As a new era of Atlanta Falcons football gets underway, with a new head coach and general manager at the helm, the latest news indicates that the team is off to a good start.
A report from Zach Klein, the sports director at WSB-TV, revealed that the Falcons had become the first and only team in the NFL to successfully achieve 100 percent vaccination for every player on the roster. The team later confirmed the report, according to Falcons digital managing editor Scott Bair, upping their total from 92 percent a few weeks ago.
This has been an area of difficulty or tension for a handful of rosters around the NFL, with notable players like Cole Beasley and DeAndre Hopkins voicing their opposition to the league's policy, one which heavily restricts unvaccinated players. However, the significant majority of the league's players have agreed to get the vaccine, with an August 11 report from Judy Battista revealing that 91.7 percent of them had received at least one dose. At that point, the Falcons and 14 other teams had at least 95 percent of players vaccinated.
Among the penalties a team could face for a COVID outbreak among unvaccinated players is that they must forfeit any game missed for such a reason, and the game will count as a loss for playoff seeding among other punishments.
Opposite the Falcons, the Vikings were reported to have had the lowest vaccination rate in the league as of August 3, with Nicki Jhabvala of The Washington Post sharing that only 70 percent of players were "in process" of getting the vaccine.
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