Some NFL teams are ready for COVID-19. Others, not so much.

Everything in America is impacted by the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. The NFL will be no different, and which teams adapt quickest will win.

COVID-19 can’t be defeated by drawing a perfect play on a whiteboard. It’s not impressed by fiery speeches. It doesn’t care if you once worked for Bill Belichick or coached Peyton Manning.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the sports world — outbreaks, quarantines, social distancing, travel restrictions, all manner of anxieties/uncertainties — can only be mitigated through patience, consistency, attention to detail and a well thought out and carried out process.

NFL coaches and executives love to talk about process. But while some of them excel at careful, methodical management, others just talk a good game, then trade the All Pro who looked at them funny in the hallway for a conditional 2023 seventh-round pick.

The NFL’s overall response to COVID-19 has been downright exemplary so far. But there are coaches around the league who, given their choice, would send the team to a cough brothel in a misguided effort to toughen ‘em up. And not all of those coaches are named Matt Patricia. Some organizations are taking the pandemic seriously at every level, others may be going through the motions, and there are some which may simply be too inept to handle what has been happening for months and will continue to happen through the season.

From the outside looking in, we don’t know which teams fall into which categories, but we can make educated guesses based on their reputations.

Just what do NFL organizations need to thrive in the time of coronavirus? As the following rundown reveals, they need many of the same things that help them thrive in normal times.

Flexibility

NFL coaches are known for being incredibly flexible, so long as they are given the exact type of players they want, are allowed to run the precise scheme they prefer and are never asked to deviate from their carefully-prepared procedures or game scripts.

In other words, these are men who will launch a franchise-wide investigation and cut three backups if their yogurt goes missing from the executive fridge.

When injuries and (inevitably) outbreaks force teams to significantly shuffle their rosters on the fly, nimble, thorough, hyper-professional organizations will gain a huge advantage.

Some organizations excel at evaluating and coaching up the players at the bottom of the 90-man roster, then keeping tabs on them regularly after they are cut so they can be re-signed at a moment’s notice. Other teams treat undrafted rookies and fringe players like cannon fodder, then scramble when the injuries pile up. Those differences will be more pronounced after an offseason when folks were rarely even sitting in the same room.

Staying in the playoff hunt will require clear, honest communication among coaches, personnel departments, and the types of players who spend their careers bouncing from midweek tryouts to practice squads to special teams. Some general managers will be signing October replacements whom their coaches are familiar with and whose agents they have touched weekly base with. Others will be making cold calls.

Top organizations and coaches will be prepared for most of what 2020 throws at them. But if a coach bristles at minor changes, can’t be bothered coordinating with other departments or dusts off the surrender flag if he’s forced to insert two new starters in the lineup, his team is in trouble. Also, that coach is Adam Gase, and that team is the Jets.

Continuity

Your favorite television sportstalk pundit has probably stressed “continuity” so often this offseason that you are sick of hearing about it: obviously, it helps to have a coaching staff, quarterback and roster who all worked together before OTAs turned into Zoom meetings and preseason games were replaced by intrasquad scrimmages in empty stadiums.

It’s easy to overstate the value of familiarity and stability: continuity won’t make a terrible team good. But it should help the Chiefs and Ravens stay on top, it could give a second-tier contender like the Titans an edge, and too much roster turnover could spell trouble for a team that was forced to make wholesale changes (hello, Patriots).

I covered the Giants in 2011, the year of the offseason lockout. Their roster looked mighty ordinary, but they spent the first two weeks of that unconventional training camp re-signing their own backups and role players instead of pursuing many of the big-name free agents who were left in lockout limbo.

Meanwhile, 90 minutes down the New Jersey Turnpike, the Philadelphia Eagles gobbled up every free agent in sight, assembling a roster that new arrival Vince Young notoriously labeled a “Dream Team.”

You know how that turned out: the Dream Team started the year 1-4 and struggled to finish .500, while the slow-and-steady Giants started and finished the season strong and defeated the Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI. It’s just one example of how familiar faces and an established system can benefit a team through turbulent times, while trying to get lots of new faces to go from “nice to meet you” to a well-oiled machine in just a few weeks can result in a stumble out of the gate.

Pedagogy

You have probably attended a Zoom meeting for your job over the last six months, which means you are familiar with the concept of logging on, muting the microphone, switching off your camera, and playing Red Dead Redemption II or watching Legend of Korra while half-listening in case the boss calls on you by name.

