For the first three weeks of the season, it seemed the Indianapolis Colts and the NFL were cruising along despite the COVID-19 pandemic still surging. That was until the Tennessee Titans became the first team this season to go through a team outbreak.
As of Friday evening, the Titans have had eight players and six other members of the organization test positive for COVID-19 with potentially more on the way.
The league already postponed the Week 4 game between the Titans and Steelers, but this has been somewhat of a wake-up call to remain diligent for the rest of the league.
“I do think it is a wake-up call in general,” said Frank Reich on Friday. “I think for our team, our team has done a very good job – our players in particular have done a good job, really our whole organization. We’re almost giving them weekly reminders on this thing about it – about Kinexon tracing, just about being smart, wear a mask, use sanitizers. We’re not overdoing those reminders, but I think we’re appropriately giving them out. That’s really a credit to our organization. It’s building wide. I mean, it’s really throughout the building. But certainly this incident is a good wake-up to this is why we keep reminding ourselves of this stuff.”
With the outbreak occurring for the Titans, there is a chance their Week 5 matchup against the Bills is in jeopardy as well should more positive cases arise in the next few days.
The league seemingly had it under control and a positive twist is that it doesn’t appear to be a multi-team outbreak. It seems it’s just the Titans right now, but things can change on a dime.
Regardless, the Colts are using this as a reminder about being diligent and being smart when it comes to life outside of the facility.