Seahawks’ Tyler Lockett and D.J. Reed, 49ers’ Raheem Mostert know ‘COVID isn’t a joke’
It floored one of the quickest, slickest Seahawks of his era.
“It was very exhausting. I could barely move,” speedy wide receiver Tyler Lockett said of having recently contracted COVID-19. “My throat was hurting. I had chills. My chest was hurting. I was very, very anxious.
“My mind was just wandering because I was probably thinking too much. I was throwing up. I threw up the first day a couple times, but just once after that, I just had no energy, so I was barely eating.”
D.J. Reed is 25 years old, like Lockett in the prime of his athletic life.
He also was flattened by having the coronavirus through last week.
“That COVID isn’t a joke,” Seattle starting cornerback said. “So you better mask up and stay your distance.”
Lockett lost eight pounds in seven days while he was out with COVID.
The record-setting receiver, Reed, and everyone in the NFL, are among the most elite, well-trained and conditioned athletes on earth.’
So much for the idea, of some, COVID is merely like a bad cold. Or the idea NFL players are too young and in too good of shape to spend time and effort protecting themselves from the coronavirus or worry about getting it.
Reed knows differently.
“Man, I was hurting,” Seattle’s right cornerback said last weekend.
That was after he overcame more fatigue than usual playing his first game back off the reserve/COVID-19 list and grabbed two interceptions in the Seahawks’ win over Detroit last week.
“I had to get tested because I had a bad headache. I was about to go to the ER,” Reed said. “It was really a migraine — my head was throbbing — so I called my girl because she was in L.A. and she said, ‘Don’t go to the ER, try just to relax.’
“I took some Tylenol or whatever and I was able to go to sleep. But I tested and was positive.”
That was on Dec. 19. He went on the COVID list two days before the Seahawks’ rescheduled game at the Los Angeles Rams. Reed missed Seattle’s loss Dec. 21 that essentially ended the team’s slim playoff hopes. Then he missed the home loss to Chicago five days later that officially eliminated the Seahawks.
“I had a sore throat,” Reed said, continuing his list of issues from the coronavirus despite being vaccinated late this spring. “So my head was hurting, the next day I had a sore throat, I had some congestion in my chest, I was spitting up mucus — and then the next day I started coughing. It was a swirl of things.
“So it was definitely serious for me.”
Thursday the Seahawks put fellow defensive back Ryan Neal, who has been starting at strong safety since Jamal Adams had season-ending shoulder surgery last month, on the COVID-19 list. Wednesday, starting defensive tackle Al Woods went on it.
Starting left guard Damien Lewis and Sidney Jones, Reed’s partner starter at left cornerback, came off the COVID list Thursday.
Friday, coach Pete Carroll said the team “should” get defensive end Alton Robinson back from the COVID list Saturday in time for him to play Sunday in the season finale at Arizona — the state that on Wednesday set a new pandemic high for emergency-room visits from people with confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19 (2,341).
Robinson is 23 years old. Seattle’s second-year defensive end had tested positive for the coronavirus each day this week since Monday.
Raheem Mostert is living through another reason most NFL players remain at risk from COVID-19, why the league continues to test asymptomatic and vaccinated players, albeit now only at random, once per week per team. And why Russell Wilson, Bobby Wagner, Carroll and the Seahawks’ other leaders have said they’ve been trying to remain vigilant for going on two full years protecting themselves from getting it.
To protect their families at home.
The wife of Mostert, the San Francisco 49ers running back, posted on social media Thursday a terrifying account of what getting COVID did to their 3-year-old son.
Devon Mostert posted a photo of their young boy in an ambulance, his small hand in her’s, “after I called 911 because he was lethargic, skin was gray, lips were purple, and had a 103.5 temperature. I’m crying even as I’m typing this…this is all SO SCARY.
“We are thankfully back home, but my family is very much in the thick of it. I’ll update you more soon. But this is literally my CRY for you to take COVID seriously.”
Lockett considered it no small accomplishment he came back from a week of having COVID to play three days after he first tested negative again to play Jan. 2 against Chicago.
“I was just tired and exhausted,” Lockett said. “I don’t want to say I had breathing problems, but I couldn’t fully breathe out of my chest like I wanted to. You know how you just get that big air? Sometimes I got it, sometimes I didn’t. Again, I felt like I was good with breathing.
“It was just very unfortunate. I was out for a whole week. We had a big game versus the Rams that kind of determined whether we could go to the playoffs or not.
Lockett said it became a mental challenge to get through the coronavirus and off the COVID-19 list. That’s because he tested every day after his positive result, which came the day after a negative test at Seahawks headquarters in Renton.
“I couldn’t play,” he said, “so I had to sit there and watch, as well as get tested positive every single day. ...
“But I got this IV, the monoclonal (antibodies) thing. I had gotten that on Wednesday, and that’s when I really started feeling great.”
He tested negative the following day.
Lockett was asked if having COVID-19 has changed how he views the NFL’s changing protocols late last month, and the league’s handling of the coronavirus the last two seasons during the pandemic.
“It makes you frustrated,” Lockett said, “because when you’ve dealt with the symptoms of COVID-19, and you’ve seen how it was on you. Iit’s like we really don’t know how it’s going to affect other people.
“For me, yeah, it sucked seeing people say, ‘Is Tyler going to play? Is Tyler going to play? I need him to help my fantasy (team).’ I’m just trying to make it through this.
“People forget — people just see COVID-19 as whatever. But if you actually get it or you go through it or other people in your family go through it, you see how detrimental it is and you see how people do die from this stuff.”
