If the NFL season is postponed, or cancelled, does this Eagles campaign disappear forever?

Rhetorical question, but the reason we ask is because we’ve got our first COVID mini-outbreak, and it’s forcing the Tennessee Titans to shelf all team activities for the week, which is now jeopardizing their next game. In addition, the Vikings, their week three opponent, are also putting the kibosh on activities while they try to get this shit sorted out.

Here’s the latest from ESPN:

“The Tennessee Titans have closed their facilities until Saturday after three players and five team personnel members tested positive for COVID-19, the NFL announced Tuesday.

The eight new positive tests have been confirmed after additional testing, a source told ESPN’s Kevin Seifert.

The Titans, citing an “abundance of caution,” issued a statement saying they’ve halted in-person work Tuesday. The Minnesota Vikings, who played the Titans on Sunday, did the same, though a source told ESPN’s Chris Mortensen there were no positive tests with the Vikings.”

The NFL and Players Association put out a joint statement that didn’t say much. They’re working closely to “perform additional tests and monitor developments” and blah blah.

One of the problems here is that the NFL didn’t build extra bye weeks into the schedule, so there’s not a lot of wiggle room moving forward. Tennessee is supposed to play Pittsburgh on Sunday afternoon. Minnesota is scheduled to play Houston. The bye weeks for the Titans and Steelers don’t match up, so I’m not sure how they’d go about rescheduling that game, if it does get cancelled. Perhaps they just isolate the positive players and bar them from playing this weekend, but continue with the matchup as planned.

First real COVID challenge for the NFL. Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer have handled these obstacles in their respective non-bubble seasons, though they had flexibility that the NFL just does not possess due to the nature of the schedule, and the need to provide enough time between games for player recovery and regeneration.