National Football League had their first taste of COVID-19 problems. On Sunday morning, they released a statement early saying that one lab in New Jersey accounted for multiple positive tests. NFL added that none of their other testing sites had seen positive tests at their locations. NFL believed it to be a ‘false positive’ frenzy. That is in fact what happened. Green Bay, Chicago, Cleveland, and other teams dealt with false positives yesterday. This is the first major issue with the NFL and COVID yet it is truly not a big deal. In fact, it is good to figure out how this could affect the season.

People hate giving the NFL credit because they’re sort of the ‘Evil Empire’ of sports, but they’ve done a great job with COVID-19. They’ve had limited positive tests since coming back. No outbreaks to date. And they’ve adjusted on the fly when something is not working right. Matthew Stafford had an issue with false-positive tests. NFL made adjustments to fix that. I’m sure they’ll navigate this issue too whether it’s moving their testing to another lab or finding out what went wrong with the one in New Jersey. That is not a Monday morning issue that I want to deal with.

It is good to get this kind of thing out of the way now versus in three weeks. Could you imagine if this happened the day before the first game of the season between the Houston Texans and Kansas City Chiefs? It would be a complete and utter disaster. But figuring out how to handle this early gives teams and the league time to prepare. Some teams canceled practice yesterday like the Browns, Chicago delayed until later in the day likely waiting to make sure everything was good, and Green Bay pressed on.

Some doom and gloomers might hate the Packers did that, but my assumption is Mark Murphy, Brian Gutekunst got word that they were false positives. A number of players were held out of practice yesterday, so, it’s possible that Green Bay took precautions without telling anyone.

Good to see the NFL continues to figure this stuff out quickly and effectively.

Charlie.