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The Ravens won’t have running backs Mark Ingram or J.K. Dobbins, who have tested positive for COVID-19. The Ravens are working remotely on Tuesday, the only real day of practice for a short-week game. The Ravens have more players who have tested positive.
The Ravens nevertheless will be playing on Thursday night.
Via Judy Battista of NFL Media, the league says that the Ravens-Steelers game set for Pittsburgh remains on track to be played.
“We will continue to monitor developments in consultation with our medical experts.” the league said, adding that the health and safety of players, coaches, and staff are paramount.
Resting a half click below paramount is getting the games played, even if it means calling up practice-squad players and other assorted slappies to fill out a roster. Although there was a belief before the season began that a certain critical mass of missing players could result in games being postponed, the league’s approach became as of Week Seven’s Buccaneers-Raiders contest that the games will be played on the day they are scheduled to be played, and that teams must rely on the time-honored principle of “next man up.”
Before that, multiple games were delayed, either by a day or two or by a week or three. The league has since decided to kick the ball while it’s on the tee, because there’s no guarantee that a postponement would allow a game to be played.
That’s bad news for the Ravens, good news for the Steelers, and better news for a league that already has lost nearly all of its ticket revenue — and that wants to keep as much of its TV revenue as it can.
