As training camps rapidly approach, issues related to the COVID-19 vaccine continue to be omnipresent in the NFL landscape. Ever since the league and NFLPA agreed to protocols for the 2021 season that will make life much easier for vaccinated players, the vaccination rate has steadily been ticking up.
That continues to be the case. 13 teams now have at least 85 percent of their players vaccinated, Tom Pelissero of NFL Network tweets. Things are clearly moving at a brisk pace, since just a couple of days before a source had told Ben Volin of the Boston Globe that it was nine teams (Twitter link). As of Pelissero’s tweet, 73.8 percent of players league-wide had gotten at least one shot.
Two teams remained below 50 percent. Players who aren’t vaccinated will face heavy restrictions for this season, including having to travel separately to road games and not being allowed to do virtually anything while out of town. As Pelissero put it at the time, road games will essentially boil down to “fly by yourself and sit in your room until kickoff” for unvaccinated players.
Meanwhile, while many players have declined to share their status, they might not be able to keep their decisions to themselves much longer. That’s because a source told Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk.com that the league and union are “working out the details” for a system of “identifying vaccinated players during practices and games.”
The source told Florio that it’s a “core concern.” As Florio notes, if that system includes visible identification during games, it won’t be hard for the media and fans to figure out. This one could certainly spark some drama, and we’ll let you know once we hear more.
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