Matt Nagy’s phone rang Sunday at 2:51 p.m. For an NFL coach, a call at that hour means trouble. Bracing for the least listened Nagy when Andre Tucker, the Chicago Bears Infection Control Officer, told him that nine members of the organization tested positive for COVID-19.
Nagy was damned, he told reporters Sunday afternoon. Like the rest of the NFL, the Bears had sailed through the first month of training camp amid the coronavirus pandemic. Not a single Bears player has returned a positive test since the first inning process. And from the whole place, it turned out, the team had the kind of outburst that could disrupt it for weeks and question whether the league could really make it through a regular season of 16 games.
“My first reaction of five seconds when I was told was just pure disappointment and frustration,” Nagy said. “It’s hard when you hear that, because everyone’s doing such a great job of doing everything we possibly can in our control to prevent things like this.
“When you hear this, you think, ‘Wow, what’s next?'”
Unknown to anyone at the moment, 10 other teams in the league experienced similar surprises in what would term the term “false positive” next on the list of NFL concerns. It did not take long for the NFL health and safety team to track down the culprit: A New Jersey lab had returned dozens of false-positive results, including 12 for the Minnesota Vikings and 10 for the New York Jets. A total of 77 league-backed positive tests returned; all came from the New Jersey lab.
According to a source, all 77 individuals were retested with the original sample. All came back negative. Each of the 77 also took new point-of-care tests. All came back negative. Thus, it seems in all likelihood that the NFL was a consequence-free moment rather than a consequence-free moment to identify a potential vulnerability in its testing procedures, such as the reactions of individual teams to disastrous news.
“Honestly for us, it’s probably good that it happened now,” Vikings coach Mike Zimmer said. “Because we were able to adjust and adjust the kinds of things and figure out if it happened during the season and what we would do from there.”
The league said it was working with its test company, BioReference, to investigate the lab problem. Not yet offered a public statement on Sunday. But it’s clear that false-positive test results now rank as the most serious issue facing the NFL’s protocols, especially considering the impact they can have on a game.
The league has already intervened once to strengthen its protocols after Detroit Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford was forced onto the COVID-19 list by what was later determined to be a false-positive test result. Now, each positive test result is followed by two more tests – one a traditional polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and the other a rapid response – over a period of 24 hours. If both come back negative, the individual is reinstated in the team facility.
However, this approach cannot be stopped during the regular season. What would happen if a player or coach positively tested the day before a game? Would he or she have enough time to go through the next two-test process prior to kickoff? The league was not ready to answer this question on Sunday, and it is still working with the NFL Players Association on regular season protocols for Test matches. One option is to cut tests 48 hours prior to a game, giving enough time to resolve any lingering questions.
Deleting false positions is also important for contact trace procedures designed to minimize the spread of infection. The NFL protocol triggers a digital assessment of data for proximity tracking each time a positive test is recorded. Anyone who was within six feet of a person who tested positive in the previous 48 hours, at least 10 minutes, is required to isolate. That list would take quite a long time for any team that practiced during that time period, but a confirmed false-positive would eliminate the need to isolate.
Before learning about the lab’s irregularities, Buffalo Bills general manager Brandon Beane did not think his team would have enough people to practice on Sunday morning. The team already knew it would keep the players testing positive, including quarterback Josh Allen. But Beane did not take for granted that her teammates want to practice in the midst of the surprise and confusion. That he and Bills coach Sean McDermott set up a conference call for the players with NFL Chief Medical Officer Allen Sills to explain the lab’s irregularities and answer their questions.
“I think this was good for her to hear,” Beane said. “Because of course, if you’re going to be tackling and blocking, and passing the ball … people can be a little bit nervous when we miss some guys. We want to be very transparent with our players. We want to be honest with everyone. not just them. People are going home. We are not in a bubble, and we want to make sure we do it right. “
In Chicago, Nagy spent a good portion of his morning explaining the episode to coaches and players in individual interviews. He then held a Zoom call with more than 140 members of the organization to discuss the decision to practice Sunday afternoon.
“We continue to talk about trust,” Nagy said. “… If you trust us, and you realize that we will never put you or your family in the way of evil, then let’s practice and let’s do our deal.”
Assuming the lab problem has been corrected and is short-lived, the NFL has ended its weekend at the same spot it started. There are only three active cases of coronavirus among its 2500 players. A total of 111 players have been placed on the COVID-19 list over the past 28 days, and that includes those who just had close contact with someone who tested positive. A handful of coaches – including Doug Pederson of the Philadelphia Eagles, Anthony Lynn of the Los Angeles Chargers and Sean Payton of the New Orleans Saints – have been hit, but no team has experienced a documented outbreak. Eventually, Sunday’s episode would soon come to be seen as a net positive.
“I’m sure they’re getting to the bottom of what happened,” Beane said. “Well, if it happened a lot, I think this would shake everyone’s confidence. But we’ve used [the tests] a month or so, and this is the first time this seems to have happened.
“It was a good fire drill for our coaches … and everyone.”
ESPN’s Courtney Cronin, Marcel Louis-Jacques and Mike Reiss contributed reporting to this story.
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