With the Colts announcing that they had multiple members of their organization test positive for COVID-19 and closing down their facility on Friday, there's a chance Sunday's 1 p.m. ET kickoff against the Bengals in Indianapolis will be postponed.
Should there be any risk involved with playing that game as scheduled once the test results are vetted (UPDATE: The team reopened its facility later Friday after subsequent tests came back negative), the NFL would catch another rescheduling break, thanks to Cleveland.
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The Colts will have a bye in Week 7. The Bengals are off in Week 9. But the fact that the Browns, whom the Colts just played in Week 5, also have a scheduled bye in Week 9 helps the league immensely.
That's because the Bengals are scheduled to host the Browns in Week 7. So the simple solution would be moving Bengals at Colts back a week to Week 7, when the Browns also would take an earlier bye, and holding the Bengals' home rematch with the Browns in Week 9 instead, when both teams are supposed to be off.
Unlike the Broncos-Patriots game being moved from Week 5 into Week 6, there are few other AFC teams affected. This is much like the Steelers-Titans moving from Week 4 to Week 7, where only the Ravens were disrupted. Here, one additional AFC North team would join the Bengals in a changeup, while the Colts join the Titans as another AFC South team with a rescheduled game in 2020.
During a pandemic when the league has tight protocols, it should keep erring on the side of caution with postponements when the schedule permits. Once again, it does here with a no-brainer solution.
