Minnesota Vikings News & Rumors

Three more individuals in the Titans organization have tested positive for COVID-19, including one player and two staff members, reports ESPN’s Adam Schefter (via Twitter). That brings the organization’s number of positive cases to 16 (eight players, eight other team members).

Earlier this week, the NFL postponed this weekend’s Titans’ game against the Steelers indefinitely, but the NFL might have to start considering contingency plans for Week 5, as well. Schefter notes on Twitter that the continued positive tests will increase “questions about the viability of next weekend’s Titans-Bills game.” The NFL was fortunate that they could accommodate this weekend’s postponement; it’s uncertain what they’ll do if the Titans are forced to sit out another week. Sam Farmer of the LA Times tweets that it’s an inevitability “that the NFL would tack an extra week onto the regular season for make-up games”

We do know that the NFL won’t open Titans facilities until they’re confident the “transmission event” has come to an end.

“We don’t want to reopen the Titans’ facility until we’re convinced that we’ve reached the end of the transmission event that occurred earlier this week and that we have put in place all the measures to keep everyone safe there,” NFL chief medical officer Allen Sills said (via Mark Maske of The Washington Post on Twitter).

Fortunately, there’s some good news out of Minnesota after the Titans played the Vikings last weekend. ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler tweets that the Vikings “received no positive Covid-19 testing results in today’s report.”

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.