PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan)- NFL Network reporter Judy Battista took to Twitter yesterday to say that the NFL’s doctor, Dr. Allen Sills, and Executive Vice President of Football Operations Troy Vincent have discussed the idea of a “bubble” for the 2020 NFL playoffs.
This would create what Vincent described as a "secure environment" for the postseason to continue and be completed with, hopefully, no issues.
Battista joined The Fan Morning Show Thursday to explain further.
“I think the bubble idea for the postseason is around the idea of, this is what a general manager said to me months ago before any of this was in place. I said to him, ‘What happens if you lose your quarterback during the regular season?’ He said, ‘Well, quarterbacks get injured during the regular season, they come back.’ So if they get COVID-19 and they’re out for 2 weeks and they miss 2 games, OK, you can recover from that.
But if you’re quarterback tests positive the week of the AFC Championship Game, it’s curtains. So I think the idea of a bubble is that it’s a manageable amount of teams, it’s a manageable of amount of time, and then you’re doing absolutely everything you can to insulate the teams from the possibility of not just one infection but an outbreak of infections which is the real fear.”
She says the league will continue to change and adapt the protocols and testing for the season, especially to eliminate any more false positives like what happened with Matthew Stafford of the Lions.
“That changed their protocol to where if there’s a player who has not had any known infection, has not shown any symptoms, has been testing negative and then all of the sudden tests positive, you then take two follow-up tests. If both of those follow-up tests are negative, you’re considered negative. It’s considered a false positive.
The Lions were very upset, understandably so. This happened during training camp, imagine if that would have happened two days before a game where you could lose a Matthew Stafford-level player.”
Battista said Dr. Sills did find some hope in what has developed recently in COVID testing.
“He said yesterday that he’s really excited about this saliva test that just got FDA approval last week. It would obviously be a less invasive kind of test and it would be cheaper and you can get results maybe faster than 24 hours.
So, I think as more tests are developed, as they learn more about the virus, I think we’re going to see the protocol keep changing all the way through the season.”