After another postponement, it's time for the NFL to prepare for life in a bubble

Vic Fangio was already at UCHealth Training Center on Sunday morning when he learned that the Broncos’ trip to New England was postponed once again because of another positive COVID-19 test on the New England Patriots. This time, the postponement — pushing the contest back seven days — led to a waterfall of schedule changes.

Maybe they’ll get the game in next week. Maybe this will be an opportunity to turn a game that could have featured a sizzle-free starting-QB duel of Brett Rypien and Jarrett Stidham into an attractive potential shootout with Cam Newton and Drew Lock.

Sounds great — if it happens.

But the reality of operating outside of a bubble in a pandemic — in which it can take an average of five to seven days before infection can result in a positive test — leads to moments like this, where every team must “improvise and adjust,” as Fangio reiterates during his Zoom press conferences.

The problem is that there is only so much improvisation and adjustment that can be done before it begins exacting a toll on the legitimacy of a season.

Yes, Major League Baseball offered a model for the NFL to follow. Its protocols allowed players to go home every night and called for them to remain in their hotel on road trips. It even offered the cautionary tale, in the form of slip-ups from the Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals, then found ways to ensure that all but two teams played a full 60-game schedule.

But the NFL can’t schedule doubleheaders to make up for lost time. The Marlins had six doubleheaders, and at one point played 14 games in 10 days.

So the NFL needs to ask itself what it wants.

Does it want to have a legitimate competition?

Or does it want to press forward with a plan that leads to constant rescheduling or teams playing shorthanded because the virus’ progression ensures that infection may not show up in tests for up to a week?

The current chaos in the NFL offers a look at a world of rescheduling. This is an environment in which the Los Angeles Chargers learned that four games in the next six weeks would be shifted, in which the already rescheduled Buffalo Bills-Tennessee Titans game remains up in the air after another Titans positive test Sunday morning.

College football offers a window into playing shorthanded.

Saturday, Virginia Tech announced that 15 players would not play in its game at North Carolina. It marked the third consecutive week in which the Hokies ruled out a double-digit tally of players, following lists of 23 and 21 players for their previous two games — all this coming after the start of their season was delayed two weeks because of positive COVID-19 tests in the program.

The game went on. A shorthanded secondary dotted with walk-ons went against a Tar Heels attack led by Sam Howell, a quarterback who could be the No. 1 overall pick in two years. The result was predictable: Tech promptly allowed more yardage than at any point in the last 33 years in falling 56-45.

Yes, teams play without players due to injuries all the time. But injuries aren’t contagious. Pandemics require an altered reality.

It is fair to ask, for example, if the Patriots would have had further positive tests beyond Cam Newton and Stephon Gilmore if they had not boarded their team planes to face Kansas City — with all players who had close contact with Newton flying on a separate flight from the rest of the traveling party.

And all this takes place under the looming specter of a second COVID-19 wave, creating a different environment than the one in which the regular season opened.

On Sep. 7, three days before the Chiefs and Texans kicked off the regular season, 25,196 new COVID-19 cases were diagnosed in the United States, according to data compiled by The New York Times from federal, state and local officials throughout the country. This was the lowest figure since June 16. Five days later, the seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases was 34,596. That was the lowest figure since June 25.

By Saturday, that seven-day average was up 39.5 percent, to 48,256. A day earlier, there were more new cases — 58,539 — than at any point since Aug. 14.

It’s likely to get worse before it gets better.

If current social-distancing and mask mandates are maintained, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington projects the number of active cases in the United States to continue increasing, reaching a peak on Dec. 28 — the final day of Week 16.

So the NFL has two choices.

It can accept the last-minute postponements, accept teams playing short-handed, accept some clubs not being able to play a full schedule — and accept the potential of further outbreaks and the risk that goes along with them.

Or it can make preparations for a bubble environment — whether it is in four eight-team bubbles or 32 separate bubbles in which players, coaches and staff are confined to hotels, team facilities, stadiums, buses and charter flights. Perhaps it wouldn’t be a complete 16-game regular season; even with at least one-quarter of the season complete, asking teams to be in bubbles for potentially four months is too much.

But the terms could be equitable and, as the NBA and NHL showed, participation could be full.

There is no good option. But as was suggested in the Academy Award-winning “Argo” eight years ago, there is a best bad option.

If the positive tests continue, a bubble will be the best of these dicey choices.