The NFL just made its first postponement of the 2020 season as a result of the Tennessee Titans' COVID-19 outbreak, but more games could be in jeopardy as more positive tests surface in Nashville. According to ESPN's Adam Schefter, an additional two Titans players have tested positive for COVID, bringing the total number of current positive cases on the team to 13 members of the organization, seven of which are players.
Those two players, the team later announced, were wide receivers Adam Humphries and Cameron Batson. Both have been placed on the team's reserve/COVID-19 list. Humphries has played in all three of Tennessee's contests to begin 2020 and has 15 receptions for 136 yards and a touchdown. Batson, meanwhile, was on the Titans practice squad.
While Tennessee's Week 4 matchup with the Pittsburgh Steelers has already been pushed to later in the season, now the Titans' Week 5 game against the Buffalo Bills could also be rescheduled if these positive tests persist, per Schefter.
The Titans' facility has been closed since the initial wave of positive tests, and the Minnesota Vikings -- Tennessee's opponent in Week 3 -- once again had zero positive tests of their own on Friday, according to NFL Network. But if more players test positive in the coming days, Schefter said, it's not out of the question the NFL could be forced to postpone the Titans' next game. This week's rescheduling process was relatively simple because of similar bye weeks for the Steelers and their former Week 7 opponent, the Baltimore Ravens, but another Titans postponement would undoubtedly present more challenges for the rest of the NFL schedule.
Titans coach Mike Vrabel, who has been adamant that his team has followed the NFL's COVID protocols, indicated this week that he'd hoped Tennessee would be able to return to work on Monday or Tuesday in preparation for Week 5. That, as Schefter suggested, is entirely dependent on whether the club's outbreak does not continue in the form of even more positive tests. It's now been eight consecutive days that the Titans have returned positive COVID tests, per ESPN's Kevin Seifert, with 15 total people contracting the virus during that time frame -- including a practice squad player who had been signed just beforehand.
