The Steelers and Titans will not play their scheduled game in Week 4, the NFL announced on Thursday morning. The game has been postponed indefinitely due to additional positive tests in the Titans’ latest round of COVID-19 testing.
The Titans were forced to cancel in-person activities this week after three players and five personnel members tested positive. After Wednesday’s round of tests, the organization is up to eleven positive tests in total — five players and six staffers (Twitter link via NFL.com’s Tom Pelissero). The team facility will remain closed until further notice, with many more rounds of tests to come between now and their next scheduled game on October 11 vs. the Bills.
The Vikings were also put through expanded testing after their Week 3 game against the Titans, but everyone in the organization tested negative. Their game against the Texans is slated to go on as scheduled on Sunday afternoon in Houston.
On Wednesday, head coach Mike Vrabel told reporters that no one on the Titans was seriously ill, beyond the usual flu-like symptoms. Hopefully, that’s still the case after word of three more positives.
Here we go…..
Stupid decision. Setting a bad precedent.
Maybe, like baseball, they’ll go by win percentage if teams can’t play 16 games?
They already made plans for what would happen in cases like this. They’ll either play on their intended bye-week or play the game before the playoffs at the end of the season
Taking a pandemic seriously as early as possible in order to contain it is a good precedent to set.
It’s a refreshing change actually!
There are still plenty of other games to watch, so we’ll be fine. If the NFL is the behemoth we all believe it to be, then no one is going to complain about the season stretching a little longer if necessary.
Football double headers! Two 3 quarter games! If games go to overtime teams start on the opposing teams 20 yard line.
Good one.
I’m open to any and all ideas that could make tonight’s Jets-Broncos game shorter.
Hillarious
That’s a good one!!!
In the 4th quarter, receivers get to line up 7 yards past the line of scrimmage.
The NFL can’t double header their way out of a jam like baseball did.
There is a good chance the Titans will miss next week’s game, too. If they have to miss another, that gets rough to make up.
But, they had to make a decision now. Can’t have the Steelers practice all week and then say, “sorry, that was your bye week.” They are already getting jobbed enough, playing 13 straight games.
I think the NFL did a wonderful job preparing for the tests themselves. They really crapped the boat when it came to preparing for a situation like this. Could have easily built in a bye week where no one played for exactly this situation.
Crapped the boat?
Screwed the pooch
Crapped the bed maybe?
“TheBoatmen • 8 hours ago
Crapped the boat?”
Don’t take it personally.
Hmm, that would have been an excellent idea. It would have made the season drag a bit, but totally worth it.
I’d like this story more if we could work in a conspiracy theory involving Belichick. Titans eliminated the Patriots in the playoffs last season so there is a motive here.
Planning an extra bye week would have a great idea here. A league-wide bye, even. I can hear league ownership gasping in shock, but it would have really saved some headaches and seemed like a logical solution for a league that supposedly planned for all this.
It would be nice to think that Covid would be so impressed by the addition of another bye week that it would throw up it’s hands and surrender unconditionally but I don’t see that happening.