Carroll: Seahawks benefiting by Washington ‘not bickering,’ being ‘smart’ about COVID-19
Pete Carroll has had his Seahawks buying into daily coronavirus tests all last season, pre-vaccine. And not just the players. For their family members, friends, dates and visitors, too.
This year Carroll has had his players and their families fully vaccinated, then vaccinated a third time with booster shots just last week. He’s hosted the shot events at the team’s training and practice facility. Seattle began the 2021 season with all but two of its 53 players on the active roster and 16 more on the practice squad vaccinated.
But the 70-year-old coach sees another, huge factor in Seattle entering the biggest game of its season still having had just one confirmed positive COVID case in the entire pandemic, and no players currently on the NFL reserve/COVID-19 list amid an outbreak of cases across sports.
Where the Seahawks live and work.
“Yeah,” Carroll said. “Because our state continues to stay ahead of the curve. Our state is not fighting or bickering over taking care of one another.
“Great leadership from the governor (Jay Inslee). And all throughout, we’ve been on it.
“It’s a really smart community that has decided to take this thing on — not 100%, but more so than most. We’ve been highly successful, particularly in King County. That’s the surrounding area that we are vulnerable to, so we are very fortunate that it all works together.”
As of Monday King County had an overall vaccination rate of 84%. Some neighborhoods in the Seattle area have been at nearly 99% since October.
“We’re really one of the highest large metropolitan areas in the country when it comes to vaccination rates,” Ingrid Ulrey, a policy director for Public Health-Seattle & King County, told Seattle’s KING-5 television.
League outbreak
Seattle (5-8) will be trying to keep its slim playoff hopes alive Sunday playing the Los Angeles Rams (9-4) in Inglewood, California. The Rams have added 16 players to the COVID list since Monday.
Wednesday, Carroll was anxiously awaiting the results of the Seahawks’ second COVID tests this week. His team just got off another road trip, to not-exactly-masked Texas and its win at Houston Sunday.
The NFL has seen 97 players from at least 28 teams go on the league’s reserve/COVID-19 list the last three days.
This week, Carroll said the Seahawks are wearing masks “everywhere.” Many more coaches had them on during the team’s indoor practice Wednesday; weeks before this, maybe one coach wore one during most practices.
“Yes, we are doing everything that we can think of. People’s conscience, the decision making, awareness, encouraging guys about all of the masking things and spacing that we do,” Carroll said. “Our guys, it’s on their minds. And it has to be.
“Look at what they’ve done. We’ve done it for such a long time. They get it. But that doesn’t mean you get lax and think that we have it. That’s not what we are doing. We are competing to figure it out at every turn, and I was really battling (Wednesday) to see these numbers.
“No numbers showed up today, to prove that we are still on it.”
It is one of the proudest accomplishments of Carroll’s coaching career, which began when Richard Nixon was president, in 1972 at Pacific, and has spanned a national championship leading USC and Seattle’s only Super Bowl title.
“It’s a big challenge and we aren’t doing it perfectly,” Carroll said. “We are struggling with it, too, like everybody else is.”
So much of battling COVID-19 is out of Carroll’s control: where players go when and how they conduct themselves when they aren’t at work; whom they hang out with; other people from outside the team’s testing and safeguard cadences coming into contact with players, coaches and staff. Even people the team interacts with such as restaurant workers at home, and the drivers of the buses that take the team from the team jet to hotels and stadiums for road games, the road hotel staffs.
The variables are mind-boggling, really, for the team to have managed just one COVID case in two years.
“No, there’s never been anything like this, at all,” Carroll said. “Nothing even close.
“The whole world is feeling it. And we are no different.”
Two tests per week, not one
To try to control the seemingly uncontrollable, Carroll has had vaccinated Seahawks testing for COVID-19 twice per week all season. The NFL requires vaccinated players to test just once per week, most commonly each Monday.
The Seahawks’ extra test per week is at team expense.
“We are the only team doing that, I think,” Carroll said. “And the reason was that if somebody was exposed on the weekend when we can lose control of guys that aren’t in the building together throughout, the Monday test would not encompass something that happened on Saturday, or even Friday night possibly. To protect ourselves against what could have happened on the weekend when we are more vulnerable, we try to catch it again on Wednesday. That’s why we did it.”
Carroll explained he could test negative on Monday and test positive on Wednesday. On another team, that second test that found the positive wouldn’t be found until the following Monday. That’s seven days and a game, perhaps a road trip among 100 other players, coaches and staff, that a positive player could expose others without knowing he was infected.
“We try to prevent any issues with that,” Carroll said.
This is all part of Carroll trying to win the competitive edge the NFL has set up for teams to fully vaccinate and avoid getting COVID-19. That’s in addition to the public-health benefits, not risking family members and others from getting infected by a virus that isn’t likely to endanger the lives of world-class athletes.
Thinking beyond oneself
Seahawks captain Bobby Wagner says he and his teammates see that bigger picture, beyond themselves.
“Obviously, everybody in the world is probably tired of this. Nobody could’ve thought that we were going to be still in this position at this time,” Wagner said.
“But I think at the same time, as soon as you say to somebody that maybe is tired that it’s not about you, it’s about the people around you. That should be a strong enough message to get across. If you don’t understand that, then I don’t know what you’re thinking.
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“I don’t think we have those guys in the building that want to put anybody in danger,” Wagner said. “We’ve seen the affects that this can have. We’ve had players that had family members pass away from this. It’s more of a respect thing. Respecting people’s health and family situation and wanting to make sure you’re not a reason that happens to somebody else.”
