Seahawks ‘taking care of business’ Monday getting COVID-19 vaccination booster shots

Fresh off just their second win in two months, the Seahawks are trying to beat something else.

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The team that had all but two of 70-plus players vaccinated to begin this season spent Monday getting COVID-19 vaccination booster shots, team wide, at its training facility in Renton.

“The Seahawks are taking care of business today,” coach Pete Carroll said Monday morning on his weekly radio show on Seattle’s KIRO-AM.

It was the day after the Seahawks beat the San Francisco 49ers 30-23.

Carroll made a point of announcing, unsolicited at the end of his show, his players, coaches and staff were getting their booster shots.

He encouraged the rest of the populace to do the same, to protect all and effectively, finally end the pandemic in the United States.

The coach’s idea was to have the players get their booster vaccines on a Monday, to give them a couple days to get through any effects of them such as tiredness well before the Seahawks next play on Sunday at Houston.

Thing is, players around the NFL feel cruddy on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesday from the constant car crashes of a pro football game on Sundays, anyway. Even those without explicit injuries often don’t feel anywhere close to healthy until about Thursday of each game week.

It might be more than coincidence that the Seahawks are getting their COVID-19 vaccine boosters the week they are playing their only game this season in Texas. That state ended last week with 54.9% of its population fully vaccinated, according to statistics from usafacts.org.

Where the Seahawks play home games, the rate of population fully vaccinated is 85% as of Friday, per the Public Health Department for Seattle and King County.

The 70-year-old Carroll has been a staunch and consistent proponent of vaccinating and protection against COVID-19 through the two years of the pandemic. He has hosted vaccination events at the team facility for players and their families.

He was having families, friends and significant others of players tested daily, just like the team, at Seahawks headquarters throughout last season when Seattle was the only one of 32 NFL teams to not have a positive case of COVID-19.

This season, tight end Gerald Everett became the Seahawks’ first confirmed positive case of the pandemic. He was vaccinated when he became infected. He missed two games in five games — a Sunday then a Thursday night game in October — while getting five consecutive negative-test results.

The league has since tweaked its back-to-play testing sequencing including for game days.