Clay Travis: Athletes Are Healthy Enough To Overcome COVID, Let Them Play

With the NFL tallying 62 cases of COVID at the start of this week, the League is starting to realize that their strategy to combat the virus has merely been to check for the illness rather than genuinely assessing it.

On Wednesday's OutKick the Show, Clay Travis argued that the continual testing and parameters set up for both vaccinated and unvaccinated football players is beginning to ruin the season for all involved.

"The NFL's got major issues with COVID," Clay stated before proposing a simple solution to remedy the situation and save the season … which is to let the players play.

As the wave of cases overrun the Los Angeles teams (Rams, Chargers) and sideline every meaningful member of the Cleveland Browns organization — Kevin Stefanski, Baker Mayfield and counting — ahead of Week 15, Clay argues that players should have every right to play through these cases of COVID.

Upon diagnosis, Mayfield announced that he was feeling superb, which Clay notes is a common occurrence among these athletes: not knowing they had COVID if not for the testing.

"If you are asymptomatic and reports are right now that Baker Mayfield is asymptomatic … why would you not allow him to play? COVID is not going away. The idea that these vaccines and the boosters were going to eliminate COVID forever is just not true," Clay said.

Clay contends that the NFL will have to, at some point, chalk COVID up as a common element of life and avoid risking its future by ignoring the facts.

"When this occurs, I think there are legitimate questions about how do we start to treat COVID as a disease that is never going to go away. It is always going to be here. And my answer is we have to treat COVID like the seasonal flu in the years ahead. We can't keep overreacting every time somebody tests positive for COVID. If they've been vaccinated, if they've been boostered. Are we gonna keep this going forever? Most NFL players don't even get the flu shot; effectively, that's what the COVID shot is."

In a league that's been unforgiving to those who don't show up for work on Sundays, NFL players by now understand that the value of playing through COVID is more significant than sitting out a week of action without a symptom.

Tune in to The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show to get more honest and insightful coverage on America, sports and politics.

Follow along on Twitter: @AlejandroAveela