Seahawks coach Pete Carroll says team still without positive COVID test

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The Seattle Seahawks had their first player land on the reserve/COVID-19 list during the regular season on Saturday as defensive tackle Bryan Mone was placed on the list.

However, head coach Pete Carroll said on Monday that Mone’s placement on the list is not because of a positive test.

“He has not tested positive,” Carroll said. “We have a guy that we’re exercising extreme caution right now because of contacts. We’re just trying to do it exactly the very best way possible and keep our fingers crossed that he’s OK. Right now nobody has tested positive yet.”

Mone was already on the injured reserve list and has not been practicing with the team because of a bad high-ankle sprain that may keep him out the rest of the season.

The only other instance of a Seattle player landing on the reserve list this year was when wide receiver John Ursua was placed on the list early in training camp. However, he quickly came off the list as his positive test was confirmed to be a false positive result.

The Seahawks roster has remained COVID free throughout the entirety of the season. Carroll said they’ve made keeping the virus out of their building a competition with incentives across the team for remaining spaced and distanced with their contact tracing monitors.

“We have teams set up by positions and some positions are combined,” Carroll said. “Each week we measure the close contacts that they have and we keep score and so we have an ongoing tournament right now and I think it’s the tight ends and specialty guys, the kickers, that are in the lead right now. It’s a pretty close competition and so we post a score every week and keep track of it. So it’s an ongoing awareness that we try to maintain. It’s not unlike us to try to figure out a competition and everything and so we figured one out. There’s some really good prizes at the end of it for the winners.

“I think it takes everything that you can think of. This is such an all encompassing challenge. Every second of the day, whether you’re here or you’re somewhere else, something can affect the outcome and so we’re trying to maintain. It all started off with attitude and a really, really strong clear conscience about how to maintain the kind of decision-making that you need to pull this off.”