Earlier today Gardner Minshew was taken off the Covid-19 list and now Matthew Stafford joins the club, per Adam Schefter.
Players only end up on the list if 1 of 2 conditions are met. The first being the player tests positive for Covid-19 and the second being the player is in close contact with someone suspected to have the virus or while tests are pending results. We don’t have to speculate why Stafford was on the list because the Detroit Lions made a statement today following Stafford’s removal from the list.
Today we removed Matthew Stafford from the COVID-IR list and onto the active roster. As a result of a False-Positive test result, he was forced due to NFL/NFLPA protocols to sit out until he received two negative test. His testing sequence for the Pre-Entry was: negative, negative, False-Positive. The next three tests were all negative. To be clear, Matthew does NOT have COVID-19 and never has had COVID-19 and the test in question was a False-Positive. Also, all of Matthew’s family have been tested and everyone is negative.
While it is amazing that Matthew Stafford does not have Covid-19, this incident raises another important question. What if someone gets a false negative? This false-positive means that testing is not 100% accurate and that’s extremely concerning for football when it only takes 1 person to infect over 50 people over the course of a practice and over 100 during a game.
I’m not saying football won’t happen, I want football to happen. I’m simply saying that the accuracy of these tests needs improvement for football season to happen successfully. I’ve said it before and I’ve said it again, the NFL can’t do a bubble approach like the NHL or NBA because there are too many people involved. It takes over twice the amount of total players on the entire court or ice to fill one side of a football field. I want the NFL to have a season but it won’t happen if a false-negative occurs and entire teams are shut down.
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