DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum Browns/COVID | Part 2 | UGH

%&@! Covid!

Since the NFL adopted these draconian "contact" rules and are going to force teams to play without players, despite those players having no positive tests or symptoms.. they could have very easily come up with a system that allows coaches to participate on game day from isolation.. with all of the resources they have, not allowing them to do that is just stupid and serves no real purpose other than punishment.

We allow them to coach on the sidelines, we allow them to coach from the booth, what are they afraid of if they coach from isolation? Stupid.

This is not the movies. No happy ending

Did anybody really expect anything different???? The Browns made the playoffs (no thanks to the Refs) But they are not the NFL favorites so they will be screwed yet again. I will never ever believe that the NFl would push ahead with the playoffs if one of their ladies (IE favorite teams)without delaying the games (see Baltimore)

Agreed. I still can't see why the game can't be moved to next Tuesday. Teams play on short weeks all the time.

So is there any chance we could get Callahan back for this game? Or is it absolutely 0%?

1. The league has said they won't delay games because a team is at a competitive disadvantage. (Also, Stefanski, Bitonio, and anyone else who tests positive from this point on won't be back Tueday anyway.)

2. It would give the winner of the game a major competitive disadvantage to only have three or four days of prep for a playoff game when the other team has the normal amount of time.

Depends on which day he tested positive.

So, it actually IS an outbreak.

Yes! What a great reference.

Yet the did so for Baltimore.

GM I believe your right. As far as the 2nd reason given the team your going to play would only have 3 or 4 days to prepare also. They won't know who they're going to play until our game is over. Either way it's just Browns luck rearing it's ugly head again.

Yes, the league has said that.. they made the announcement on December 3rd, after already doing it for a couple teams previously.

I think that's why people are ticked. Not only that, this is the playoffs, this is supposed to be the showcase for your "product", the best of the best. I'm kind of in line with GM here... if Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes needed to be ruled out, the NFL would have found another way.. they probably can't now because precedent has been set but they would have.

Wow. Seriously?

Smfh.

Question for anybody who knows.. who does the contact tracing? Anybody know how the process works internal to a teams organization?

To ask the question that's really on my mind.. what's preventing a team (or players and coaches) from just lying? I mean, I get that with a positive test you are out, but what is the formal process to determine who they were in contact with? Is it the honor system? Is it the team self-reporting?

Why not just postpone all of the playoffs for two weeks? It's the damn playoffs

They postponed the Baltimore game because they had an outbreak within the team’s facilities. A strength coach had COVID, knew it, didn’t wear a mask, and got everyone sick. As bad as all this seems, the Ravens had way more players infected.

I’ve said it before, if we want to get the game postponed we should get more players infected with COVID.

And make sure the spread is traced back to the facility.

We only need to get a couple more players infected (preferably back-ups) and then give them this spider web of contacts... then those on the contact list could come back and play after it was postponed.

How does contact tracing work in the NFL? Here are the answers
By Peter King
12/14/20

One prediction I feel very good about making: Without a significant and advanced system of contact tracing this fall, the NFL would have had to postpone or cancel games by now. Yet here the league is, 14 weeks in, and zero games to make up. “The contact-tracing element is absolutely foundational for us,” the NFL’s medical director, Dr. Allen Sills, told me Friday. “It’s the element that almost nobody is talking about.”

Contact tracing has become increasingly important as the season progresses and COVID-19 increases around the country and in the player population. In September and October, 47 NFL players tested positive for COVID. That number shot up recently. From Nov. 1 to Dec. 5, 111 players were positive. More cases, more chances of spread. And more reason to emphasize the identification and isolation of COVID-positive people. The NFL, as of Friday, had discovered 24 new cases of the coronavirus through tracing of high-risk close-contacts with those NFL employees previously testing positive. That is according to Dr. Christina Mack, an epidemiologist for IQVIA, a long-time NFL partner in health research and technology, and now in contact tracing. She has worked closely with the NFL this season.

Dr. Mack gave an illustration of how the contact-tracing program works. There are a few provisos: Privacy laws prevent the NFL from using an example with names and teams, so for the sake of the exercise, I will use The Team, and Player A and Player B. She would not provide exact dates of the illustration, so I will use Day 1, Day 2, etc. She would only say that this scenario occurred within the last month, as cases around the league have spiked.

Day 1, evening

Player A, driving, carpools home with a teammate from a full day at practice with The Team, having a conversation of about 12 minutes with the teammate when he drops him off. Player A arrives home around 6:30 p.m.

Day 2, morning

At 7:30 a.m., Player A arrives at The Team facility and his nose is swabbed for the daily COVID-19 PCR test. A normal practice day ensues.

