The Titans and Vikings have suspended in-person activities after the Titans learned of three players with positive COVID-19 tests, plus five new personnel positives (Twitter link via Tom Pelissero of NFL.com). The Titans played the Vikings over the weekend, meaning that the Vikings were potentially exposed.
Already, the Titans have been told to stay away from their facilities until Saturday, so they’ll have to conduct all activities remotely in the interim (Twitter link via ESPN.com’s Dianna Russini). The Vikings, meanwhile, will wait until all of their test results come in before setting a plan of action, Dan Graziano of ESPN.com tweets. The NFL has ID’d 48 individuals who came in close contact with the nine people who tested positive on the Titans, so the Vikings are taking every precaution. To date, the Vikings have zero positive tests, per a club announcement.
So far, the league has been able to keep the spread of COVID-19 at bay with regular testing and strict guidelines for positive tests. Now, they could be hitting a major roadblock. The Vikings are scheduled to face the Texans this week and the Titans are slated to take on the Steelers. Both games, in theory, could be in jeopardy if there are widespread positives. Hopefully, there are no additional COVID-19 tests, and the games can go on as scheduled with players from Titans’ expanded practice squad called up to the 53/55-man roster.
The Titans advanced to 3-0 after their 31-30 win over the Vikings on Sunday. The Vikings, meanwhile, are winless through three games with a thoroughly depleted defense.
I imagine the games could be pushed to Monday or Tuesday if needed
Monday at the latest. Tuesday is too short of a week for the next game.
No Shorter than Sunday to Thursday games.
Yup.
Yes, and in fact what they could is make the game Tuesday, and push their following game from Sunday to Monday.
It must be so frustrating for the Texans. After opening up against the Chiefs, Ravens, and Steelers, they must be so looking forward to the Vikings.
If you can’t beat at least some of the good teams, then it just shows that you aren’t playoff caliber.
Maybe. But I wouldn’t be shocked if it turned out they were one of the top 6 teams in the AFC and happened to open their season against 3 of the top 4 or 5, would you?
If you trade away a player who is as important as Hopkins it’s almost inevitable that your going to struggle in the early going.
That’s what happens when BOB trades away their best player. They’re not going to the playoffs this year.
That feels pretty premature. The Titans have gone 3-0 while winning by a cumulative 5 points while playing a cakewalk schedule. The Colts have gone 2-1 against similarly weak competition. Saying the Texans won’t make the playoffs because they’ve gone 0-3 against extremely hard competition and they traded away their best weapon feels premature. They still have all of their division games ahead of them.
I read earlier that they could cancel this weeks Steelers/Titans game and make week 4 the Steelers bye.
Steelers Titans game gets rescheduled for Week 7 (Titans original bye)
Ravens/Steelers play week 8 during what would have been both of their bye weeks.
That’s some major league baseball level finagling right there.
Ravens move their bye week to week 7 in that scenario, I guess?
If it happened, then yes, they would move to week 7 I’m assuming
The only good thing about having few (or no) fans in the stadium is that rescheduling games has little impact.
Vikings got it on purpose. They needed an early bye week.
Vikings need to mail it in and improve their draft spot.
They SUCK.
How can a team have offensive line issues year after year after year and not AGRESSIVELY address the problem??? But nope…they continue to draft CB’s like there’s only one position on the field.
GM/Head coach are to blame for this continued SINGLE largest problem.
Dude, take a breath. In the last draft, they took 2 CBs in the top 160 picks. That makes sense, since they lost three who played a lot of snaps. They also took an offensive tackle. In the previous draft, they took no CBs in the top 160 picks, but took 2 offensive linemen. In the draft before that, one of each. And if you want to go back one more (the last draft where all picks could still be on their rookie deal), they took an O-lineman and no corners.
You’re overreacting to one draft in which they took 2 CBs in the first few rounds. Corners are pretty important, and that’s clearly not why their O-line has struggled.
If you arent a Vikings fan, then I would stay out of it, Oooof. You know not what we have been through, and your explanations are sort sighted.
short sighted* to touch on that, their fascination with drafting corners and ignoring offensive line stretches far beyond the last two drafts.
I rattled off four drafts. Literally all the drafts that would still be on their first contracts, outside of options on first rounders from the year before. The facts don’t bear out what you’re saying.
And away we go…
Does anyone really care when the playoff’s start? The NFL should simply keep pushing them back to fit in any makeup games.
“Already, the Titans have been told to stay away from their facilities until Saturday, so they’ll have to conduct all activities remotely in the interim…”
So if they DO play this week they do so with pretty much zero practice time, or are they allowed to practice together at another site (which would seem to defeat the purpose)?
I keep hearing the Titans would be at a competitive disadvantage by not practicing.
NFL coaches are such task master control freaks…has anyone ever tried it?
What if TEN is fresh and just roll over the Steelers?
NHL teams started phasing out morning skates years ago when they realized players already know how to skate and all they were doing is tiring them out for no good reason in the mornings of games.
Football relies so much more on designed plays where everyone has to know their role and how to execute it. If the practices were about staying in shape or something, I’d be with you, but young linemen for instance could probably use those reps.