Baltimore‘s game at Pittsburgh is still on for Tuesday night and the NFL intends for it to be played, according to sources.
As of Sunday morning there have been nine Ravens players and eight staffers who have tested positive for the coronavirus, sources said, and there were no new cases from Baltimore on Saturday.
The NFL’s focus is on identification, isolation and containment. The effort to carry that out is why the Ravens-Steelers game was moved to Tuesday and why the Saints-Broncos game remains scheduled for Sunday despite Denver not having any quarterbacks. In Baltimore, the spread was not contained; in Denver, it is.
The league does not hold up a game for a player, or group of players, to return. Instead, all of the league’s decisions have been medical decisions, not competitive ones, and have been driven by its doctors. As a result, there hasn’t been a single NFL game canceled through the first 12 weeks of the season.
The NFL Players Association was also in agreement with the decision in Denver to make the quarterbacks ineligible. The Broncos’ three eligible quarterbacks — Drew Lock, Brett Rypien and Blake Bortles — were each deemed to be high-risk COVID-19 close contacts and none of the three can be in uniform for Sunday’s game, the team announced Saturday night.
Denver’s statement didn’t say who the players came in contact with, but sources told ESPN it was quarterback Jeff Driskel. Driskel tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday and was moved to the team’s reserve/COVID-19 list later that day.
ESPN’s Jeff Legwold contributed to this report.
