The Falcons, Buccaneers, and Raiders claim to have reached 100 percent of players vaccinated against COVID-19, and of the NFL’s 32 teams, 27 report a 90 percent rate or higher. The latest report on the league’s vaccination rate as a whole is 93.5 percent. Despite the attention paid to the loudest holdouts, these are very good numbers. But can they be trusted? There’s good reason to believe some number of NFL players have used fake vaccine cards, and teams’ protocols aren’t designed to catch them.
Fake CDC cards, often ordered online, are big business and growing, and two NFL agents who work for different agencies told Defector that players they represent asked them for help getting a fake vaccine card. (Both agents declined to do so.) One of those agents said that his client asked him about getting a fake card because a teammate of his had used one. “He was like, ‘Oh well my teammate’s got this fake card. Should I just do that?’” the agent said. “I’m like no! Just get vaccinated!”
This player was interested in getting a fake because he had just been placed on the COVID-19 reserve list for being a close contact. Two days after the conversation with his agent, the player got COVID himself.
Based on what that agent learned from his conversation with this player and others similarly shut down as close contacts in 2021, he estimates that 10–15 percent of players have a fake vaccine card. “I think it is a lot more common than people realize,” he said. “Look, you’re talking about the NFL. These guys do anything they can to fudge a weed test or a PED test.”
A third NFL agent told Defector that he hadn’t directly heard of any players using fakes but assumed it was probably happening. We spoke in the morning and that same night, the agent texted me back with an update: “Was told by a player tonight that a big-name guy on his team has a fake card. Players know.”