And so, which is worse: the damage the coronavirus has inflicted on the Cleveland Browns hopes for their first playoff game since 2002 or that which they have done to themselves? Quarterback Baker Mayfield might have an opinion, since he could be at the epicenter of the consequences of both. I’m not sure he would be willing to share it.

On Tuesday morning the Browns revealed that head coach Kevin Stefanski, assistants Drew Petzing (tight ends) and Jeff Howard (defensive backs), Pro Bowl left guard Joel Bitonio, and receiver KhaDarel Hodge had tested positive for COVID-19 and will not coach or play in the Sunday night’s wild-card game against the Steelers in Pittsburgh. On Wednesday, no new positives were reported.

The COVID-19 casualties join a list of coaches and players placed on the COVID-reserve list the previous week. Some could return in the rematch against the Steelers, others not. Testing and time will tell. Among the most significant losses had been Bill Callahan, arguably the best offensive line coach in the National Football League, and his assistant, Scott Peters. Center JC Tretter, besides doing his usual stellar job on the field, worked with his line cohorts on the sideline between offensive series. They studied on a Surface tablet how the Pittsburgh defense was attacking them and how to respond.

Whether Callahan and/or Peters can return for what could be the last game of a remarkable 11-5 season and relieve the load on Tretter may be only one of the questions concerning the offensive line. Equally challenging will be who fills in for Bitonio (no one can replace him). Given limited choices, what was rookie left tackle Jedrick Wills Jr. thinking when he potentially compounded the problem? At about the same time virus test results were being announced, Wills and receiver Rashard Higgins were spending part of their Tuesday off getting arrested in Westlake, Ohio, for drag racing. They could afford the $124 citations they received but the line cannot afford to lose another player. Plus, Higgins is one of Mayfield’s more trusted targets.

The Browns said they will “handle this matter appropriately” which could mean any number of responses but probably not one that will sideline the players for the playoff game. I possess hard-won knowledge of how such an incident was handled both in my own family and by the California legal system. You can read a fuller account in the chapter “Torn Between Two Worlds” in my new book Football, Fast Friends, and Small Towns: A Memoir Straight from a Broken Oklahoma Heart. But I’ll share the gist now.

After being forced to leave my hometown because the U.S. Department of Agriculture transferred my father from Oklahoma to Sacramento, California, I was lonely and lost in my new frightening world. Maybe I wanted attention. More likely, I was simply stupid. I had never drag-raced around Nowata, Oklahoma, but for some reason I cannot remember—there wasn’t a good one—I took up a challenge in suburban Sacramento. My competitor and I raced straight into a Sacramento County Sheriff’s Deputy. I, of course, was on the wrong side of the road. The deputy was not pleased to be forced off that road. He noted as much on the citation. I was 17 and mortified in the way only someone who thought of himself as a “good boy” could be. I made no excuses.

Even if there had been Twitter in 1963, I certainly would not have posted, as Higgins did before he deleted it, that his “foot slipped” and that he “was tryna get away from Covid.” Neither my Mama and Daddy nor the judge who suspended my driver’s license would have bought that sort of copout. Nor would they have, I suspect, accepted the whine that Wills tweeted. He thought people were “Blowing it way out of proportion.”

What was being blown by such irresponsible behavior was the Browns’ playoff chance to beat the Steelers in Pittsburgh, something they have not done in any game since 2003—17 in a row. The team has overcome many obstacles during this pandemic season but to add burden and danger of the virus infections through which coaches and players are suffering is unconscionable. Higgins already had to miss a game—an embarrassing loss to the one-win Jets—due to Covid-19 protocols. And every offensive lineman knows how important he is to the continued good health of his quarterback.

Mayfield will be without the comfortable familiarity and bond that has developed and grown between Stefanski and him. His head coach calls the plays and has gained, as the season progressed, a better understanding of how to best use Mayfield’s skills. Offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt will step as play-caller but as competent as he might be, but Van Pelt’s hasn’t been the voice in Mayfield’s helmet all season.

As for Mayfield’s offensive line, just when right guard Wyatt Teller returned from an ankle injury to resume play that may be even better than Bitonio’s, Mayfield must contemplate the protection that a different left guard might provide. Back-up tackle Kendall Lamb has not played a down at guard, and the other possibilities are undrafted linemen off practice squad so new they need directions to left guard. Some have yet to play in an NFL game or have been limited to special teams. Undrafted Michael Dunn would fall into both categories. He is familiar to acting head coach Mike Priefer, who steps up from special teams coordinator, with, like Van Pelt, Stefanski’s confidence.

All in all, it is not a formula for playoff success—even for a resilient team. The NFL prides itself on its efforts to achieve competitive balance. It is built on it. It promotes it with its draft (worst drafts first) and a schedule that more or less pits the strong against the strong and the weak against the weak in interconference and interdivisional matchups. Yet when it comes to these playoffs there is no consideration offered or quarter given to a team that finds itself in COVID-19 hell through no fault of its own.

Because the playoffs do not include bye weeks—except for the top seed in each conference—the flexibility to move back games as existed during the regular season is mostly gone. The league will reschedule games only if it believes the virus is spreading inside a team facility and not coming from the outside into it. If Pittsburgh has a competitive advantage because Browns coaches and key players have come down with the coronavirus at the wrong time, that’s not the league’s concern in a no-excuse world. Try telling that to Browns observers, rabid and sedate, and duck as they respond.