One after another on Wednesday, the revelations came on the delayed pace NFL teams are dealing with on player vaccinations.
“I haven’t been vaccinated yet,” Panthers quarterback Sam Darnold told the local media. “Still gotta think about all those certain things that go into it. Again, it’s everyone’s choice, whether they wanna get vaccinated or not. So, that’s really all I got on it. I don’t wanna go too into detail.”
Fair, of course, since these are personal decisions.
“Obviously, [the coaches] want everybody to be vaccinated to move more freely around the facility, and with traveling and all that type of stuff,” said Washington defensive end Montez Sweat. “But everybody has their own beliefs, and they’re entitled to their own decision.”
That’s also reasonable.
But here’s the one thing that you can’t say about this issue: that it won’t have an impact on NFL teams six or seven weeks from now when training camps kick off. And if it might impact training camps, then it might impact how teams come out of the gate in September. And if it might affect how teams come out of the gate in September, then it might have an effect on what the playoff brackets look like. And you get the picture.
That’s one reason why, over the last few weeks, coaches have worked exhaustively with their players, like Sweat said, and beaten through every avenue possible to try and get them every bit of information they can on the work Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson have done to get us all here, and what players will be putting in their bodies if they make the decision more than 140 million Americans [and counting] already have.
Those coaches all know this will start to count very soon.
And that’s regardless of where anyone stands philosophically of getting vaccinated for COVID-19.
