Opinion: Unvaccinated Carson Wentz would ruin Colts' incredible season if he contracts COVID
We’re just waiting, right? That’s all we’re doing. Waiting, watching, wondering which members of the Indianapolis Colts will appear next on the NFL’s reserve/COVID-19 list. Six more names were added Monday, but not him.
You know.
Him.
Listen, do you want me to write real stuff, or would you like to read instead about Santa and Rudolph and other fairy tales? Can’t do it. Can't pretend the fate of this incredible season for the Colts, this against-all-odds, uphill battle toward the 2021 NFL postseason, cannot still be ruined by one piece of news in particular:
Carson Wentz testing positive for COVID-19.
Don’t tell me that topic is untouchable. These days the omicron variant-fueled coronavirus surge isn’t just a story, but The Story. This thing is infecting everyone, the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, quarterbacks and non-quarterbacks alike. Wondering about the health of the Colts’ most important player – not their best player, not by a long shot, but easily their most important player – is something we’re all doing. Check social media. Type in “Carson Wentz” and “COVID.” I’ll wait.
See?
To Quenton Nelson and Darius Leonard, to Zach Pascal and Khari Willis, to Mark Glowinski and T.J. Carrie, the Colts on Monday added the last available member of their preferred starting five offensive linemen – right tackle Braden Smith – to the COVID list. These are hard hits, but not a knockout blow.
Carson Wentz would be the knockout blow. His backup is Sam Ehlinger, the sweetest young man on Earth, a tough sonofagun, born with the leadership gene not granted any other quarterback on the roster. Ehlinger is all those things, but if he has to play for the Colts this week against Las Vegas, perhaps even next week against Jacksonville, and definitely at any point in the NFL playoffs, the Colts are done. He’s not ready, especially with a roster already decimated by injuries and COVID.
Carson Wentz has to stay healthy, or the Colts’ dream season will meet a nightmarish ending, one we’ve all feared since training camp, when we first realized franchise quarterback Carson Wentz was one of those people. You know.
Them.
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Writing from a hospital room
Don’t tell me I can’t write what everyone is thinking.
We’re way past the stage of tap-dancing around the topic, with the coronavirus having killed 815,000 people nationwide. People are dying around you, and they’re dying around me, and with those last four words I was being literal, because I’m writing from a hospital in Columbia, South Carolina. People are dying in this state, more than a dozen a day, more than 14,500 total. Since early Christmas morning I’ve been sitting in the intensive care unit of the biggest hospital in the biggest city in South Carolina.
People are dying here.
My mom will not be one of them, to be clear. She’s going to be fine. We had a non-COVID scare, a big one – I didn’t drive 10 hours overnight, that night being Christmas Eve, for a small scare – but she’ll be OK. You’re not reading about my mom because I want sympathy or whatever.
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Being here in this hospital, where every room is full because omicron is rampaging, where doctors and nurses are talking about the looming post-holiday surge that will bring the medical system to its knees, fuels the anger I have for our response to COVID.
A virus can survive this long only if it finds a weak host, and the coronavirus continues to kick our collective ass because it has found a soft spot among society: The unvaccinated, the unmasked, the uncaring. Every country has them, every state, every city.
Every locker room.
Don't blame coach Frank Reich or GM Chris Ballard or owner Jim Irsay for the Colts having one of the least-vaccinated locker rooms in the NFL. They've tried. They're still trying. The Colts are following the NFL's protocols as well as they can. Of that, you can be sure.
"From the beginning of this pandemic," Reich was telling me Monday, "we've made it clear we believe the best course of action is to be fully vaccinated. However, we also live in a country where freedom of choice is highly espoused and therefore feel it is important that we respect the individual choice of players on the issue of vaccination."
Last week I asked Wentz about the omicron surge knocking out dozens of players around the league, and the NFL's reaction to the surge, and wondered if all of that had changed his mind about being vaccinated.
“For me, nothing has changed," he said. "We talked about it a lot early in the year and nothing has really changed for me on that front.”
Next I asked Wentz if he's ever explained why he's unvaccinated.
“I talked a lot about it early in the year, so you can check those ones," he said. "I don’t really want to discuss that right now.”
I checked those ones. Here's what he said earlier in the year about being unvaccinated:
"Trust me," he said in September, "it's a personal decision, and I’m not going to go in depth on why."
Ah.
Here we are, three weeks from the playoffs, with everything on the line, and the Colts’ dream season is hanging by a thread of Carson Wentz’s jersey.
Darius Leonard did his research
I’m wondering about Darius Leonard’s vaccination research.
You know Darius. The Colts’ best defensive player, and one of the best linebackers in the league. He’s not vaccinated. His choice. Here’s what he said in September about that decision:
“I’m a bounce-off guy, just wanting to see more, want to learn more, want to get more educated about it," he said. "Just got to think about it. I don’t want to rush into it. I got to see everything. I’m listening to all of the vaccinated guys here. I’m not like you see on social media. I’m not pro-vax. I’m not anti-vax. I got to learn. When you don’t know a lot about something, you have to educate yourself about it.”
I got to learn…
Leonard was put on the COVID list Saturday morning, meaning he’d miss two games – unvaccinated players must sit out 10 days after a positive test – and the first game was Saturday night at Arizona. Here’s one thing Leonard learned:
The Colts can win without you.
Darius loves him some Darius – most pro athletes have that confidence gene, but some hide it better than No. 53 – and I just wonder if he’s been humbled by any of this: He caught the virus, as vaccinated players are doing as well, to be clear, but his unvaccinated status means he’ll miss the 15th and 16th games of a 17-game season where the Colts are fighting for their playoff life.
Has he learned anything? Has anyone? All those people we read about, anti-vaxxers who use their last, pitiful breaths on their dying bed to beg family members to get vaccinated? Is anyone paying attention?
You see the Colts’ reserve/COVID-19 list balloon to 14 players in the last week alone, including starters (Pascal, Carrie, Glowinski) and stars (Braden Smith, Willis) and superstars (Nelson, Leonard), and you wonder whose name will be next. Amazing that the Colts won at Arizona without most of those players. Amazing, the organizational attitude about this whole thing.
Reich learned Saturday morning that the team would be without Leonard, Willis and Pascal that night, and in his words, “Nobody flinched.” The coaching staff adjusted. The healthy players played. The Colts won.
On Monday, after six more players were added to the COVID list – but not him – I reached out to several franchise members about the possibility of losing Wentz. I wanted to know the stress level that comes with waiting for all daily test results, especially the result of that one player at that one vital position. And to a man, each in his own way, this is what they told me:
If that happens, everyone will say we’re done. And we’ll prove everyone wrong.
The Colts are tough, but like every team in the NFL – like every state in America, every country in the world – they have a weak link. And the omicron variant is probing for that link. It’s searching, searching, searching...
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.