Wherever you stand on vaccination, it’s difficult to argue that remaining unvaccinated is somehow not an impediment for an NFL player. A player’s unvaccinated status has an impact on everything he does, from how he conducts himself in meetings (because of social distancing) to when and how he can lift weights and what time he arrives for work.
“We’re segregated,” one player said. “Vaxxed over here, unvaxxed over there.”
Put simply, for vaccinated and unvaccinated players, the 2021 season is a completely dissimilar existence. Players who have elected to not be vaccinated are, in essence, operating under the league’s onerous, pre-vaccine restrictions of 2020.
Related on the SLP
The NFL’s stance is that none of this is meant to be punitive. The goal, the league has consistently said, is keeping players and staff members healthy amid a pandemic. While vaccinated people can and do contract COVID-19, particularly the highly contagious Delta variant, NFL chief medical officer Allen Sills said recently, “The data has consistently shown higher rates of infection in unvaccinated players than vaccinated players.”
That said, if the rigorous rules motivate players to opt for vaccination, the NFL isn’t about to complain.
