The two Super Bowl teams have begun undergoing twice-per-day coronavirus testing. That means daily point-of-care testing in addition to the regular daily testing that has been done of teams’ players, coaches and staffers since training camp.
The Buccaneers and Chiefs have been subject to the league’s intensive protocols for teams for more than two months. Those enhanced measures, which included additional mask-wearing requirements and provisions for team meetings to be held remotely, were required of all teams beginning in mid-November, after the NFL previously had applied them only to those teams that had a positive coronavirus case or were exposed to the virus.
Coaches and other team officials also have stressed to players recently, according to a person familiar with the NFL’s planning, that the competitive stakes are higher than ever now, and any lapse in adhering to protocols would carry the risk of a player missing the Super Bowl, either through a positive test or being placed into quarantine as a high-risk close contact.
League officials and leaders of the NFL Players Association say that those still playing must guard against complacency.
“We’re not there yet,” DeMaurice Smith, the NFLPA’s executive director, said last week. “I hate to kind of step on the enthusiasm. It’s great to be one game away. But I think … we’re actually counting the days until that game kicks off. So it’s great. I’m proud of our players, thrilled that we’re here. But we’ve still got to get there, right? It’s day to day.”
The NFL opted against putting teams into a bubble environment, either at a single site or with players and coaches whisked to local hotels after leaving their hometown training facilities each day, for its postseason. The league and the NFLPA instead chose to continue to rely on the strict and ever-tightening protocols that had gotten the sport through its 256-game regular season with teams based in their home cities, playing games in their own stadiums with empty or partially filled stands.
“We were flexible and adaptable throughout,” Allen Sills, the NFL’s chief medical officer, said last week. “We’ve modified our protocols throughout the season based upon the data and the learning that we’ve gotten from the testing and tracing programs.”
The only significant coronavirus-related disruptions to the playoffs came when Coach Kevin Stefanski and some players and assistant coaches missed the Cleveland Browns’ opening-round victory at Pittsburgh after positive tests.
It will be a scaled-back Super Bowl week. Media availabilities for the teams’ players and coaches will be conducted remotely. That begins with Monday’s media-day proceedings. The Chiefs are not scheduled to arrive in Tampa until Saturday and will spend the week at home, preparing in their own facility. The Buccaneers already are at home, as the first team that will play a Super Bowl in its own stadium.
“We’re one game away,” Browns center J.C. Tretter, the NFLPA’s president, said last week. “If you probably took a poll before the season started for a lot of people in the community, I think, getting to the Super Bowl in the same amount of time with really only tiny changes to the schedule — that was not the expectation. So a ton of credit goes to our players as well as to everybody who stepped in those buildings, doing the right thing and following the protocols.”