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NFL continues to see positive coronavirus cases rise

The New England Patriots, Tennessee Titans, and Las Vegas Raiders have all reported positive coronavirus cases among their players. Yahoo Finance’s Dan Roberts joins The Final Round to discuss the details and what’s next for the NFL if it doesn’t take more precautions.

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: Well, speaking of coronavirus cases creeping up in cities nationwide, a couple of cities-- or a couple of states, I should say, recording their highest number of cases over the last seven days. But when you take a look at how some of the sports leagues are dealing with this, we got new news out today regarding the NFL, and cases there continuing to climb. Two more players on the Titans, as well as a third player on the Patriots testing positive.

Dan, now we have two games in jeopardy this weekend. And this is a league that started the season off on the right foot. What can you tell us, and what do you think the league's response to this is going to be?

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DAN ROBERTS: Well, we have games in jeopardy, that's right. Now, the caution I give is that when people see this news, and I understand this, the first reaction is to say, oh, boy, especially when you see reports of multiple cases on multiple teams at once, you say, oh, boy, the whole season is in jeopardy. Boy, I don't think so.

I think the NFL and from everyone I've talked to, I was just speaking to someone pretty close to NFL officials about this a few hours ago saying that almost nothing would lead the NFL to pause or suspend the season. I mean, the revenue is great enough, and mostly from broadcast. And, you know, the sort of power is great enough that this league is not stopping.

You might see some games postponed, you might see some games canceled, that would be a worst case scenario. But people's reaction is to say, how is this season going to continue? It will. And, you know, the NFL knew that they'd have COVID cases. That's not me defending what the league has done. I just think that's the reality here.

And if you remember when Major League Baseball returned, about two weeks in, the Marlins had a major outbreak, and everyone at the time said, how is this going to continue? This season's in trouble. They got through it. They muddled through it. And now here we are in the MLB postseason.

So you're right. We have the next Patriots game in jeopardy, the next Titans game is in jeopardy, there's a case on the Raiders. And I think the key with what the NFL has done is that they're testing all the players every single day. So, you know, when Cam Newton, the Patriots quarterback, reportedly tested positive, three days later, you still had no positives on the Patriots, and everyone was so surprised.

They said, wait a minute, how could that be? Where did he get it then? And then say we have a positive in Stephon Gilmore, the defensive star of the Patriots. So it's a reminder that there is an incubation period. They can test everyone and get no positives and then two days later, they have a positive. That's concerning.

But they're testing the players every day. I think if there's anything you can ding the league on, it's that, in hindsight, they probably should have had more bye weeks. You know, they probably should have carved into the season more weeks where teams weren't scheduled to play so that they would have had open gaps to reschedule games to when they got positive cases.

I mean, the NFL had all the time in the world to prepare for this. But all that said, yeah, I think you're going to, you know, maybe see some games postponed. We've already seen that the Titans game this past weekend was postponed. For now, that is the worst I could imagine happening. But you have to keep monitoring the situation.

And every time there's a player who tests positive, they isolate him for 10 to 14 days. And that's the status quo for right now. I expect to see more positives. But I would caution people, I don't think that means, oh, the whole season is about to go down.

SEANA SMITH: Well, Dan, that's a disadvantage, right? When it comes to the NFL compared to, say, the MLB, which you were just talking about, because if MLB wants to postpone a game, they could eventually have a double header. They have more, just, options in terms of making up that game, whereas the NFL, you can't play two football games in one week. I mean, that's just from a safety standpoint.

It's not the right call to make. So their options, I guess, at this point are limited.

DAN ROBERTS: Well, that's exactly right. And I'm glad you said that because, you know, it's already kind of too short or seen as a short week when a team plays both on Sunday and Thursday, right? And then you also had no preseason. So we've talked about, you know, it's a little too early to tell, but is the rate of injury higher than usual because there were no preseason games.

So you add to all that the idea of rescheduling games, it's tough. I mean, there was talk about the Patriots-Chiefs being moved to Tuesday of this week. And instead, it did happen on Monday night, even though Cam Newton was out. But I think you're going to come up to some, you know, worst case scenarios where instead of pushing a game, you know, that Titans-Steelers game was pushed all the way to week seven, instead of pushing a game, you might see some games just not happen.

But you're right, the NFL is at a disadvantage there. It's a much shorter season, you got one game a week. With baseball, you can always throw in a double header. You can make a team play twice in one day. So tough for the NFL, and they'll just have to continue to muddle along. Let's make sure we mention for the viewers if they didn't see that just a few days ago, the NFL announced tighter restrictions and bigger punishments for teams that don't follow the COVID regulations.

Now, one of those is if you bring on a new player, like a free agent or you get some player via a trade, there's a much longer onboarding process than usual. So that also makes it harder. I mean, you've got a guy who has COVID, suddenly, you need to bring a new guy onto the team, longer period of onboarding.

So it isn't simple. The optics may not be great. But again, I think the NFL is likely to just muddle through the positive cases that pop up.