Jerry Jones urging Dallas Cowboys to get COVID vaccine for Canelo fight, NFL season
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said that anyone who is in the team’s war room for the 2021 NFL Draft, which begins Thursday and runs through Saturday, will be full vaccinated for the COVID-19 virus.
No number has been set for how many people will be allowed in the war room but the NFL has mandated that all official participants must vaccinated.
Jones is taking it a step further and is urging anyone in the Cowboys organization to the vaccine, including players, coaches and staff.
“Very much. Any chance I get,” Jones said. “Seriously, we are unabashed about encouraging everyone to get the vaccine. It certainly will enable us to not have anybody that should become ill that might have become ill.”
Jones wants the Cowboys to be an example for the league and the nation on how to get back to normal as safe possible.
After leading the league in fan attendance at AT&T Stadium during a 2020 season in which NFL crowd sizes ranged from severely limited to nonexistent, Jones expects a return to full capacity for the 2021 season.
He hopes to set the tone with the upcoming world super-middleweight boxing title fight between Canelo Alvarez and Billy Saunders on May 8 at AT&T Stadium.
Jones expects 65,000-70,000 in attendance, which would be a new pandemic world record. He has even invited the entire Cowboys team to be in attendance.
“But we need our vaccinations,” Jones said.
It’s about the fight but it’s also about using it as tool to entice the players to get vaccinated.
“We’re encouraging in every way that we can,” Jones said. “Obviously we don’t have the ability to say that you do that in order to be with your teammates or with the team or be with the staff at the player level because of our union bargaining. But absent that we really feel strongly that it is in all of our best interests here in April looking ahead to the season that we are pushing hard right now to get everybody vaccinated.”
The NFL can’t force or require players to get vaccinated. But the NFL is strongly encouraging them to do so.
Fully vaccinated NFL players and other staffers will no longer have daily COVID-19 tests.
Testing will be reduced to once per week for those who are 14 days past their final vaccination shot. Vaccinated players also will avoid lengthy entry testing after traveling to team facilities and won’t be required to quarantine if they are deemed a high-risk close contact to someone with a confirmed COVID-19 infection.
But any team employee who refuses a COVID-19 vaccination without “bona fide medical or religious ground” will not have Tier 1 or Tier 2 status, and as such they would have restricted access within team facilities and extremely limited access to players.
This story was originally published April 28, 2021 at 9:47 AM.
