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As the east coast began to bed down, the future of the Saints-Lions game lurched towards jeopardy. News released that at least one Saints player—former Lions fullback Michael Burton—had tested positive for the novel coronavirus, which set off a flurry of secondary testing across the Saints roster.
In case you’re just waking up, here’s what has been going on thus far:
- The timeline thus far, from the Athletic’s Katherine Terrell: the Saints were tested Saturday morning, prior to their flight to Detroit. The results came back on Saturday evening, which set off a series of rapid tests with everyone who came into contact with Burton.
- Burton received two sets of tests on Saturday night: the nasal swab and a point-of-care test.
- Per Jay Glazer, several other Saints players are undergoing POC tests as well. One of these players is Saints star running back Alvin Kamara.
- As of 7 am ET, the world still awaits the results of that round of tests, which could decide the fate of the scheduled game.
- Per Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk, the Saints news, compounding with issues with positive cases among the Tennessee Titans, has set off alarms among the NFL coaching cadre, with suggestions that the season might have to be restructured:
Multiple coaches have suggested this weekend the possibility of pressing pause on the season, reconfiguring the schedule to have 12 total regular-season games, and putting teams in hotels for the nine games left to be played.
— ProFootballTalk (@ProFootballTalk) October 4, 2020
As test results potentially come in hours before the two teams are scheduled to take the field in Detroit, our eyes will remain on this situation as it develops.
Update: The Athletic’s Katherine Terrell and NFL.com’s Ian Rapoport report that the retests came back negative.
Good news for the Saints: I'm told the re-test of the player who tested positive came back negative along with a negative rapid test. The rapid tests they did of the other players also came back negative.
— Katherine Terrell (@Kat_Terrell) October 4, 2020
This is true. The league has informed the team that it’s game on, sources say. https://t.co/LB2XFlruro
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) October 4, 2020