Kelly Stafford rips NFL over husband's false positive

Well that didn’t take long.

Last week it was announced that Detroit Lions starting quarterback was placed on the reserved/Covid-19 list after testing positive.

Four short days later we find out that the test was one of the false positive sort, and that in four subsequent tests Stafford and his family all tested negative.

This lead to what can only be described as a strong warning from Stafford’s wife about the sharing of positive tests and the fallout for those in the Stafford family.

It is fair to say that Mrs. Stafford’s indignation was warranted and will be mild compared to what will happen if something like this occurs during a game week.

Stafford’s positive test results and his placement on the Covid-19 reserve list happened on Friday/Saturday. His negative was not found until Tuesday evening.

He would have missed a game if this was the regular season for a test that was wrong.

While the safety of the players is of the utmost importance, can you imagine what happens if Kyler Murray had a similar situation week four against the Panthers? Imagine the Cardinals heading to Carolina at 2-1 and Murray tests positive on the Saturday test to only re-test negative the next four days. The Cardinals lose and the test was wrong.

Again, I’m not saying that players should not be tested, or that positive tests should be ignored, I’m saying the immediacy of the reaction has to be tempered a bit.

We can take all the information into consideration, get a re-test and assess the results from there.

Maybe two positive test results before being placed on the reserve list, similar to the two negative results before returning.

While the NFL is dealing with uncharted waters, the Stafford fiasco shows that being safe is clearly at the forefront of the NFL’s mind, but it may need to work on that reaction before sending out the information of positive results and the resulting Scarlett Letter placed on any positive.

The anger of a wife will be nothing compared to the anger of Seahawks fans if Russell Wilson misses a game against the 49ers and it ends up costing the Hawks a playoff spot, all for a false positive.