With the Tennessee Titans continuing to deal with new positive COVID-19 tests, the possibility that the Buffalo Bills play in Nashville next Sunday is becoming more unlikely. With a Thursday night game following against the Kansas City Chiefs, the Bills don’t have any wiggle room in their schedule and the Titans have already lost their bye week because this week’s game against the Pittsburgh Steelers was postponed.
So what are the options for the next two weeks for the NFL and the Buffalo Bills?
Option 1: Keep the current schedule
This is unlikely. The incubation of the coronavirus can be up ten to 14 days. With the Titans quarantining on Tuesday of this week, ten days would be Friday, October 9th before the October 11th game. Especially if the Titans have positive tests coming in all the way until Friday the 9th, they wouldn’t play the game as scheduled. They also wouldn’t be able to prepare for the game. The Titans aren’t able to practice until the positive tests stop trickling in.
Bills vs. Titans: October 11th
Bills vs Chiefs: October 15th
Option 2: Move Titans/Bills back a day or two, move back Bills vs Chiefs a day or two
One of the options the NFL publicly considered for this week was moving the Steelers & Titans to Monday or Tuesday to give them a longer runway. That wasn’t going to work with more and more tests, but moving it to Tuesday would give Tennessee 14 full days from the time they were quarantined until the time the game was played. It doesn’t solve the problem of the Titans not practicing for two weeks, but it gets the game played.
This would necessitate moving back the Bills vs. Chiefs. Buffalo can’t play on Monday/Tuesday and then play that same Thursday. If they move Buffalo to Monday/Tuesday, they could move the Chiefs game to Friday/Saturday. Keep it primetime so the NFL can fulfill their obligations.
Bills vs. Titans: October 12/13
Bills vs Chiefs: October 16/17
Option 3: Move Titans/Bills back a day or two, swap a Sunday game to Thursday night
Moving the Bills/Chiefs to a Sunday game, be it prime time or during the day on Sunday, would give the Bills the necessary recovery time after a delayed Titans/Bills game. Week 5’s Sunday Night game is the Minnesota Vikings vs. the Seattle Seahawks. Could a prime-time game swap happen?
Bills vs. Titans: October 12/13
Bills vs Chiefs: October 18
Option 4: Create a new week of games and postpone Bills/Titans
The NFL had to know this was a possibility. Creating an extra bye week at some point in December could solve a host of potential problems. It would likely slot in BEFORE what we’re calling Week 17 right now in order to keep divisional matchups in tact for the final week of the season. Moving everything else back in the process would allow other outbreaks to be addressed later. Networks would be happy with one or more new games to broadcast, right?
Bills vs. Titans: December?
Bills vs Chiefs: October 15th
Option 5: Force the Titans to forfeit
This seems pretty unlikely unless they can find that members of the team willingly and flagrantly violated the NFL and NFLPA procedures.
Bills vs. Titans: BILLS WIN 2-0 (by rule)
Bills vs Chiefs: October 15th
What options are we missing? There has to be more you can drop in the comments section.