Carroll wishes U.S. had self-discipline Seahawks have had for COVID-19. But...resources?
Pete Carroll wishes our country had the same level of commitment and self-discipline in fighting the coronavirus as professional sports do.
As the NFL has its first outbreak of COVID-19 in this unprecedented season, the league’s oldest coach is re-committing himself and his Seahawks to their fight against the coronavirus.
It’s the ultimate knock-on-wood statistic, as the Tennessee Titans learned first-hand this week: the Seahawks have not a verified positive result in the nine weeks of daily testing of players, coaches and staff since virus testing began July 28 when players reported to training camp.
“It’s a day-to-day haul. And I’m not even complaining. It is what it is,” Carroll said Wednesday, after dropping his face mask to talk more clearly during another remote, online press conference.
“We’ve got to have a great attitude about it. I think attitude is a huge part of this. And that’s why leadership is so important, and direction and the system is so important.
“Let’s just take a sidebar for a second: think if the whole country could have approached it like the NBA and Major League Baseball and football. I don’t know how everyone else would approach it, but if you would have approached it like this we’d be in a much different state.”
That is, different than 7.25 million cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. as of Wednesday, and 207,000 deaths. That’s more than twice the number of deaths from the virus as in any other country in the world.
“Look, there’s been just a handful of occurrences through the thousands and thousands and thousands of tests that have taken place,” Carroll said.
“So there’s a way to handle this. It ain’t fun. It’s not what you want. But you can do it. It just takes a real, you know, diligent mentality to get it done.”
VIP testing
Let’s be clear: the way the NFL has handled this is to throw insane amounts of money at it. Money our states governments don’t have, and our federal government spends elsewhere.
It pays NFL daily testing, an estimated $40-50 million per team, in what amounts to a national contract with VIP perks with BioReference Laboratories.
The NFL can do this because it practically prints money. The league generates an estimated $15 billion—with a “B”—annually in revenue.
Imagine Washington churning out $15 billion each year. Yeah, the Seahawks’ state may be able to better fight COVID-19.
Here’s what the NFL’s money pays for:
Each morning players, coaches and staff from all 32 teams report to testing trailers set up in the parking lots of team facilities. In the trailers, technicians conduct nose-swab tests. Each team has a chartered jet on standby every afternoon at a nearby airport. A pilot flies the hundreds of vials containing cotton swabs to laboratories on each coast. One is in New Jersey. The other, the testing lab the Seahawks tests are flown to, is in Burbank, California. Each day, another pilot and plane arrives in Seattle, and every other NFL city, waits for test samples, and flies them back down to Burbank.
Teams get the results of those morning tests by late that night, usually with 16 hours of the test. Carroll gets a direct report each night. He stays up past midnight for them. Has every night for the last nine weeks.
Some days, at least once per week, the players, coaches and staff get more-expensive point-of-care tests, also via nasal swabs but treated on site. The results on those come back with 30 minutes.
They are similar to the immediate-results tests the Pac-12 has partnered with a San Diego company to use in deciding to start its college football season on Nov. 6 instead of in the spring, as the conference had earlier decided.
Carroll’s been holding his breath there is not even one positive result. The Seahawks had one in August, wide receiver John Ursua. He got quarantined in the training-camp hotel for one day, took two more tests trying to confirm the positive, and they were negative. Per NFL protocols, that meant Ursua had a false positive.
Every other time—the thousands of test results Carroll gets on his computer past midnight, every night—every one of them have been green check marks.
“Now, it’s coming in about 12:30 (a.m.), at night, when we get the word of what the past day of testing showed, testing-wise,” Carroll said. “It used to be about 4 o’clock in the morning.
“And I haven’t missed one yet.”
It’s been remarkable. The league braces for 5% positive tests as a threshold whether to continue testing. It’s been 0.5%. But the system has worked so wondrously no one wants to stop the daily testing. It continues, indefinitely.
First outbreak
NFL players and coaches from Seattle to Miami are reviewing their calls for strict adherence to protocols that had worked against the COVID-19 virus and pandemic—until the league’s first outbreak this week.
