Back in early May, the NFL’s chief medical officer Allen Sills warned that as the league prepares its plans for play during the coronavirus, it shouldn’t be a surprise when positive cases among players arise. From the start, the fact that players will get sick has been a given.
On Monday, NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport confirmed that the Cowboys’ Ezekiel Elliott had tested positive for COVID-19, along with at least two other Dallas players and four members of the Houston Texans.
The positive test cases come as Texas relaxes their guidelines around social distancing. As the league grapples with the best way to get players on the field safely, it’s clear that keeping players totally shielded from the virus is going to be virtually impossible.
As reported, none of the positive NFL players have had access to the team facilities —the league and the NFLPA are still working out the guidelines around opening them up to players—which is the rare bright side to this story. According to Rapoport, the team identified the cases and isolated their players, as their plan has always meant to do. In this case, the NFL’s containment plan worked and hopefully none of the players affected will experience any lasting damage from COVID-19. Elliott, for his part, is reported to be asymptomatic and “feeling good.”
It’s hard not to look at this story though and see what could happen just a few weeks down the road, when NFL locker rooms are open again and players start to practice in earnest. One positive case is all it takes to bring down a team, and potentially have disastrous consequences.
In a contact sport like football, social distancing is practically meaningless, even with updated face shields and dressing stalls six-feet apart. Players can stay away from each other while they put on their uniforms, but it’s all for null if they’re pushing up against each, breathing in each others faces for hours on end each day.
Elliott’s positive test result is the latest concrete reminder that more NFL players will get sick as the season starts. The only question is, how bad will the damage eventually be? Will a star player get so sick that it ruins their future career? Will handful of players experience symptoms that linger for months on end? Are we willing to keep the game going until someone actually dies?
The league, players and fans have all accepted that risk as the cost of getting back out on the field, but it’s time to stop pretending that those risks are hypothetical. More players are going to test positive and it’s only a matter of time until someone is seriously, irrevocably sickened.
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