We continue to see a steady uptick in COVID-19 cases around the league, although fortunately they have been mostly isolated incidents with no full-blown outbreaks. Tuesday morning we got word of two more teams with players testing positive, both in the NFC East. The Giants and the Washington Football Team are the latest to be hit with the virus.
The Giants’ player is kicker Graham Gano, Paul Schwartz of the New York Post tweets. Thankfully New York is on bye this week, so Gano should be able to kick by the next time the Giants play a game in Week 12 against Cincinnati assuming there are no complications, Mike Garafolo of NFL Network tweets. The Giants are finally starting to pick up a little steam, so hopefully this remains an isolated incident that has minimal implications because of the bye.
Washington also had a player test positive, and also thankfully it sounds like somewhat of a best-case scenario. The unidentified player hasn’t been in the facility in the past few days and didn’t travel with the team for their game in Detroit last week, Tom Pelissero of NFL Network tweets. That’s because the player is currently on injured reserve, Nicki Jhabvala of the Washington Post tweets.
Washington is going into the intensive protocol, but since he didn’t play in the game the Lions won’t have to and hopefully no other Washington players caught it. Interestingly, as Pelissero noted in a follow-up tweet, Washington was one of only three teams who hadn’t placed a player on the reserve/COVID-19 list during the regular season before now. The only two remaining are the Rams and Seahawks.
Since 2010 the average death by flu has ranged from 12,000-61,000 per year. COVID has taken 230,000 in 10 months. Not even close.
Kind of crazy that, despite how bad they’ve been, the Giants could be 6-4 save for a handful of plays. Bad teams find ways to lose those games, yes, but in their last six games, they’re 3-3, with their three losses being by a total of 6 points (lost to Cowboys by 3, Eagles by 1, Bucs by 2). If Daniel Jones doesn’t throw a few interceptions and if Evan Engram caught that ball against the Eagles, they’d be going into Cincinnati on a six game winning streak.
Their final stretch is brutal, however (Seahawks, Cardinals, Browns, Ravens before closing out with the Cowboys), so they’ll likely not overtake the Eagles for the division. Talk about a blown opportunity, though.
You can play the “if this/if that” game with any team and the conclusion that always results is that injuries and turnovers generally dictate who gains the edge in a parity driven league.
“fortunately they have been mostly isolated incidents with no full-blown outbreaks”
I think the Thanksgiving holiday will be the major test as that is the time a large surge in cases is most likely to occur.