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Here’s the plan, per sources, which is tied to Tennessee being able to play:
🏈Broncos-Patriots next Sunday.
🏈Week 8 (what was supposed to be Denver bye): Chargers at Broncos.
🏈Week 11 (scheduled Miami bye) Dolphins at Broncos.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) October 11, 2020
The Tennessee Titans have drawn most of the national attention after an outbreak of positive COVID-19 tests at their team facility rivaled the numbers reported out of the entire country of New Zealand, but the New England Patriots have sent another ripple effect throughout the NFL after a series of positive tests of their own. And the league’s latest attempt at adjusting to this reality could impact multiple teams, including the New Orleans Saints, if not directly.
ESPN’s Adam Schefter reports that the current in-house proposal — if the Titans can play, which is up in the air given another positive test on Sunday — would reschedule the Week 5 game between the Patriots and Denver Broncos for Week 6, moving Denver’s previously scheduled Week 6 game with the Miami Dolphins to Week 11. The Saints will visit Mile High Stadium in Week 12.
So while the immediate changes would not influence the Saints, who rest during their Week 6 bye, the Broncos will not have that luxury. They would lose their own bye (in Week 8, when they’re to face the Los Angeles Chargers, their initial Week 11 opponent) and end up hosting the Saints after playing 10 consecutive games instead of three matchups after a bye week.
For Denver, Week 5 would be treated like their bye because they won’t play a game. But that’s hardly a real bye week because they have been practicing and preparing for their matchup with New England, meaning they won’t get a bye at all this year with all these schedule changes. That’s a tough break for a team that’s already been hammered by injuries to linebacker Von Miller, the franchise of their franchise, and numerous starters on offense including quarterback Drew Lock and wide receiver Courtland Sutton.
And it would give the Saints an advantage, cold as that is to say. They’re scheduled to fly out to Denver after back-to-back home games in New Orleans, with five kickoffs between their Week 6 bye and this Broncos game. That’s a stark difference to what the Broncos will be experiencing, even if they’ll be the home team.
You have to feel bad for the Broncos on some level. Through no fault of their own, they’ve been caught up in another team’s problems and had their schedule turned on its head, and the impacts will be felt for weeks. It’s been a theme of the 2020 season with other teams like the Pittsburgh Steelers experiencing schedule changes after an opponent (the Titans) mismanaged COVID-19 protocols.
It shines a spotlight on the NFL and the NFLPA, too. They had all summer to devise contingencies and backup plans and the best they could come up with was granting each team a couple of extra practice squad spots. League leadership underestimated their ability to contain infections and are now trying to stubbornly cling to a 17-week season with 256 games, citing logistics (heaven help us if we can’t have the Pro Bowl). NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero reports that the league is still reluctant to break from that structure by adding a Week 18 to make up delayed games.
Postponements should have been foreseen and accounted for, but they weren’t, and now many teams are paying for it with a mix-and-match schedule that looks different each week.
And we aren’t out of the woods yet. More positive tests are inevitable, as are more postponed games if not outright forfeits and cancellations. Some of them could more directly impact the Saints, who had their own scare last week after registering a false positive test result in Detroit.
Until the NFL decides to foot the bill and institute some sort of bubble for its teams and personnel, it’s tough to see a way out of this. Things would be different if a COVID-19 vaccine were available soon, but it’s highly unlikely to happen in the months ahead.
So buckle up
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