NFL training camps had been rolling right along with very few COVID-19 cases. The positivity rate had been less than 1% (and dropping), and as of this morning, only four players league-wide were on the reserve/COVID-19 list.
But the NFL released a statement today indicating that yesterday’s testing returned several positive results from each team that is serviced by the same lab in New Jersey. The league is investigating those results, the impacted teams are working to confirm or deny the positive tests, and clubs around the league are taking precautionary measures, including altering or cancelling football activities today. The full statement can be found here, courtesy of Tom Pelissero of the NFL Network (on Twitter).
Luckily, it appears this might just be a issue with the testing site. Indeed, as Brad Biggs of the Chicago Times tweets, the Bears’ testing on Saturday yielded nine positive tests, but it turned out that all nine were false positives. The Bears have simply pushed back today’s morning practice to later in the afternoon, and at least a few clubs that aren’t serviced by the New Jersey location are practicing as normal.
Of course, even false positives during the regular season could force games to be canceled or force healthy players to sit out, so it may be a blessing in disguise that this has happened now so that the league will be better equipped to handle lab irregularities in the future. As of now, today’s news just seems to be a blip in the radar, but it is obviously worth keeping an eye on.
I’d like to see the NFL start a few weeks later to not overlap as much with the other sports. Also wouldn’t mind if all college football got pushed to the spring so we can get some NFL on Saturday’s every week.
I’m not too worried about the start date but Saturday NFL would be a good alternative if no college for sure
The other sports spent so much time trying to adjust because they didn’t want to compete with NFL. What exactly are you concerned about?
Testing is not perfect.