The NFL made it almost a quarter of the way through the 2020 regular season before encountering its first — and hopefully last — COVID-19 outbreak. With the Tennessee Titans seeing around 20 players and other personnel test positive for the “coronavirus” over the course of the last week or so, the team's Week 4 matchup against the Pittsburgh Steelers was ultimately pushed to Week 7 as the tandem of AFC franchises instead utilized a bye week this time around.

While this situation was luckily an easy fix as the Steelers and Titans previously owned Week 7 and Week 8 bye weeks, respectively, more complex difficulties could be up ahead if another outbreak occurs during the 2020-21 regular season. Because other situations and scenarios may not be as easy as rearranging two or three games that are luckily very close together on the schedule, the NFL must have contingency plans in place moving forward.

The NFL does have a few things going for it, however, which should make things a bit easier throughout the regular season while alleviating the need for postponements during the postseason.

The first is that the league should immediately implement two bye weeks for each team. As of now, each NFL franchise owns one bye week — which is the norm for any regular season — while each team should actually have two, which would allow for rescheduling with minimal shuffling around. Each franchise should have its normally scheduled bye week in addition to a bye week come “Week 18,” an addition week that should be added to the back-end of the regular season.

For example, if a team like the Titans is forced to forgo its “Week 18” bye, then the week in which the team is unable to play would just become its second bye week. A make-up game would then be inserted into that “Week 18” slot. Of course, if the same team were to encounter so many outbreaks that these additional weeks wouldn't suffice, then foreits would obviously need to come into play. On the other hand, if a team goes unscathed, then that team would utilize its second bye week come “Week 18,” something that could come in handy for playoff-bound organizations. If the NFL does not get out in front of the possibility that more outbreaks can occur quite quickly, the league will find itself in some serious trouble in terms of scheduling and making up games down the road.

Because the outbreak involving the Tennessee Titans happened so early on in the year, the NFL now has the ability to learn from its mistakes just in time to potentially save its season before it is too late. If something of this nature did not happen until later in the regular season, it would have surely caused panic in addition to the fact that there would be significantly less weeks to work with in terms of moving around games. Due to the fact that no team has had its originally scheduled bye week yet, the NFL has encountered a no harm, no foul situation with the Titans. This may not be the fate of other organizations, though, as it has never been more clear that a postseason bubble needs to be put in place.

The risk just simply isn't worth the reward come playoff time as a bubble is something that has been rumored as a possibility for the NFL even before the outbreak down in Tennessee. If a team were to reach the playoffs just to lose its franchise quarterback or a superstar defender because of COVID-19, there will most certainly be more than a few unhappy people both internally and throughout the country, whis is no doubt something the NFL absolutely must avoid at all costs. Not only could the league lose a ton of money due to an instance of this nature, but the health and safety of the players needs to be put at the forefront both now and when the stakes get even higher come playoff time.

Of course, a bubble situation would be tough to execute with all 32 NFL franchises, though less than half the league reaching the postseason could make a scenario much more doable. With that in mind, the NFL should switch over to a bubble the second that it is plausible in order to both keep its players as safe as possible and to ensure that playoff games go untainted from start to finish.

How can the league go wrong if it puts safety and competitive integrity first above all other things moving forward?