PITTSBURGH -- The message from Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin has been the same every week.
And after an unscheduled bye because of a COVID-19 outbreak in the Tennessee Titans organization, it rings even more true within the Steelers' locker room.
"Let's not be those guys, who, we're five weeks into the NFL season and now say, ‘Oh, we were supposed to be doing this,'" said tight end Vance McDonald on Thursday, relaying his coach's message. "It's like, 'No, we knew what we were supposed to be doing from Day Zero training camp whenever we all reported, let's just do that. Let's have respect and honor for everyone and just follow the rules.'
"To me, that's the only way you're going to have fair play."
To have that, McDonald called on the NFL to establish a foundation of fair play. The Steelers learned a week ago their Sunday game against the Titans was being postponed to later in the season, eliminating their Week 8 bye week and giving them a brief one over the weekend. Now, more positive tests in the Titans' organization, bringing their total to 23 since Sept. 24, put the team's game Sunday against the Buffalo Bills in jeopardy.
A group of Titans players also held a workout at a Nashville school last week after being explicitly told not to gather in person following positive COVID-19 tests, a source confirmed to ESPN's Turron Davenport.
"It's all about that fair playing field," McDonald said. "Until that is established and figured out, I feel like we're moving through this with blinders on. Obviously we're going to have to do that to some degree throughout this whole journey, but that doesn't mean that we say, ‘All right, whatever happens, happens.'
"There's got to be some sort of foundation that we can come back to as a league that establishes fair play. When one team, like as you mentioned with the Titans, and again, I'm not saying we know all the details or whatever, but if one team's blunder is another team's just misfortune, like how Ben [Roethlisberger] mentioned [on Wednesday], felt like we got the short end of the stick, yeah, I feel the same way."
The Steelers started out 3-0 before the bye, and McDonald said he spent the weekend feeling "angry" at the situation, especially as he drove in from his farm to do the daily COVID-19 testing, now required even on off-days during a bye week. He acknowledged that players have to accept the fluidity of the season and called on his team to reset after the week of uncertainty.
Though they navigated one week of upheaval caused by COVID-19, that doesn't mean the Steelers -- or the rest of the league -- is out of the woods.
"I think the NFL is about to enter a time where, let's face it, you don't have bye weeks to shuffle around anymore," McDonald said. "In order to keep an even playing field, it's going to be interesting to see what management and leadership does to be able to account for all the moving and shifting the patterns of teams."
