On Tuesday, the NFL had its first COVID-19 outbreak.
Per USA TODAY Sports, the Tennessee Titans have shut down their facilities until “at least” Saturday due to three players and five other people with the team testing positive, and the Minnesota Vikings — who played Tennessee on Sunday — closed theirs. The Pittsburgh Steelers are scheduled to play the Titans on Sunday, and in a statement, the team said, “We have been informed to proceed with our game preparations for Sunday’s game until we are informed otherwise.”
The information that’s coming out about is all quickly changing by the minute, but the possibility of a postponed/canceled/moved game already has NFL Twitter abuzz with suggestions about how the complicated scheduling the league has could be shuffled around to accommodate a game that could be moved:
A suggestion:
Get rid of the week off after the Conference Championship games
Push the first three rounds of the playoffs back a week
Play any regular season games which need to get postponed in Week 18
— Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) September 29, 2020
Best reschedule scenario:
Move #Steelers at #Ravens from Week 7 to Week 8, when they now have byes.
Plug #Steelers–#Titans into Week 7, when #Titans have bye. Oct. 25.
— Paul Kuharsky (@PaulKuharskyNFL) September 29, 2020
If Steelers-Titans has to be postponed, there's a relatively easy fix. Titans have a Week 7 bye, but Steelers bye isn't until Week 8. However, Steelers play Ravens in Week 7, and Baltimore also has a Week 8 bye. So move Steelers-Titans to Week 7 and Steelers-Ravens to Week 8.
— R.J. White (@rjwhite1) September 29, 2020
Titans have Wk7 bye.
Steelers have Wk8 bye.
Steelers scheduled to play Ravens in Wk7.
Ravens also have Wk8 bye.Could move Wk7 PIT-BAL game to Wk8
Could move Wk4 PIT-TEN game to Wk7
Move Titans & Steelers bye to Wk4
Move Ravens bye to Wk7Problem solved?
— #AskFFT (@daverichard) September 29, 2020
Best solution for rearranging the Steelers/Titans schedule.
– Steelers/Titans don't play Sunday. Week 4 becomes Steelers' official bye week.
– Steelers/Ravens gets pushed from Week 7 to Week 8 (both teams have byes).
– Steelers/Titans play Week 7 (Titans scheduled bye).
— Alex Kozora (@Alex_Kozora) September 29, 2020
– Give Titans and Steelers a Week 4 Bye
– Move Steelers/Ravens, which is set for Week 7, to Week 8 (both teams then had their Bye Week 8)
– Ravens get Week 7 Bye
– Play Steelers/Titans in Week 7 (Titans had their Bye Week 7)
– Play Steelers/Ravens Week 8
Helps Ravens a lot
— Brad Spielberger (@PFF_Brad) September 29, 2020
If you give both the @steelers and @Titans their bye this week.
You could move the titans/Steelers game to week 7
The Steelers play the ravens wk 7 but the Steelers and ravens both have a bye week 8. You could just bump the ravens/Steelers game to week 8— Jay Feely (@jayfeely) September 29, 2020
Here's a solution; Ten and Pit go immediately into a bye week and then move Pit/Blt to week 8 (both teams have a bye in week 8 right now) and move Ten/Blt to week 7 (Ten has a bye in week 7 right now). https://t.co/uGYS1R4l3a
— Mike Tannenbaum (@RealTannenbaum) September 29, 2020
We’ll see if any of this is even necessary as we find out more, and I would hope the NFL had contingency plans in place for a scenario like this one. But if the game gets moved, canceled or postponed, it’s going to be very, very complicated for the league as a whole.
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