Seahawks saluting at tomorrow’s playoff game their unseen MVPs: their COVID-19 testers
Pete Carroll got up and at them before dawn.
Because that’s when you have to get up to catch some of the most valuable people to this Seahawks season.
In the darkest and coldest days Washington has, early morning in January, the Seahawks coach walked a couple first downs from his car parked in the players’ and coaches’ parking lot at the team facility along Lake Washington in Renton. He walked up switchback metal ramps. He walked past the stand that encourages you use hand sanitizer and offers extra masks, lest somehow 10 months into this pandemic you forgot yours.
Carroll walked into the same trailer he’s entered every day since the last week of July. It’s the same trailer every one of his 53 players, 16 practice-squad players, a dozen more on injured reserve, perhaps a hundred or more assistant coaches, trainers, administrators and team staffers—even until recently a handful of media members who cover the team—have walked into every day for 5 1/2 months.
It’s been their way of football life, their only permissible way to get into the team facility each day, their only way to play.
“We are coming to announce to our group of nurses, nurse practitioners, phlebotomists, how grateful we are for all the work that they’ve done to help us carry out this whole process of testing and taking care of all of the COVID issues,” Carroll said in a video posted Friday by Madeline Down of the Seahawks’ video-production department.
Carroll then checked in again with Victor Omballa. The site manager runs the Seahawks’ COVID-19 tests that are done with unwavering positivity and joy each early morning by technicians then flown each day to BioReference Laboratories in Burbank, California, for processing.
For the last six months, Omballa has been at Seahawks headquarters more than the goal posts have.
He gave Carroll his daily testing packet. It contained a form with the coach’s full name, birth date and stickers with the same. Those were to go on the vials that will contain the cotton swabs a technician is about to swirl for about 10 seconds in each of Carroll’s nostrils.
Above where Carroll is sitting, next to a nurse, there are blue-and-green signs declaring “GO SEAHAWKS!” That’s for the team’s playoff game Saturday against the Los Angeles Rams. Those signs have been up in the trailers through the Christmas decorations, and before that, the playfully spooky Halloween theme complete with candy and costumes.
Bluetooth speakers bump pulsating music that makes mornings seem like club nights. On any given day, confetti is all over the floors and folding chairs inside the trailer.
That’s right, they party in the Seahawks’ COVID-19 testing trailer.
On Nov. 3, during my daily test so I could report on that day’s practice, I got dumped with confetti. My testing nurse grabbed a bullhorn—yes, they even have a bullhorn—and made a fun, impromptu announcement. Another technician had a small gift bag rushed to me. That all happened after my nurse had me confirm to her my birth date, standard daily testing procedure, and found out that day was my 50th birthday.
This week, after Carroll sat and got tested for COVID-19 for almost the 200th time this season, the coach gathered the nurses around him in the trailer.
“All of you guys have been so extraordinary. And because of the spirit that you’ve brought, all along and you’ve made this thing happen where you’ve taken care of our players and everybody in the organization, we would like you guys to raise the 12 Flag at the game this weekend,” Carroll announced.
“Oh my, God!” one tester exclaimed.
Then, cheers.
And that was before the Carroll gave each of them their own, blue Seahawks jerseys with the number 12 and their names on them.
The Seahawks call them their “Swab Team.” They are joining the players and coaches in fighting “an invisible war,” as one testing nurse put it.
They have been as much a part of the team’s success in winning the NFC West and earning their first home playoff game since 2016 as Russell Wilson, Bobby Wagner, Jamal Adams, DK Metcalf and K.J. Wright have.
Omballa’s and his staff’s relentless fun, confetti, costumes and positive vibes at 5 a.m. every day during one of the darker years in our country’s history has paid off for Seattle. Remarkably so.
The Seahawks are the only NFL team to not have a positive case for COVID-19 this season.
Carroll saw how his players and staff dealt with daily coronavirus testing as another opportunity to compete against other teams. Other clubs have had key starting players miss big games because of COVID-19 issues. Baltimore had to play a key division game at Pittsburgh without quarterback Lamar Jackson, the reigning league most valuable player. The Cleveland Browns entered Friday, two days before their AFC wild-card game at the Steelers, having not practiced all week because of positive tests. The Browns’ head coach is going to miss the franchise’s first playoff game in 19 years because he tested positive for COVID-19.
Meanwhile, the 69-year-old Carroll and his Seahawks roll along, virus-free (knock on wood) on the eve of their playoff opener.
How has Carroll made Omballa’s COVID-19 testing operation and staff in the team’s parking lot a competitive advantage?
He’s used some of the reported $40 million and more each NFL team has been spending on daily COVID testing to the fullest extent he can imagine.
The coach has gotten his players to tell the team the names and times of visitors of any kind—girlfriends, parents, siblings, nephews and nieces, friends from back home and locally—who want to come and see their Seahawks at their homes. The team then arranges for those visitors to meet with a couple of the nurses, who peel off from the trailers in the back and staff small, auxiliary tents in the front parking lot of the team headquarters. Those visitors get COVID-19 testing and the results before they go visit their players.
“It’s been us trying to make sure the Seahawks get the results on time and ensure that everyone who was exposed or at risk is excluded fast and to reconfirm the results before they get into contact with anyone else,” Omballa told the team’s website.
The auxiliary tents got a tad busier through the holidays. Yet the Seahawks stayed virus-free, at full roster strength for every one of their 16 games. They won 12 of them, and the division.
Being virus-free allowed Wilson to throw for 40 touchdowns. It allowed Wagner, Wright, Adams and the defense to rebound from worst to near-best in the league by season’s end.
In so many unseen ways, Omballa and his staff allowed the Seahawks to earn their first home playoff game in four years Saturday.
For that, and how they did it, the COVID-19 testers join Paul Allen, Chuck Knox, Cortez Kennedy, Steve Largent, Sir Mix-a-Lot, Ken Griffey Jr., Edgar Martinez, Ed Viesturs, Bill Russell, Don James, Dave Matthews and other giants in the Seattle community who have kicked off Seahawks home games over the years with a flourish.
They get to raise a revered flag.
This story was originally published January 8, 2021 at 6:03 PM with the headline "Seahawks saluting at tomorrow’s playoff game their unseen MVPs: their COVID-19 testers."
