NFL Updating Quarantine Procedures to go With new CDC Guidelines

Players around the NFL will now have to miss less time thanks to new guidelines.

The NFL is planning to follow the new guidelines set in stone by the CDC that will now require players to miss just five days, instead of 10. This is good news for the Cleveland Browns, as Greg Newsome II will be able to play against the Pittsburgh Steelers. Newsome was placed on the COVID-19 list six days ago and was forced to miss the Green Bay Packers game, now he is able to return.

NFL and NFLPA now have adopted the new CDC guidelines that reduce the quarantine time to 5 days from 10 days for all Covid positive players who are asymptomatic, including those who are unvaccinated, per sources.

— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) December 28, 2021

Big news here is that even the unvaccinated players will be able to return after just five days as long as they do not have symptoms. Prior to the new guidelines, players had to miss 10 days if they were unvaccinated. Majority of the Browns team is vaccinated, so there was not a big worry there.

If this rule changed prior to the Las Vegas Raiders game Cleveland would have been able to get quite a few more players back. All of those players who tested positive won’t have to test for the remainder of the season, since it will be in the window that doesn’t force them to test.

For team’s who play Sunday they will be able to get any player back who tests positive on Monday or before during the prior week. This is going to cut down on players having to miss time and be out the 10 days. With the playoffs approaching it made sense for the NFL to follow the CDC guidelines, so that there was no threat of key players missing games down the stretch run. Teams around the NFL will no longer have to worry about players missing more than one game due to being on the COVID-19 list, a win for everyone.

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Brandon Little is a writer for Sports Illustrated’s Browns Digest website and you can follow him on Twitter here. You can follow Browns Digest on Twitter as well here.

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