The Steelers-Browns playoff game is on as scheduled. For now.
That’s despite a continuing spread of coronavirus cases within the Cleveland Browns organization that started before its Week 16 loss and continued through the team’s Week 17 win over the Steelers.
Via an email to TribLive Steelers beat writer Joe Rutter from NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy, the league is moving forward with plans to kick off at 8:15 p.m. Sunday night.
Great. Similarly, I am “planning” to buy the property next to Neverland Ranch and build an equally sized mansion just so I can be Ron Burkle’s neighbor. And I plan on doing so with whatever money I raise selling lemonade on the Clemente Bridge before Pirates games this summer.
Let’s see whose plan comes together first. I’ll give McCarthy’s a better shot. But not by much.
After all, the league reiterated “plans” to have the Steelers-Ravens game on Thanksgiving. Then, again, that following Sunday. Then they “planned” on it for Tuesday. Only to end up playing it Wednesday.
Not to mention all those “plans” to get the Steelers-Titans game off the ground on time back in Week 4 as well. How did those turn out?
The NFL can bluster all it wants about soldiering forward. The league is still subject to the spread of covid-19 among its remaining playoff clubs. The infection rate will dictate plans. Roger Goodell’s preferred Super Bowl schedule will not.
Sadly, the virus appears unaware that it’s playoff time now, and these games “really” count and can’t be moved.
Well, actually, they can. And let’s be honest, they will be moved if necessary.
The conferences have a Saturday-Sunday gap between the divisional-round contests and conference championship games. Hence, there’s no reason why that can’t happen between the wild-card weekend and the divisional round, too.
Even if the opponent is coming off a bye.
Given everything else we’ve seen based on scheduling tweaks this year, let’s not act like a Monday to a Sunday second-round playoff game would be catastrophic, or any more tainting of competitive balance than a team playing with only two-thirds of its roster as we saw when Baltimore came to Heinz Field.
Now more than ever, the league needs to be transparent about its thresholds for playing games based on infection rates within individual teams and the reasons why decisions will be made to play or postpone.
What does it take to get a game moved? What are the minimum accepted days between games? How many positive cases within a team constitute the need for a delay? Does depleting a specific position group via close contact tracing matter in the analysis or not?
Be upfront about it. Now. Before it looks like Goodell is making things up as he goes along. Because maybe — quietly — what is good for Patrick Mahomes isn’t good for Baker Mayfield. And that would reek of favoritism.
The Steelers are not going to get forfeited into the next round, so don’t even bother going there. The league would delay a full week before something like that happens. Honestly, Goodell should’ve baked in a bye week before the start of the playoffs instead of before the Super Bowl.
Get a week further removed from the holiday spike. Delay six total teams from traveling and 12 total teams from playing until the weekend of Jan. 16.
The playoffs are going to last five weeks anyway. Three conference weeks, a bye week, and the Super Bowl. Who needs that extra week before the Super Bowl this year? For what?
The virus has already practically eliminated all the parties, media events and meetings. I would think that both the newly crowned AFC and NFC champions would prefer to just get to the title game as fast as possible and not sit around for an extra week practicing at home among their families and the general public, just waiting to see which important player gets covid.
Imagine being the Kansas City Chiefs or Green Bay Packers after winning the conference title on Jan. 24. Then on Monday, Feb.1 — after a meaningless bye weekend — Mahomes or Aaron Rodgers gets a positive test and can’t play in Tampa.
What a waste that would be.
What the NFL should’ve done is build a bubble format for the playoffs, but that apparently never had much of a prayer of happening because of logistics, cost and collective bargaining with the NFL Players Union.
Now, if the spread continues, the Browns might resemble the makeshift unit Baltimore dressed in the Heinz Field “Covid Bowl.” And then the Steelers are going to have to expose themselves to that opponent for the second week in a row.
So far, evidence indicates that a spread on the field between teams has been close to zero, if any.
Now would be a lousy time to find the outlier in that experiment, though, huh? You don’t want the Steelers becoming the Browns in terms of contagion, then going to Buffalo so the Bills can become the Steelers. And so on.
Unfortunately, this is the reality the league is in now. Trying to “drive a toaster through a car wash” without getting electrocuted. Believe me, I’m rooting for Goodell to white-knuckle this Apollo 13 mission all the way to Tampa on schedule for Feb. 7.
If he can’t, he’s more than welcome on my Neverland-adjacent ranch to get his mind off things.
In the meantime, can I interest any of you fine folks in a glass of lemonade?
Tim Benz is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Tim at tbenz@triblive.com or via Twitter. All tweets could be reposted. All emails are subject to publication unless specified otherwise.
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