Bill Belichick stirred things up with comments on the vaccine last week.
The New England Patriots head coach said that “a pretty high” number of vaccinated players have tested positive for COVID-19. The NFL’s chief medical officer quickly responded by saying there is a higher rate of infections in unvaccinated players.
The issue that stems from Belichick’s comments is that teams cannot make roster decision regarding players based off of vaccination status. Speculation led to the idea that Cam Newton’s release had relevance to his vaccination status, but Belichick denied that.
On Monday, Belichick opened up his time with reporters to clarify his comments on the vaccine.
“Just wanted to kind of take a second and clarify an answer to a question that I gave the other day relative to vaccinations,” Belichick said, transcribed by WEEI. “No player has been released or kept because of their vaccination status. That’s not part of the equation. My comment relative to vaccinations are, really, the way I feel is that that’s an individual decision for each person to make. As a team, we’re better off if everybody is vaccinated. And that being said, even if everybody was vaccinated, that doesn’t solve all of our problems.
As we’ve seen multiple players and head coaches and assistant coaches throughout the league test positive for COVID even after they have been vaccinated. So it’s still incumbent upon us to be vigilant in our, really, daily hygiene and decision making for the health and safety of each of us individually and our team. So, we’ll continue to follow all the league protocols as we always do. But it’s not, that’s not a factor in any player’s release or non-release on the team.”
Without clarifying these comments, the NFL Players Association could have potentially launched an investigation.
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