Seahawks’ Quandre Diggs, at home in Austin, doesn’t like how quickly Texas is reopening
Quandre Diggs LOVES Texas.
That’s obvious. From his offseason home being in Austin to having starred in football at the local University of Texas to the burnt-orange Longhorns custom office chair he was sitting on in his house Thursday, he’s all “Hook ‘em ‘Horns!” about his home state.
But the Seahawks safety, still at home instead of with his team in Seattle because of the coronavirus pandemic, doesn’t love how Texas is responding to the COVID-19 virus.
“I think our governor (Greg Abbott) has opened up the state a little too fast,” Diggs said during a Zoom online call Thursday from Austin. “I think that we have (a) rise in cases. ... You know what I mean, it’s not like it’s getting better. We might’ve flattened the curve a little bit, but we still have spikes in cases.
“I think we are just doing a little too much right now.
“But, we’ve just got to roll with it, and we’ve got to keep ourselves safe even though the governor is not going to do it.”
Out west in the home state of Diggs’ NFL team, most of Washington remains under a stay-at-home order with non-essential businesses closed or greatly restricted, as they have been since mid-March.
Not so in Texas.
On Monday, Abbott issued an executive order to advance his state into the second phase of its ongoing plan to open additional businesses and activities in Texas. Abbott reopened child-care centers, bars, massage and personal-care centers, bowling alleys, rodeos and bingo centers.
His order came days after Texas reported its biggest one-day jump in COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began sweeping the country.
Friday, restaurants in Texas will be allowed to increase capacity from 25% to 50%. Bars, wine-tasting rooms and craft breweries can reopen at a 25% capacity. Those capacity limits do not apply to outdoor areas that maintain safe distances, Abbott said this week.
The Dallas Cowboys in his state were among the first teams to reopen their team facility this week. These are the first days league commissioner Roger Goodell is permitting football operations and administration staffers, but not coaches or players, to enter team headquarters if local authorities permit.
The Seahawks’ Virginia Mason Athletic Center in Renton remains closed indefinitely under Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s stay-at-home order that runs at least through May 31. A team spokesman told The News Tribune this week the Seahawks’ facility will remain closed at least until June 1, if not longer, per the governor’s order.
Diggs, who turned 27 in January, is a self-described home body, even in normal times. He says he doesn’t often surround himself in big crowds socially.
Yet he has other reasons to believe more caution is better to return to regular life, and to football, from COVID-19.
“The pandemic is bigger than football at the moment,“ he said.
“I mean, I’ve got a 10-month-old daughter (Ariya Marie) that I’ve got to take care of. I have an 87-year-old grandmother that I’ve got to keep safe.”
Diggs has been at his home in Austin enlisting his nephews to help him train at his house. The self-described budding barbeque master—he says he’d rate himself about a 7 as a meat griller, with ribs his specialty—has been making a point to eat “more lean” to not put on added weight while at home during the pandemic. He had been excited to practice in May and June in organized team activities (OTAs) and minicamps in what would have been his first offseason training with the Seaahwks.
Seattle traded for the Detroit Lions’ captain and safety in October. He battled through a hamstring injury he brought from the Lions then a high-ankle sprain to solidify what had been a scattered Seahawks secondary often in disarray in the first games after Earl Thomas left and signed with Baltimore last spring.
It’s increasingly likely the next time Diggs, the Seahawks and all NFL teams will be back on the field practicing is for the start of training camp. That is scheduled to begin in late July, but as Diggs said echoing everyone else in the league and in sports right now: who knows?
What’s he believe the 2020 NFL season may look like, if there is one?
“At this point, I don’t know anything. I’m out of the loop just like everybody else,” Diggs said.
“At the end the day, this pandemic is bigger than football. I just think we’ve got to let all the facts—we’ve got to let all the doctors and the scientists, let those guys figure it all out,” he said. “I mean, whatever Goodell or whoever makes the announcement that we’ll come back and play ball, then we’ll just go from there.
“I’m not here to assume anything. I hope we have a season. I do. But at the end of the day we’ve got to look after, and look at all the facts, and see then.”
This story was originally published May 21, 2020 at 1:24 PM.