Four players and five team personnel from the Tennessee Titans tested positive for the virus this week. On Wednesday, the league postponed the Titans’ game against the Pittsburgh Steelers scheduled for Sunday. On Thursday, the league announced additional positive tests for the Titans.
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday the league sent two memorandums in the last two days to all teams warning of possible suspensions and loss of draft choices if they don’t follow all of the NFL’s protcols on COVID-19 safety, travel and game-day operations in this unprecedented season.
“If we are to play a full and uninterrupted season, we all must remain committed to our efforts to mitigate the risk of transmission of the virus,” NFL executive vice president of football operations Troy Vincent wrote to teams in a Wednesday memo obtained by The Journal.
The Titans played last weekend at the Minnesota Vikings. The Vikings shut down their team facility until Wednesday.
The Seahawks are scheduled to host the Vikings Oct. 11.
This weekend, Carroll and his five dozen or so players plus 70-some coaches and staffers travel to Miami to play the Dolphins in front of what is expected to be 13,000 fans. Last week, Florida’s governor lifted all COVID-19 restrictions on restaurants and bars, saying they could host patrons at full capacities. The state is basically back open from the pandemic.
Florida has about three times the population of Washington, 21.5 million to 7.5 million. As of Tuesday, Florida had almost eight times the total number of COVID-19 cases than Washington, 705,000 to 90,600. Florida had about seven times more deaths than Washington, more than 14,000 to the Evergreen State’s 2,200.
Dolphins president Tom Garfinkel told si.com last month: “By the end of July, positive rates in Miami-Dade County were above 20%. One out of every five people had it.”
Those rates have improved.
On to Miami
Carroll said his team’s infectious control personnel and staff have been talking to the managers of the Miami resort hotel in which the Seahawks will be staying Friday and Saturday nights for Sunday’s game. The coach said the hotel has assured the Seahawks it will be following all of the NFL’s protocols for road-team travel.
Miami coach Brian Flores acknowledged in Zoom call with Seattle media Wednesday that in Florida “we are a little more open than some other states.”
Flores said his Dolphins have, like Carroll’s Seahawks, challenged themselves to adhere to team and league COVID-19 protocols.
“Our medical staff has worked hard to be extremely vigilant,” Miami’s coach said.
“A lot of this responsibility falls on the players and the coaches.”
Carroll shared the responsibility yet again Wednesday in a team meeting about the virus, and the Titans’ outbreak.
“We went all over it again. Gave them a COVID update, so they would know what happened and took place,” Carroll said.
“It only takes one person. One person outside the bubble can affect all of this. We need these reminders.
“We can’t, like, open up the restaurants and stuff.
“We’ve got to stay with it, and stay after it. Stay diligent. ...This is an all-out, full-on onslaught for the next 13, 14 weeks, whatever it is.”
Carroll’s daily challenge
The challenge is for Carroll to prepare his 3-0 team for games each week—such as Sunday’s against the Dolphins (1-2), conduct practices such as Wednesday’s outdoors in which the offensive linemen were all wearing surgical masks—while constantly reinforcing the message. It goes out daily to 53 men on the active roster, and 16 more on the practice squad.
Keep yourself in a virtual bubble: home to testing into the team facility to home and back again. Stay away from restaurants. Avoid public places, for even one night.
One fails, they all fail.
Carroll’s been taking on this challenge since the end of July. He hopes it lasts through January, to complete a deep run for Seattle back into the playoffs.
“Really, my mind has been on this for so long, for so many months, well before we ever got back here (to the team facility for training camp), it just seems like a continuation of the new,” the 69-year-old coach said.
“This is the way we operate. This is the way we function. ...I’ve just been so actively involved with every aspect that we can possibly think of for so long that it’s just part of it.
“It doesn’t seem like it’s detracted from our work. We’ve found spaces between the spaces to figure it out. ...I’m not griping about it. If I’m complaining about it, kicking my lip about it, how are these guys going to be? So I’ve just been on the whole time—and plan to be on until it’s over. You are just going to have to shake me, because we are tuned in.”
For Carroll, “it’s the only way it can be.”
“The messaging just has to be so consistent and so strong,” he said.
“Relentless.”
This story was originally published September 30, 2020 at 6:54 PM.
