Tyler Lockett is vaccinated. But not all Seahawks are. Crunch time to reach 100% goal
Tyler Lockett is vaccinated. He volunteered the information.
The 28-year-old standout wide receiver thought seriously of opting out of the 2020 season over concerns about the coronavirus. Now, he says all he can do is inform younger Seahawks what he knows about the COVID-19 vaccine.
Lockett, Seattle’s players-union representative, also says whether teammates gets vaccinated ultimately is up to each man.
The NFL is trying to make that decision for each player. Make it an obvious choice, that is.
Wednesday, the league issued a memorandum to teams detailing how it will conduct the 2021 season amid the pandemic.
Two distinct worlds are emerging within the NFL for players this season. Each club could—and in some cases likely will—essentially have two teams within its team.
That is, unless a team can be almost 100% vaccinated. The league and global health experts define that as past two weeks since a person’s last shot.
“All you’ve got to do is, you’ve got to figure out what rules you want to follow,” Lockett said.
“All is know is, I got vaccinated, so I’ve got freedoms.”
The league told teams for this season vaccinated players no longer will have daily COVID-19 testing, no travel restrictions, no prohibitions on access to the locker room, team dining area, team planes, hotels or having visitors. Basically, they will be returning as close to pre-pandemic normal as is possible in 2021.
Those who begin training camp at the end of July and the season in September not vaccinated?
For them, it will be 2020 all over again.
Players not vaccinated will be required to continue the daily testing all players and staff had to enter the team facility each work day last year. Vaccinated players will get tested only every two weeks, the NFL says.
The unvaccinated will be required to wear masks inside team headquarters and during team travel, including on buses and planes. They must remain socially distant from others inside the facility, including in the locker room, weight room and dining room. They can’t eat with teammates. They can’t use the team’s sauna or steam room. Unlike the vaccinated, non-vaccinated players cannot leave the team hotel or interact with anyone in person outside the team travel party while on the road. They are not permitted to participate in social or even commercial and promotional events.
Non-vaccinated players can be fined for violating any of these policies.
Most notable: A potential competitive situation will develop if a non-vaccinated player is exposed to someone who has tested positive for the coronavirus. That exposed player will have to quarantine for multiple days, including perhaps through games. A vaccinated player will not have to quarantine if he is exposed to a positive COVID-19 person.
“An unvaccinated player could lose play time,” Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said. “He could lose access to the team.
“That’s an issue that they have to deal with as they make their final choices here on how to handle it.”
That is a huge reason why Carroll continues to encourage—if not implore—every one of his 90 players to get vaccinated within the next two weeks, so there is enough time to be considered fully vaccinated before training camp begins July 27.
Seattle was the league’s only team without a positive COVID-19 test last year.
Will the Seahawks be one of the NFL’s only 100%-vaccinated teams this year, or maybe the only one?
The rates
The NFL is at a player-vaccination rate of about 50%. Sixteen teams have at least 50 of their 90 players fully vaccinated so far. Of the other half below 50 players, a few are markedly lower. The Washington Post reported the teams with the lowest number of vaccinated players include the Los Angeles Chargers, Jacksonville, the Arizona Cardinals and Indianapolis.
The Seahawks open the season at the Colts Sept. 12.
Seattle is in the top half of the league. Carroll said his club is just below a handful of teams with the most vaccinated players.
“We were a couple numbers from being in the top echelon of having as many guys as anybody in the league,” Carroll said Tuesday.
That’s about 60 of their 90 guys.
Carroll has set a goal of 100% of players vaccinated by the start of training camp. The team has already said virtually all of its coaches and staff that typically interacts daily with players are vaccinated.
So, yes, the Seahawks have more to accomplish in this final week of offseason workouts than getting everyone on the field and installing coordinator Shane Waldron’s new offense.
Their three-day, mandatory minicamp ends Thursday. It’s the final day he can convince the players to get vaccinated. Seattle has 87 of the 90 players on its roster in the minicamp. Jamal Adams, Chris Carson and Aldon Smith are away as excused by Carroll.
“We are in a couple crucial weeks coming up,” Carroll said. “The next two weeks, I think it’s two weeks from Friday, will be the time that if you are going to be a two-shot-routine guy, then you have to start the process if you are going to make it by camp.
“Our guys are aware of that.”
Seahawks players—and their families—have been offered vaccines at the team facility in order to make the process convenient.
