Yahoo Finance NFL legend Steve Young: The league is tweaking COVID-19 policies so that 'asymptomatic players can play’
Amid rising COVID-19 cases, the NFL hasn’t wavered from its plan to play all scheduled games within the originally planned 18-week season and playoffs.
In the past week alone, the NFL has postponed games to help players return from COVID-19 protocol and is now trying to prevent some players from entering the COVID-19 reserve list entirely.
On Saturday, the NFL changed its testing protocol to decrease the number of times vaccinated players are tested as long as they remain asymptomatic. Pro Football Hall of Famer Steve Young said the league’s message is clear: The NFL will press forward amid the COVID surge, even if that means allowing asymptomatic players to play in games regardless of their infection status.
"They’re going to try to figure out a way to make sure that asymptomatic players can play, and this is their solution,” Young said on Yahoo Finance Live (video above). “And people can argue and curse and do everything they want about it, but the fact is the NFL has been amazing in getting people on the field and playing football throughout the pandemic.”
The NFL recently adjusted its policies after having more than 100 players test positive prior to its most recent slate of weekend games. The slew of positive tests forced three games to be moved to weekdays due to a lack of player availability among three teams. As of Monday evening, the NFL had more than 150 players on the COVID-19 reserve list.
The NFL is "in a unique spot where they don’t have to really answer to anybody,” Young said. “It's the most inelastic business in America where the demand is constant and ever present. And no matter what happens, the demand will be there. And so in that inelasticity, the NFL has a tremendous amount of flexibility. They want to stay on schedule. They want to make sure they put the games on."
Other American sports leagues are also adjusting amid the recent surge: The National Hockey League (NHL) extended its Christmas break by two days as more than 15% of the league's players have been added to COVID-19 protocol. It also tweaked its testing rules to administer tests daily and has now postponed 50 games less than halfway through the season.
The National Basketball Association (NBA), meanwhile, has positioned itself more similarly to the NFL. The basketball league has postponed seven games since Dec. 14, and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver told ESPN Tuesday night that the league has ‘no plans’ to pause the season.
'People can argue and curse and do everything they want'
Nearly 95% of all NFL players are vaccinated, per a release from NFL Player Health and Safety.
Still, breakthrough cases have brought the league to an inflection point. The Cleveland Browns started a third-string quarterback on Monday night. And many Philadelphia Eagles fans who originally bought tickets for Week 1 weren’t able to attend on Tuesday night because of the game being rescheduled to a weeknight.
For the San Francisco 49ers, there hasn’t been a breakthrough COVID case yet among its players during this current regular season. The team’s president, Al Guido, attributed this to the high vaccination rate among players, employees, and the surrounding Santa Clara, Calif. area.
“All of our Tier 1 and Tier 2 staff, our coaches, our executives, are fully vaxxed, fully boosted, so I feel like we’ve done a really good job at the mitigation efforts,” Guido told Yahoo Finance recently. “We know we're in an evolving, changing world. We’ve seen rescheduling of games. But we feel very confident that we’ll get all of our games in.”
When asked about the NFL’s decision to not test vaccinated players regularly, which could lead to players participating in games while infected, Guido deferred the decision to the NFL’s medical team.
“If you look at our league, the lion’s share of our infections are asymptomatic,” Guido said. “If you look at the make-up of the individuals, they’re healthy. They’re young. And so, I certainly feel very good. It’s not my job to — I guess I can pontificate on this — but I really frankly follow the doctors and the science here. And the NFL’s got some of the best in the world, if not the best.”
These are the costs of playing amid a surge in COVID-19 cases. Young, who’s now also an NFL analyst on ESPN, said the league will do what it can to make sure the on-field product isn’t highly impacted.
“I think the pandemic is maturing, and it’s left a lot of people to kind of figure out ways that work for their business,” Young said. “And the NFL’s going to be the tip of the spear on that.”
Josh is a producer for Yahoo Finance.
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