The Titans And Vikings Have Closed Facilities After Tennessee’s Positive COVID Tests

The Tennessee Titans and Minnesota Vikings have both closed their facilities after Tuesday morning brought word from the NFL of eight new positive tests within the Titans organization — with three players and five team personnel testing positive after Sunday’s 31-30 win over the Vikings in Minnesota.

The Vikings have not had any positive tests yet, but given the incubation period of the virus can take days, they will be hoping that remains the same. For Tennessee, they are in a much more precarious position with three players testing positive and five staff members, as they were already without outside linebackers coach Shane Bowen on Sunday due to a positive test, but his removal from the traveling party seems to have not been able to keep there from being an outbreak within the team. The team is working to confirm the tests as positives, with there seemingly being some hope of this being an issue of false positives, but if not the league and team have some serious decisions to work out.

For now, that outbreak is minor and the hope is that they caught it early enough to keep it that way, but the next week of testing will be crucial for the Titans in learning whether their efforts will be successful. Tennessee is scheduled to face the Steelers on Sunday in Nashville, and while the NFL has not given an indication of whether that game is in jeopardy, one certainly has to think more positive tests would lead to a postponement, as they’d be unable to field a full team or get enough practice work in this week to prepare. Minnesota is scheduled to play in Houston on Sunday, and likewise will be awaiting testing results in the coming days to determine their next steps.