New NFL COVID-19 measures won’t change way still virus-free Seahawks were already doing it
The San Francisco 49ers no longer have a home. Not one from which they can operate daily. Their county stopped football practices and games because of the coronavirus.
The Denver Broncos played a game Sunday with no quarterbacks. All four of theirs were out because of the COVID-19 virus. One quarterback tested positive. Three others missed the game because of contract tracing and being a high risk, after none of the QBs wore masks. A practice-squad wide receiver completed 1 of 9 passes with two interceptions in Denver’s 31-3 home loss to the New Orleans Saints.
The Baltimore Ravens had a 21st player added to their reserve/COVID-19 list after their eighth consecutive day with a positive test result. Seven offensive starters, including NFL MVP Lamar Jackson, are out because of the coronavirus. The Ravens play a twice-rescheduled game at the 10-0 Pittsburgh Steelers Tuesday.
The league fined the Saints $500,000 and took a seventh-round pick away from them for celebrating their win this month at Tampa Bay in their locker room while not wearing masks. The NFL fined the New England Patriots $350,000 for violations of the league’s COVID-19 protocols that led to Cam Newton and others testing positive last month.
Meanwhile, the Seahawks remain virus-free.
It’s the ultimate knock-on-wood fact: the Seahawks entered their game Monday night at the Philadelphia Eagles having had zero confirmed positive cases of COVID-19 in the four months and one day since daily testing began across the league. That was July 28, reporting day for training camp.
“We feel very fortunate that we are where we are,” Seattle coach Pete Carroll said. “And we feel like we are kind of anticipating what’s coming. So we’re in good shape right now.”
This past weekend the NFL informed teams they had to shut down their facilities and conduct only virtual meetings on Monday and Tuesday. That’s a preemptive measure presuming another spike across the league in positive tests among players. The league has reason to believe many players hosted guests over Thanksgiving weekend.
The NFL’s latest coronavirus edict does not apply to the Seahawks.
And not just because they played Monday night.
“The idea is to do everything virtually, team functions,” Carroll said. “That would mean Monday (after a Sunday game) we would meet virtually—which we already do anyway. So it’s not going to change us, at all.
“It’s not going to affect us at all. We’ve already been doing what they are asking.”
Plus, the Seahawks have since July had procedures in place encouraging players to tell them when they were having visitors come see them, and who those visitors will be. The team pays to have those visitors come to Seahawks headquarters to get their own COVID-19 testing in tents separate and in another parking lot from the trailers in which the players get tested each morning.
“There were just a couple requests about that (for Thanksgiving), so we didn’t have much activity there,” Carroll said. “Our guys for the most part made the choice to stay apart from their friends and family and stuff at this time—which is great. That’s the easiest way to take care of any concerns.”
They were, um, strongly encouraged to do that, by the way.
“We know people can drop in at any time. So we still make that available to our players, to their family and friends and extended group,” Carroll said, “to make sure that we can take them all in and that they are safe.”
The Seahawks coach sees this latest memo as the NFL’s next phase of COVID-19 protocols the league has now enhanced three times since Oct. 1 while trying to complete the season: minimizing contact time at team facilities to near zero beyond the practices on the field each week between games.
“I think they’ll continue to clamp down as they continue to see the severity of the situation,” Carroll said.
“So, we’re ready to go. There’s really nothing we can do that we haven’t done before. So we are well prepared for it, and we will be able to take it in stride.
“These protocols that are just stepped up here don’t affect us at all.”
The Seahawks and every NFL team are reportedly spending an estimated $40 million each for daily coronavirus testing—and, more important, to get the results within 12-18 hours.
The testing is done by tireless, energetic and fun-loving technicians from the NFL-contracted BioReference Laboratories. They report to work before dawn each day to trailers parked just outside the Seahawks’ team facility.
Players, coaches and staff report there by 9 a.m. seven days per week (and at the team hotel on game days) to get cotton swabs swirled around the inside fronts of each nasal cavity. Those swabs are then sealed in vials and transported to the airport. Each afternoon a pilot flies a chartered plane carrying those Seahawks’ tests to a BioReference facility in Burbank, California. The results are processed there and reported back to the team usually by that night. That’s so each person tested can be cleared to go back into the Seahawks’ facility the next day.
Each morning, including weekends and holidays, the testing process repeats itself. So does the process of flying the tests to Burbank each afternoon and returning a plane to Seattle in time for the next day’s run. A couple technicians fly on the team plane with the Seahawks to road games, to continue the testing each morning at their road hotels.
Not every NFL team has had its technicians fly on the charters with it. Some had have had their lab techs fly commercially to meet the team at a road city.
But the Seahawks see that as an unnecessary risk of exposure to the virus for the technicians—and thus, to the team. So they give the techs seats on their plane. The testers are essentially are inside Seattle’s roving team “bubble,” like the players and coaches.
The Seahawks have scientific reasons to stay concerned. And diligent.
COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations have spiked this month to the highest levels of the eight-month pandemic across the country. Gov. Jay Inslee and his public-health officials told citizens of Washington to spend Thanksgiving with only their immediate family members who live in their homes. Sons and daughters returning from months away at college are considered by public-health officials to be virus risks to have at home for the holiday.
The Seahawks announced last week their next two home games, against the New York Giants and Jets Dec. 6 and 13, will be like the first five games in Seattle this season: without fans.
So it goes in King County, Washington and across a country that lacks clear and enforced national guidelines and shutdowns to control the virus’ spread.
Though he says the financial hardships of small businesses in the Seattle area pain him, Carroll has told his players not to eat at restaurants. He’s had the team’s food-services staff prepared whole, multiple meals for each player so they don’t have to go out to eat—and if they do, make it take out. That is, if you don’t already have a personal chef, as many do.
It’s another example of how resources for NFL teams and players are a large reason for the Seahawks’ testing success.
And how the NFL’s latest COVID-19 protocol won’t change the team’s daily operations.
““Hopefully we can just keep it going,” Carroll said. “It’s a one-day-at-a-time deal. It’s all we got.”
