The National Football League’s postseason started last weekend. The winner-take-all tournament features 14 teams vying for the Super Bowl title. But after a month in which a record number of players had been added to the lists of the COVID-positive, that number has suddenly come to approach zero. It’s almost as if the playoffs were the antidote to COVID-19 in the NFL.
Between Dec. 1-27, 521 players on the league’s 32 teams were added to the league’s reserve/COVID-19 list, CBS Sports reported. The NFL even had to postpone three games because rosters of several teams were depleted. During the penultimate week of the regular season, a record number were on the list. The week before the playoffs started, there were 80 players listed.
With just over half the league eliminated, you would expect the numbers to be fewer now. But entering that first weekend of the playoffs, the 12 teams playing (two other teams had the week off) had a combined seven players on the infected list. Seven of the teams did not have any players on the list.
It’s a New Year’s miracle! And this happened as cases were surging in the world, the country, and the league.
The NFL recently revised its policies, shortening quarantine periods by half to match recent recommendations by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And regular COVID-19 testing for vaccinated players and team staffers has been discontinued unless someone admits to having symptoms. Furthermore, any player, coach, or team staffer who tests positive for COVID-19 can return just one day later, so long as he has two negative tests in that time frame.
The NFL stated the changes had been agreed upon just before the league’s playoffs solely because of its experiences with the omicron variant. Research revealed omicron was more contagious but far less severe. Approximately one-third of infected players had mild symptoms, and nearly two-thirds were completely asymptomatic.
“I think this is a new phase of the pandemic,” said Allen Sills, the NFL’s chief medical officer. “We’ve got an evolving virus and a landscape that’s changing. And therefore, we’re going to need to evolve our solutions.”
For all the talk of the seriousness of COVID-19, is it coincidental that just as the league’s most important part of the season starts, the number of players listed on the COVID-19 reserve lists significantly drops? Maybe science supports this decision — indeed, it might be the first time all season the NFL has had a rational, cogent COVID-19 policy. But when the rules change like this, apparently to accommodate the playoffs, it makes people question the legitimacy of public health advice.
