First time this COVID-19 season, Seahawks had fans at a game. What it was like in Miami
The message coming through the speakers at the gates of the stadium from Dolphins radio analyst and former Miami wide receiver Jimmy Cefalo was clear.
And ominous.
“COVID-19 is a life-threatening disease.”
That’s what greeted the 12,369 masked, socially distanced fans attending the Seahawks’ win over the Dolphins, 31-23, as they entered Hard Rock Stadium Sunday. Miami is one of 10 NFL teams and city authorities allowing at least some fans to attend games during the coronavirus pandemic, though at limits far below stadium capacity.
It was the first Seahawks game this season with fans in attendance. They weren’t hugely loud. But they were louder than the artificial, piped-in noise of the first three games, two of them in mainly still-locked-down Seattle.
The fans in Miami on Sunday couldn’t just come in when they wanted. The Dolphins assigned time entries for each ticket holder. Fans could enter whenever from 11 a.m. until just past noon for the 1 p.m. kickoff. After 12:10, fans were assigned 10-minute intervals to pass through the gates, to prevent massing.
Once inside, many of them were chanting for...the Seahawks?
And before the game even started.
“Yeah, I did hear them chanting ‘SEA! HAWKS!,’” Seattle wide receiver DK Metcalf said.
Yes, the Seahawks—whose home games are in empty CenturyLink FIeld per Washington state restrictions for the coronavirus—had to go on the NFL’s longest trip there is inside the country, 3,330 miles,, to get two things their unbeaten season had lacked.
Fans. And cheers for them.
“Hey, man, it was lovely,” wide receiver David Moore said after his exquisite touchdown catch gave Seattle a two-score lead in the fourth quarter.
“We always love to hear the 12s, and the fact they were in the stands today, it was just...it felt like normal, a little bit. Just not as loud, but a little bit normal.
“You heard ‘SEA! HAWKS! It’s lovely to always hear that. That is good to hear.”
Did I mention those fans were masked?
This past week the Tennessee Titans suspended in-person activities at their team facility after the NFL said the Titans had 10 players and more team personnel test positive for the COVID-19 virus. On Wednesday, the league postponed the Titans’ game against Pittsburgh that had been scheduled for Sunday.
New England quarterback Cam Newton tested positive for COVID-19, causing the Patriots’ game at the Kansas City Chiefs scheduled for Sunday to be rescheduled—for now—to Monday night.
So the Seahawks traveling to a state where restaurants and bars are permitted to operate at full capacity, where businesses that remain closed in Seattle-Tacoma are very much open, was in the very least remarkable.
As they did before their opener at Atlanta last month, the Seahawks had the access in their team hotel even more restricted to the public than usual.
They arrived here Friday night. The players stayed basically in their own tower of their sprawling resort hotel in north Miami-Dade County. They again had plans to bring a couple of their technicians who test them each day in the trailers in the parking lot of their team facility in Renton to their team hotel in Miami, as they did last month in their smaller hotel in the Buckhead section of Atlanta.
Yet the mask wearing in south Florida this weekend was unequivocal. No mask, no entrance. In fact, masks were everywhere this weekend in south Florida. Everyone in the Fort Lauderdale airport, in the Seahawks’ resort hotel in Aventura, even walking onto Sunny Isle Beach in north Miami-Dade County Saturday night were wearing masks.
Yes, there were nightclubs such as the one I drove past in Aventura on the intercoastal waterway that was bumpin’ and crowded Saturday night. But overall the weekend I saw here was counter to the national perception of Florida in relation to COVID-19, a state which can charitably be called “open.”
Last week, Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis 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. School children in Miami-Dade County are returning to their buildings for in-class instruction on Monday.
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.”
Yet Garfinkel and his Dolphins executed a purposeful, effective plan to have fans attend Sunday’s game as safely as possible.
Miami had 11,075 fans, or 20% of its stadium capacity, for their home opener against Buffalo last month. Sunday’s announced total number of tickets distributed was about 1,300 more people than that.
Those weren’t massed inside. They were spread across all sections. The Dolphins did an analysis of season-ticket holders’ accounts and grouped them per how many tickets each had. Those groups sat together. The team spread the next season-ticket holders away from the previous ones at a socially acceptable distance.
Concession stands and signs for them encouraged fans to order and pay ahead through apps on their smart phones, so they could then just pick up their orders at the stands—or have them delievered to their seats—to avoid congregating at the concourse.
The fans most vociferous for the Seahawks, the ones wearing the jerseys of Russell Wilson, Tyler Lockett and Metcalf, were in the lower-level stands behind the north end zone, the left one as you watched the Fox television broadcast.
That’s where Shaquill Griffin and his Seahawks defensive teammates ran to celebrate after Griffin’s game-sealing interception of Dophins quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick in the fourth quarter. After posing with his fellow Seahawks for a faux-group photo, Griffin chucked the ball he picked off about 25 rows into the lower deck, toward many spread out cheering and wearing Seahawks gear.
Griffin grew up in St. Petersburg, an 3 1/2-hour drive north and west of Hard Rock Stadium. He had about a dozen family members and friends in the stands Sunday.
Was he throwing the ball to them?
“No, my family and friends were actually on the third level,” Griffin said, smiling. “Couldn’t throw that far.
“I actually wish I would’ve kept the football.”
Turns out, Griffin had an agreement with his nephew who was at the game.
“Before the game (he) said, ‘Uncle, can you bring a football back?’” Griffin said. “I said, ‘I’ll bring one back if you bring me one back.’”
His nephew’s response?
Pure.
“He said, ‘We can’t take the ball in Pop Warner,’” Griffin said.
You can in the NFL, for a small (relative to the players’ salaries) fee.
“And I threw it, and I didn’t think about it. Caught in the moment,” Griffin said of his interception ball Sunday. “I wish I could get that back.
“But that’s OK. Merry Christmas.”
As with the Seahawks’ opening win at Atlanta, the team won’t know if this truly was a successful weekend until they take and get back the results of their daily COVID-19 tests Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday back at the trailers at team headquarters in Renton. But—knock on wood—they’ve yet to have a verified positive yet since testing began with reporting for training camp July 28.
“It’s a really good solid football game,” coach Pete Carroll said.
“And really pleased to get the win and get the heck out of here.”
This story was originally published October 4, 2020 at 7:15 PM.
