So what’s it like traveling to be one of two to cover a Seahawks game in a pandemic?
The surreal started at the airport.
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport rightly calls itself “the world’s busiest airport.” Upon landing at 6 p.m. Saturday, it was one of the world’s largest voids. It was like it was 3 a.m. in there.
Then, the doorman at the team’s hotel in Buckhead. He was as big as Duane Brown, with shoulders as wide as Bobby Wagner’s. He stood in the front door — the entire front door — like a giant Dr. Anthony Fauci. The big guy made it clear to everyone who approached: No mask, no entry.
Inside, Seahawks players and coaches were wearing masks. Everywhere. Their rooms were protected by guards, as usual. But this time the rooms were on the low floors. That allowed the players to more conveniently take the stairs down to and up from their meetings in a conference room. The room had chairs socially-distanced.
Elevators aren’t the best places during a pandemic, even these that had capacities limited to two persons.
Brian Schottenheimer calling pass plays for Russell Wilson on 28 of the first 38 plays of Seattle’s season wasn’t the only thing wild and unprecedented about the Seahawks opening this 2020 season like no other.
Their 38-25 victory over the Falcons was only part of the story. And not even the most important part.
“It was different,” coach Pete Carroll deadpanned.
Many Seahawks, prominently Chris Carson and Bruce Irvin, have family in Atlanta from growing up in and near Georgia. Normally, this weekend would have included short, fun reunions. They would have been hanging out together in the lobby, maybe stealing an hour or two on Saturday outside to reunite.
Not this weekend. The COVID-19 virus and resulting protocols from the NFL and the players’ union to play this season mandated no visitors to the team hotel. And no leaving it, either. The players were quarantined inside it from their arrival late Friday night until their buses left for the stadium Sunday morning. The drivers wore masks.
In fact, all of Atlanta was more masked-up than I expected. Locals I talked to said there has been a change in the populace’s use of masks in recent weeks, after Georgia had a spike in COVID-19 cases.
The ride into the stadium two hours before the game was also eerie. Instead of an NFL game, it was like pulling up to a neighborhood bake sale — before dawn. The streets around the 71,000-seat Mercedes-Benz Stadium on the western edge of the city’s downtown core are usually packed with people, cars, bikes and music on game days. When the Seahawks last came here in October, the space between the CNN Center and the massive dome was full of tailgaters, tents and ticket scalpers.
This is what it looked like outside the stadium on Sunday.
The most noticeable, and worthy, sights on the way into the stadium were the signs and tributes all over the city to the late John Lewis. He’s a legend for what he did for the Civil Rights Movement in the South and beyond.
The Seahawks’ team buses got a motorcycle and SUV escort from the Atlanta police that they did not need. If it weren’t for a construction zone bunching up a bit of traffic briefly on Interstate 85, the police vehicles would have outnumbered the cars on the way to the stadium.
The buses arrived at the north entrance to the dome about two hours before kickoff. Some of the players got off it wearing Black Lives Matter shirts. They were greeted not by the usual throng of curious folks and photograph-seekers gawking through the rod-iron fence but by one guy. He was wearing Falcons red. He was just happening past on his bike.
“They always show up this late for a game?” the man asked from the sidewalk just through the fence from the players.
No. Often they arrive three hours or so before kickoffs. This time the Seahawks appeared to be arriving later to minimize their congregating time in the locker room.
To get into the stadium, the couple dozen media members covering the game had to first scan a “QR” code from a sign outside the only gate open. We had to download onto our smart phones an app and answer whether we had experienced virus-like symptoms the last two weeks.
I guess if you don’t carry a smart phone you weren’t getting in. Or, you were in 1980.
Inside the gate on the main concourse there was a lone police officer walking, plus two security guards in red polo shirts — and no one else. The press box had maybe two dozen people in it, all spaced around the gigantic press box from the 10-yard line around the back line of one end zone. Michael-Shawn Dugar of The Athletic and I were the only Seattle media members — television, radio, newspaper and website — in Atlanta. The Seahawks’ radio crew including play-by-play man Steve Raible broadcasted the game from back home, in their booth at CenturyLink Field.
When the Seahawks took the field for early warmups, wide receiver DK Metcalf was wearing a black shirt that read “WE WANT JUSTICE.”
At the end of pregame drills, 20 minutes before kickoff, all Seahawks and Falcons lined up across each goal line and faced each other. Their arms were interlocked. On the giant overhead video board, a recorded, piano rendition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” played. The song became renowned during the Civil Rights Movement, and is often called the Black National Anthem.
Other scenes in the empty stadium showed the push to end racism and demand social justice in our country.
At the end of the pregame warmups, a video tribute to Lewis aired on the giant board above the field. Lewis served in the U.S. House of Representatives for Georgia’s 5th congressional district from 1987 until his death in July at age 80.
During the national anthem, Quandre Diggs, Marquise Blair, Neiko Thorpe, Shaquill Griffin, Rasheem Green and Jarran Reed sat on the bench on the Seahawks’ sideline. Michael Dickson, Ben Burr-Kirven, K.J. Wright and a team trainer took a knee in front of the bench.
Seahawks All-Pro safety Jamal Adams stood, and raised a fist toward the stadium’s open roof.
“I wanted to not only stand strong,” Adams said, “but I wanted to show I’m Black and I’m proud to be Black.”
Metcalf and fellow wide receiver David Moore were among about a half-dozen players who remained inside, in the tunnel connecting the locker room to the field, during the anthem. They jogged onto the field to join their teammates after the anthem ended.
The game was just … different.
The Seahawks had to generate their own energy. The in-stadium noise the Falcons artificially piped in was noticeable only because it was so low, such a non-factor in the game. Atlanta coach Dan Quinn said last week he wanted more like “ambient” sound, so as not affect quarterback Matt Ryan and his offense calling signals.
The noise in the stadium was ambient only for a library.
“Not daunting. At all,” Carroll said.
The noise coming through the Fox Sports television broadcast was, I’m told, louder. But the players didn’t hear that.
Carroll was jumping around and “woooo”-ing so loudly from all of the Seahawks’ big plays you could just about hear him in the press box, 200 yards and six levels away.
When I told him that after the game on the Zoom video press conference — media in the press box stayed there to do interviews online; there was no locker-room or even podium access — Carroll said: “Really? I’ve been kind of anonymous for a long time.”
And then the Seahawks put their masks back on. They boarded their buses with the masked drivers. They went to that relatively empty airport that is usually the world’s busiest for the flight home with a crew that’s been out in society far more than they have for the last month and a half.
As splendid as the Seahawks’ results were this weekend like no other, Carroll knows the real measure of how successful this trip was — how successful this NFL season may be — comes in the next few days.
The players’ and coaches’ resume their daily COVID-19 tests this week, in the trailer outside team headquarters back in Renton.
“Everybody asks about the two days (traveling to and from Atlanta) and what’s going to happen and that,” said the coach whose 69th birthday is Tuesday.
“I can’t tell you until after we get back home and do a lot of testing and all that.”
This story was originally published September 14, 2020 at 11:00 AM.