NFL players may be slightly more motivated to pay attention to online meetings than you are (and coaches surely insist they keep their cameras on), but as young men of action, they are also more likely to get fidgety and tune out. Also, your bosses are probably more tech savvy than most NFL coaches, because gerbils are more tech savvy than most NFL coaches, so your meetings were probably more dynamic: graphics, shared screens, breakout rooms, and so forth.

When Chip Kelly ran the Eagles, he based his classroom sessions on up-to-date research concerning learning styles: shorter meetings, less lecturing, more feedback and interaction. Then he traded the entire galaxy for Sam Bradford and DeMarco Murray, but let’s put a pin in that for now: Kelly wanted his coaches well-versed in pedagogy, the art and science of teaching.

Kelly’s gone, but there are some NFL coaches who embrace a modern approach to presenting information, while others surely spent the whole offseason droning next to a whiteboard about zone blocking assignments for hours at a time while players dozed off with their laptops on their laps.

Young coaches from the Sean McVay assembly line no-doubt had the edge when OTAs became On-Line Talking Activities, both because they grew up in the Internet era and don’t say things like “FaceTweet” and because they are generally forward thinking.

But don’t count the Boomers out. Despite his many, many, MANY game-day shortcomings, Giants offensive coordinator Jason Garrett has a reputation as a fastidious organizer of meetings and practices. After all, it’s the only thing Jerry Jones really let him do.

The need for punchy, digestible, user-friendly webinars works against coaches who like to strut around conference rooms spouting tough-guy aphorisms while condemning Instagram as a cause of the downfall of society. But we’ve already picked on Matt Patricia enough.

Accessibility

This is a great year to be the Baltimore Ravens, and not just because Lamar Jackson is awesome. The organization is well-run, team headquarters looks like a country club and crab cakes are delicious.

The Ravens’ longest road trip this season is to Houston when they face the Texans in Week 2. In a year full of travel restrictions, their schedule is full of I-95 bus rides (Philly, Washington) and short flights (Indianapolis, New England). They will take short jaunts to and from most games on gameday: no jet lag, no hotel quarantines.

John Breech at CBSSports.com published each team’s travel mileage back in June. The Ravens will travel just 6,420 total miles this year. Their AFC North Rivals the Steelers (6,600) and Browns (7,342) are next on the list, as is often the case: AFC North cities are centrally located and close to one another.

On the flip side, the Seahawks will travel 28,982 miles this season, with early-kickoff road games in Miami, Buffalo, Washington D.C. and Atlanta. It’s hard enough playing football at what feels like 10 a.m. PT time. Doing it after rushing into town the night before and being hermetically sealed in a hotel room won’t be any easier.

Even when teams are at home, there will be a pronounced difference this season between practicing in a spacious, state-of-the-art, digitally-equipped, well-ventilated facility and some 1950s sweat dungeon or a glorified Danny’s Free Weights that the owner threw together from his leftover yacht redecoration budget.

In fairness, most teams have modernized their facilities over the last decade or so, and even the Washington Football Team’s headquarters (as opposed to their concrete veggie spinner of a stadium) are pretty fetch. Just keep in mind the differences in little things like the size of the locker rooms will be much more pronounced in 2020 than a typical year.

Football Organizations Need Organization

Franchises that stay near the top of the standings for decades like the Patriots, Ravens, Steelers and Eagles typically do just about everything well: not only are their coaches and general managers great, but they often have the best travel secretaries, IT departments, weight room sanitation procedures, and so forth.

Franchises that are lucky to sneak into the playoffs once per decade, meanwhile, often have owners who fire the ticket takers during mood swings, and that seeps down to every level of the organization.

In a typical year, the difference between great at little things like making travel comfortable, weekly meetings livelier or payroll questions easier to answer might count for about 0.005 wins in the standings. This year, that might creep up to 0.05 wins. But factor in more important skills, like the ability to grab the best plug ‘n’ play linebacker off waivers, and the edge that well-run organizations will possess this year becomes more pronounced.

Times of turmoil and transition always favor the best prepared, best organized, most logical and coolest under fire. Football itself also favors those individuals and franchises.

This season may be full of disruptions, adjustments and anxieties, but when it comes to the final standings, the impact of COVID-19 is unlikely to result in many surprises.