The Seahawks also have been using ultra-rapid Mesa testing for COVID-19 this offseason, for vaccinated and not-vaccinated players. The Mesa testing gets 30-minute results, versus the 12-hour results of the team’s and league’s BioReference testing each day during the 2020 season.
The Seahawks got set up with Mesa testing with help from Dr. Vin Gupta, a global-health specialist at the University of Washington. Carroll has had Gupta in for online team Zoom calls for months talking to the players about vaccinations and the pandemic.
The skepticism
Carroll has done everything to get all his Seahawks vaccinated short of putting the needle in their arms himself.
Yet 100% vaccination may prove to be the team’s trickiest goal to accomplish this year.
“There are a lot of guys who haven’t been vaccinated who just want to wait as long as they can, to get all the information that they can, which they deserve to do,” Carroll said.
Cornerback D.J. Reed spoke for more players than Carroll, the league and its union would like while answering where he stood on the vaccination issue.
“Oh, man, you are going to get me in trouble,” Reed said last week, smiling and laughing. “But I am going to say it.
“Obviously, we want to get everybody vaccinated. But there are a couple guys that still aren’t sure, just because they kind of feel like it’s something that’s new and they want to know that it’s OK to get it. We definitely, as an organization, are making a push for it.
“Me, personally, I’m still kind of waiting for those answers, same as a couple others. I’m not opposed to getting it, but I just want to learn more about it and get more research done.
“We’ll see. I’m 50-50, honestly.”
Reed isn’t the only NFL player thinking that way.
Montez Sweat, Washington’s young, star pass rusher, told reporters in the D.C. area last week: “I probably won’t get vaccinated until I get more facts and that stuff.
“I haven’t caught COVID yet, so I don’t see me treating COVID until I actually get COVID.”
That makes the NFL Players’ Association leadership shake their head. And not up and down.
“We’re a microcosm of our country, right?” NFLPA executive director Demaurice Smith said last week on a video conference call. “There’s wide disparities in our country between where some people are getting vaccinated and why some people haven’t.”
The Seahawks play in one of the most vaccinated areas of the country. Seattle this month became the first major U.S. city to pass a vaccination rate of 70%.
Thing is, only about 10 of the 90 players currently on the Seahawks’ roster live year-round in the Seattle-Tacoma area. Many more live in areas where vaccination levels are below 50%.
“Look, I think the only thing that we can do is make sure that all of our players have all of the information,” the NFLPA’s Smith said. “Nobody should not have all the information that they want. …
“I don’t think the country is in a place right now where we lack the information. I think the country is in a place right now where people are asking whether they trust the information and whether the information is sufficient to deal with any other issue they may have.”
Seahawks safety Quandre Diggs and Lockett had similar views on vaccination among teammates.
“To each his own,” Diggs said Tuesday. “I’m not getting into any politics, anything like that, you know what I mean? Whatever guys choose to do, that’s what they do. ...
“If you want to get the vaccine, you get it. If you don’t, you don’t. ...
“As long as you are protecting me and my family, and I am protecting me and my family, that’s all I care about.”
Team messaging
As the team’s player rep for the union, what is Lockett telling fellow Seahawks about getting fully vaccinated in time for the start of training camp in six weeks?
“All I know is, a lot of people aren’t going to want their money to get messed with,” Lockett said. “And, so, if they choose not to get vaccinated and somehow they get it, somebody gets it and the NFL is still doing that same thing on holding you out or not out? I don’t know how that stuff goes. ...
“I’m vaccinated, so I have freedom. But I’m not going to live like I have freedom. I’m still going to quarantine myself.”
Lockett, a 1,000-yard receiver last season, says he’s probably going to still wear a mask when out in public settings indoors.
“Because just because you are vaccinated doesn’t mean that you can’t get it,” he said. “I’ve had a conversation with my mom where somebody did end up getting it, and they were one of the first that got the vaccine. That was a doctor. So I know you can still get it. You might not go to the hospital and have severe symptoms. ...But for me, I don’t even want to test it.
“So I’m still going to live safe, and do what needs to be done to protect my family and everybody else that I’m around.”
The Seahawks, and the rest of the NFL, have about two weeks to have players protect themselves, and everybody else that they are around.
Or else training camp will begin with teams within teams.
“It does feel much more open than it did last year. Guys are just more comfortable with so many guys being vaccinated and all the staff being vaccinated,” Carroll said. “It’s like you can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
“It’s a good feeling. We are just trying to pull our guys along with us, as many as we can, so we can make this as safe as possible.”
This story was originally published June 16, 2021 at 8:03 PM.
