strike a blow for ticket sales in coming weeks, as the Cowboys are set to host their annual Thanksgiving Day game versus Washington, plus another two home games in late December.
On Tuesday, team owner Jerry Jones boasted to Dallas radio station 105.3 The Fan about the team’s attendance figures.
“My plan was to increase our fans as we went through the season, and we followed that plan,” Jones said on-air Tuesday, per the station. “We’ve had almost a third of the attendance in the NFL. The whole NFL. I’m proud of that. Our stadium is particularly suited for airiness, openness, air circulation…
“I’m very proud of the fact that we do it safely, we do it smartly. Our fans are really helpful, to say the very least. I see a continued aggressive approach to having fans out there. And that’s not being insensitive to the fact that we’ve got COVID, an outbreak. Some people will say, ‘Well, maybe it is,’ but not when you’re doing it as safe as we are and not when we’re having the results we’re having.”
The league’s franchises in Baltimore, Washington, and Philadelphia all announced this week that they will not allow fans to attend their next home game amid spiking COVID rates around the country.
“The league doesn’t make the decision on how many fans may be at games,” NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy explained to WFAA in an email. “This is done in conjunction with the club in coordination with local, county or state authorities and public health experts.
“19 teams have hosted fans at games this season. Every situation is different depending on stadium size and local conditions. We’ve been tracking Covid case trends at the local & state levels w/ public officials. No local case clusters have been reported traced back to NFL games.”
Jones had echoed the same message during his radio interview the previous day.
“Literally, literally,” Jones said, “we have had no one report that they’ve had gotten any contact with COVID from coming to our football game. No one.”
No. But eight people can all say they were at a Cowboys home game shortly before testing positive for the virus. It may not be direct cause-and-effect… but it should certainly give pause about the wisdom of inviting even more fans into the stadium, especially while the team and coaching staff is operating under more stringent restrictions than ever before.
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