PITTSBURGH — It would be ideal if the winner of the Super Bowl was actually the best team in the NFL. That happens sometimes, but often there are other factors — injuries, the right path of opponents, a couple of key calls — that help determine the winner.
COVID-19 protocols trump all of those factors and could be the single biggest factor in the fate of teams fighting for the Super Bowl. We — at least in my lifetime and I’m 50 years old — can never recall any non-football factor that weighs so heavily on the outcome of the games. We have never seen anything that could change the fortunes of a team as quickly as these COVID-19 protocols have.
We got another reminder of this with the Browns announcing that their head coach, Kevan Stefanski, and guard Joel Bitonio and receiver KhaDarel Hodge tested positive for COVID-19 and will not be available for the Steelers-Browns playoff game Sunday.
That is a significant change for the Browns, as it takes their head coach and maybe their best offensive lineman out of the mix for the most important game the franchise has played in more than a decade. And there is no guarantee the outbreak is over and there won’t be more players or even more significant players that are ruled out for the game.
It is a reality check for every NFL team still alive in the playoffs that their fortunes may not be 100% in their hands. I’m quite sure every NFL coach of a playoff team said this morning, “By the grace of God that wasn’t us.”
Mike Tomlin addressed this at his weekly news conference Tuesday. He said that this is something that every coach is thinking about as they prepare for game each week, but it is also something they can’t control.
“Every morning at 6 a.m., I am looking at my phone and waiting for verification of the previous days test results,” Tomlin said. “Are we in the clear or not, and what necessary adjustments need to be made or what investigations need to be made? That has been our life, not just here in Pittsburgh, but collectively as members of the National Football League since July.
“There are continual reminders of how fragile these circumstances are so what is transpiring in Cleveland is not reinforcement or verification it is just more of the same for us like it has been for everyone else throughout the course of this journey.”
The Browns weren’t likely to win this week, anyway. The Steelers have owned them, Ben Roethlisberger never loses to them and earlier this year, when both teams were at full strength, the Steelers pounded them into the Heinz Field turf. And even if the Browns somehow beat their demons and get past the Steelers, they aren’t going anywhere.
Nobody believed the Browns were a Super Bowl team before this development and so when they ultimately end up losing Sunday, it will be a blip on the radar, a tiny footnote in history, that they didn’t have their coach.
However, there are many other teams with Super Bowl aspirations that could certainly get taken out of the playoffs with a bad batch of COVID-19 tests. And that would be a nightmare for the NFL as they have forged through a lot of uncertainty and adversity to get to the point where they can put on the playoffs and showcase the best of the league.
The Browns losing Stefanski is one thing — what if, say, the Packers wake up one day and find out Aaron Rodgers has tested positive or has had close contact with someone who is positive? What about the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes, the Bills and Josh Allen or the Saints and Drew Brees — and, of course, the Steelers and Roethlisberger?
Those developments would absolutely change the course of the playoffs and make it very difficult for the NFL to crown a champion without some degree of an asterisk. We have seen injuries change the course of the playoffs in the past, but I am not sure we have seen something that has the ability to wipe out a position group or side of the ball like COVID-19.
Heck, maybe the two teams best positioned to handle this stuff are the Ravens and Titans. Both have already had a fairly significant outbreak, so maybe the worst is behind them. We aren’t sure how that all works, but it seems like people getting a second infection is fairly rare, so I’m sure Mike Vrabel and John Harbaugh are knocking on wood.
The Steelers cannot control these outbreaks or when they happen. The virus has proven it will pop up whenever and wherever it chooses regardless of how many safeguards are in place. The Steelers can only hope that they aren’t on the wrong end of a batch of positive tests and that they have the chance to compete in the playoffs with their roster intact.