Day 3

At 6:30 a.m., when Dr. Mack wakes up, her phone already has text alerts of any positive tests among the players or team employees (coaches, training and equipment staff) with daily player contact. These tests of about 70 players per team (plus coaches and team officials) were swabbed the previous morning. She sees Player A of The Team has tested positive from his test on Day 2. The rest of the NFL’s COVID team, led by Dr. Sills, plus officials of The Team, also get this data. An official of The Team contacts the player and tells him to isolate and not report to the club facility—and to expect to be debriefed by a league contact tracer about all his contacts in the previous three days. “The team will ask, ‘Are you okay? Are you isolated? If you’re at home, make sure you’re isolated from your family,’ “ Dr. Mack said. “And they isolate everyone who is about to get contact traced.”

At 7 a.m., Dr. Mack and a team of four to six tracers meet by conference call to discuss that day’s positives. Dr. Mack and the tracers have to look at results from the player’s tracking device on Day 2, when he was contagious and spent the day at the facility, plus two days prior. They do this because even though the player didn’t test positive on the previous two days, he may have had the ability to spread the virus on those days. Each player while at the team facility wears a Kinexon tracking device from the time he walks in till the time he leaves for the day, and it shows who the player has been closer than six feet to during the time he is at the facility or at practice. In examining the player’s device over the previous three days, Kinexon shows the player had eight contacts on the day he tested positive, seven contacts on the previous day, and two contacts on the previous day to that. Some of those people—depending on the time and area of contact—will be contacted by the tracers. While this is happening, The Team decides to close its facility and work remotely till the tracing has occurred.

At 8:30 a.m., what Dr. Sills calls “the SWAT team,” a group of about 12 doctors, epidemiologists, infectious-disease experts, league officials and tracers, meet by conference call. (This meeting happens seven days a week, an hour earlier on Sundays.) “We go through each case that day, and put together a pod team for that case,” Dr. Mack said. For the pod investigating Player A, there will be an IQVIA tracer, an NFL-employed tracer, and a physician who is an infectious-disease expert.

A big part of the process is interviewing The Team’s Infection Control Officer (each team appointed one to start the 2020 season) to get an overview of Day 2, to see where more questions and interviews might be needed.

“The individual came in at 7:30 a.m.,” Dr. Mack said, referring to the day of the positive test. “There was a team meeting but it was in the bubble, which is a well-ventilated area. They had a lift session so we walked through the map of that lift session. Everyone was spread out. They were more than six feet apart, heavily ventilated room. Everyone had been wearing masks per protocols. The team had a walkthrough [a light practice]. They had lunch. The lunch tables are one chair per 10 feet apart. We went through the walkthrough again. The practice goes from 2:15 to 4:10. Everyone was spaced out and masked during that time. And then they actually had a night meeting which was 45 minutes and the [infected player] was there until 6:15 p.m. We walked through that entire day and asked about contacts at each point, masking at each point. Did you drink coffee or have a snack or eat food at any point? Which suggests the mask would be off.”

At the beginning of the season, the NFL defined “close contacts” as being within six feet for at least 15 minutes. Not anymore—because the CDC has deemed that too many factors can impact the strict definition of close contact. Tracers now would be concerned with a 5-minute, unmasked and indoor conversation. According to Dr. Mack, “The real art with the contacts is the interview. It has to be thoughtful and thorough.” It can last from 20 to 50 minutes, or longer, with questions like: Was your contact with the infected player inside? Outside? Were you masked? Were you eating? Drinking? Was the mask off for part of your contact?

It turns out, after the interviews conducted by the two tracers doing the investigation into Player A’s contacts, one was deemed a “high-risk close-contact.” That player, Player B, by league rule will have to stay away from The Team facility for 5 days.

When the tracers interviewed Player A, he mentioned a contact with a teammate on the evening of Day 1, driving home. In an interview with one of the contact tracers, Player B’s story matched the details of Player A about the carpool drive.

“It was an estimated 5-minute drive,” Dr. Mack said.

Two problems, per Dr. Mack:

“They had the windows up, and they were unmasked.”

Said Dr. Mack: “When they got home, they went outside and they talked for 12 minutes approximately, and then parted ways. That was the contact on that day that was noted as a high-risk close contact. In this example, at the facility, all of the protocols had been followed, distancing was done, masks were worn. The facility was set up in ways that tables were far apart, chairs were far apart, meeting rooms were well-spaced, they were in well-ventilated areas. We did not have any high-risk close contacts from the day in the facility despite interactions with the team all day. None of those individuals turned positive. But we did detect that high-risk close contact from the shared car ride home.”

Day 4

Player B does not test positive.

Day 5

Player B tests positive, four mornings after the maskless, closed-windows car-ride with Player A.

