Are the Eagles using COVID-19 protocols to their advantage? Looking at the possible gamesmanship strategy that might be genius
The Philadelphia Eagles clinched a playoff spot on Sunday by narrowly defeating the Washington Football Team along with a couple other results in their favor. Before the fun begins, however, they have one more game on Saturday night against the Cowboys which has become fairly meaningless in the grand scheme of things, and they should certainly be looking to rest some if not all of their starters in that affair.
Several players may be forced to rest whether they want to or not, following an interesting and perhaps unexpected development Monday morning in which a dozen Eagles players had tested positive for COVID-19, including several notable names in Dallas Goedert, Jason Kelce, Fletcher Cox, and Boston Scott, among others. For a team that has generally been one of the more compliant ones in the league regarding getting vaccinated and following protocols, this surprised some.
On the surface, the claim could easily be made that their most recent opponent in Washington, who of course have been notoriously ravaged by COVID for the past month now, may have once again transmitted the virus to the Eagles as a result of playing them, as Nick Sirianni tested positive the day after their first matchup in Week 15. However, the timing of the positive tests and the assortment of players placed on the list is a little odd. While Omicron has dismantled several rosters up to this point, it had yet to take out 12 players from one team across several different positions at the same time. With the new COVID-19 protocols, vaccinated players are only tested if they either have symptoms, are randomly selected (which is usually by position group), or they volunteer. The first two choices appear out the window, so seemingly all of these players volunteered to be tested shortly after their game, and chances are they were far from the only members of the team to do the same. Given all of this, it is almost impossible to believe that the Eagles did not plan to have much of if not the entirety of their roster volunteer to be tested at once.
Why would they do this? I think there are multiple likely reasons:
1 – It clears roster spots to call up practice squad players to play in the meaningless Cowboys game this Saturday. It is really hard to have 25 starters on a 46 man game day roster and never play any of the starters. Narrowing this number down could help keep the Eagles healthier come playoff time (assuming they fully recover from their COVID).
2 – Testing positive on Monday is much better than testing positive on any other day of the week if you are an NFL player, especially with the new protocols only requiring five days of isolation without symptoms for a positive test. This allows players to return as early as Saturday if they begin isolation on Monday, whereas testing positive later in the week would make it much more difficult to be available for the following game. With some playoff games happening on Saturday, the Eagles could potentially start doing this every week with the hopes of retaining key players in time for their game even if they have to enter protocols.
3 – This is more theoretical rather than practical, but perhaps testing positive now makes it less likely players will be selected to undergo testing in the future, thus increasing their chances of availability for the duration of the playoffs? I don’t have any hard evidence to back that up, but it would make sense that the league may not target recent positive cases as part of their testing process.
Some of this potential gamesmanship strategy is discussed further by a doctor much smarter than me here.
In a strange way, the Eagles may have been hoping to get as many people on the list as possible this week so they can clear roster room and perhaps increase their chances of playoff availability. In my view, there is nothing inherently wrong with this at all, and quite frankly it is strategic genius and really goes a long way to show that being a vaccinated and compliant team is a legitimate competitive advantage in the NFL this year.
Photo: David Maialetti/ Philadelphia Inquirer
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Categorized:Eagles