Falcons owner Arthur Blank said, “At some point you feel like you are fighting a ghost, you don’t know where to swing.”
Giants co-owner John Mara seemed equally resigned to the situation. “It seems like it’s never going away,” he said.
That’s why the National Football League (NFL) needs to devise protocols that acknowledge the fact that the pandemic has become endemic. It’s here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future. It’s not a one- or two-year thing. The league needs to figure out how to better manage things. The protocols need to reflect more common sense, more of the knowledge that has been developed over the past two years.
The NFL also needs to give a crap about the protocols it adopts. If a quarterback isn’t vaccinated, he can’t be allowed to ignore the rules, as Aaron Rodgers was.
Much of the 2021 protocols seemed to be about P.R. and politics. The goal needs to be finding a way to minimize the spread and to get players who catch COVID back in the game safely. Players who ignore the protocols need to be let go. It is looking like those that get infected with Omicron are showing less serious symptoms this could be a good since idiots like Aaron Rogers will likely get infected and this milder variant will give immunity. It will not however make him or the league any smarter.