Epilogue

“This has been an evolution, an ongoing learning process,” Dr. Mack said. “So with this team [the prior week], we had gone through the data and we said, ‘You have a really high number of close contacts at 3 o’clock on a Wednesday. What is the team doing at 3 o’clock on a Wednesday?’ And they said, they’re in the locker room. They’re coming in and out of practice at that time and they’re in the locker room. We said okay, let’s go through and look at the schedule. Who’s in the locker room? And as we went through that exercise the week prior, we learned that the position groups had lockers close to each other and talked through with the team that if they changed the placement of the lockers to make it so the position group lockers were very much spaced apart, they aren’t going to be near each other and they’ll reduce their number of close contacts. After that meeting, this team changed the placement of the lockers. It was really well-timed because when this case came up, they had just moved all of the lockers and so they did not have contact in the locker room at that time between these people. It felt like a bullet dodged.”

I wondered if, in this case, limiting the spread to one player through contact tracing was a Eureka! moment for Mack and her three-person pod of tracers.

She paused, and answered it this way: “If there’s a positive case, keep one case to one case.”

https://sports.nbcsports.com/2020/12/14/an-inside-look-at-how-contact-tracing-works-in-the-nfl/

We need a gigantic COVID Hamster Ball for the sidelines.

If I'm reading that right, they have an elaborate and well-coordinated process that uses scientific data from monitoring devices, etc.... but still relies heavily on people just being honest in the interview.

So answer me this...it Joel tested positive on Monday or Tuesday and played Sunday...why wouldn't the Steeler player or players he lined up against not be a high risk close contact?

jc -

Aditi seemed legit choked up in that piece on Bitonio.

The Steelers will have 0 covid cases come Sunday. We all know that.

Hell, 14 teams in the playoffs and the Browns are the only one with cases.

All you can do is laugh at this point.

Seems to me if some of our players played and had COVID, certainly the Steelers NOW have it.

Yup.

It's called "The butterfly effect."

As a protest, once we get down by 14, just take delay of game penalties the rest of the game. The clock is started again when the ball is put in play, isn't it? Seems it would have to. You don't lose a down.

It only becomes a half the distance penalty once inside the 10 yard line. At some point it would be funny to watch the umpire spot the ball once it is on the quarter inch line.

The NFL probably wouldn't be happy with that, but what could they do?

Pretty sure the world is a simulation designed to torture Browns fans.

Dunno what we all did in a past life/simulation, but we must've been MONSTERS for this kinda punishment.

They would find or invent an interpretation that causes a loss of down.
They would also likely start to eject players or coaches while letting them know in their headset that they are about to be fined very, very heavily. Conduct detrimental to the league, and other such language that would result in suspensions of banishment from the league.

Oh, I know. I am sure a standard NFL contract prohibits throwing games. The NFL could apply that clause in the contract to punish the players and team.

-JC-

Bitonio played a full game, no mask, in the huddle, blocking D-Lineman. Why wouldn’t every D-Line he blocked and the entire Offense that huddled with him in Contact Tracing Quarantine!?

That's what I'm saying. I'm sure they'll create a loophole for that premise..

So the NFL can do the following:


"The Pittsburgh–Tennessee game, originally scheduled for October 4 at 1:00 p.m. ET, was postponed to October 25 at 1:00 p.m. ET due to several Tennessee players testing positive for COVID-19.[81][82]"

"The New England–Kansas City game, originally scheduled for Sunday at 4:25 p.m. ET, was postponed to Monday at 7:05 p.m. ET due to one positive COVID-19 test on each team, remaining on CBS."

"The Denver–New England game, which was originally scheduled for Sunday at 1:00 p.m. ET on CBS, was moved to 4:25 p.m. as part of the NFL's flex scheduling.[85] The game was later postponed to Monday at 5:00 p.m. ET after multiple New England players tested positive for COVID-19.[86] This game was again postponed to October 18 at 1:00 p.m. ET when another New England player tested positive.[87] The game remained on CBS."

But half a team and coaching staff out and the rest of the team unable to practice? Nope.

just wait till some of the NFL's golden boys like Mahomes and Rodgers come down with it during this playoff run...see how they'll bend over backwards to make sure they can play

Watching the UNC Miami basketball game on ESPN just saw it scroll on the bottom line that the 2 assistants to test positive were the DB and TE coach.

What does that leave us with? A total of 6 or 7 coaches on the sideline who actually matter?

Just clicking.....


It sucks, but that’s the way she goes. We can’t do anything about it. We can still beat Pittsburgh, no sense throwing in the towel and giving up now.

First, each subsequent delay of game is a 15 yard unsportsmanlike. Although I know that doesn't really speak to your example.

The bottom line to what would happen is the NFL's be-all, end-all, do what you want to the bad guys rule... The NFL rulebook has the open-ended concept of a “palpably unfair act” — an action which can be disruptive of the game but is not necessarily covered by other rules. For a palpably unfair act, the referees have leeway to assess whatever penalty they see fit, up to and including ejecting players and even forfeiture of the game.

See Bottlegate for example.