The NFL, already reaching new heights (or lows) in fan base alienation, is now equally determined to aggravate its players.

The NFL just informed clubs that if a game cannot be rescheduled during the 18-week season in 2021 due to a COVID outbreak among unvaccinated players, the team with the outbreak will FORFEIT and be credited with a loss for playoff seeding, per sources.

Massive implications.

— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) July 22, 2021

Ah, but it gets better:

Here’s more from today’s memo, which also says the team responsible for a canceled game because of an outbreak among unvaccinated players/staff will be responsible for financial losses and subject to potential discipline from the commissioner. Wow. pic.twitter.com/Q86a2WcG1K

— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) July 22, 2021

Nothing like playing the peer pressure game.

Now, regardless of one’s opinion on the COVID vaccine, it is reasonable to assume that a professional athlete, should he or she be of the persuasion that eschews illicit substances and/or performance-enhancing chemicals known to have a detrimental effect on quality of life, is understandably reticent to have vaccines injected that may affect their ability to perform at the highest level. As noted in my earlier story regarding Eric Clapton’s severe reaction to the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, none of the different vaccines are 100% guaranteed safe. There is also the unknown of how the vaccine might interact with legal supplements, let alone illegal ones although the NFL does seem to have cracked down on such in recent years. Translation: If I was playing a game with most likely a quite brief career and accompanied by severe health risks (CTE, anyone?), I too would be less than enthusiastic about getting jabbed for the job.

That the league is rolling out such heavy-handed tactics comes as no great surprise. The league has already strong-armed the players into taking away a preseason game in favor of adding a seventeenth regular season game, this creating not only one more game where all starters will be playing, but also ratcheting up the intensity in preseason as players trying to either win or hang on to a roster spot will be going even more full-out than before, given there will be one less game to impress the coaching staff. What could go wrong?

Since the NFL has its spiffy new fatcat TV contracts in its back pocket, it doubtless believes it holds all the cards in this game of shut up and play. ESPN, doubtless considering how many hundreds of millions of Mickey Mouse’s money it is shelling out to take over for DirectTV in broadcasting out-of-market games alongside national broadcasts a/k/a Monday night football, isn’t even bothering to strike an independent journalistic pose, none too subtly holding up for ridicule players openly questioning the NFL’s stance and the NFLPA’s meek submittal to same.

Nothing eats itself quite like the woke brigade.