Dion Dawkins is back on the football field not long after he was uncertain if he was going to live or die.
The always-animated Buffalo Bills left tackle revealed earlier this week that he contracted COVID-19 in July after receiving his two vaccination doses but before the two-week period after the second shot to be considered fully vaccinated.
“I didn’t know that my mind could get to the low that it could get to,” Dawkins told reporters. “I was extremely emotional. I didn’t even think that I was that emotional. I don’t want to scare anybody but there were moments that I was like, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to make this.’ I was down bad, where I could barely move and I was hurting.”
The symptomatic Dawkins spent four days in the hospital and lost 15 pounds.
“If there’s a checklist for it, it was everything,” Dawkins said. “It was shortness of breath, it was the hot and cold, it was the cough, it was the dehydration.”
More than 90 percent of players across the league have received at least one shot. But the Bills are the NFL’s most polarizing team when it comes to vaccination status.
Cole Beasley is the NFL’s most outspoken critic of the different protocols facing vaccinated and unvaccinated players — thinking the shot is being forced upon him — while his fellow receivers who share an indoor meeting room, Stefon Diggs and Emmanuel Sanders, are advocates of the vaccine. Quarterback Josh Allen declined to say if he is vaccinated.
“The first that I thought of was, ‘How am I professional athlete and I’m down bad like this?’” Dawkins said. “I can’t imagine people who aren’t healthy and don’t work out and don’t do anything. Just God bless them. … This is a world fight, and I just got hit with a bullet.”
Dawkins made his decision with the developmental lungs health of his 6-month-old son, born prematurely, in mind.
“Honestly, truly, I didn’t know what to believe at first. There was a lot of unknown areas about COVID and the vaccine,” Dawkins said. “When I took that initiative to get vaccinated, I just wanted to do what was right. The message I would say is do what you’re most comfortable with, but I’m glad that I had the vaccine when I had COVID. I wish that I could have been fully, fully vaccinated — I was right before the fully vaccinated point. If I was fully, it would have been easier on myself.”
Dawkins said his personal experience swayed his entire family to get the vaccine. He has shared the “raw, honest truth” with those who ask to help educate.
“Life can be over before you know it, regardless of what you made in life or what you did,” Dawkins said.
Dawkins returned to practice this week and is expected to play Saturday’s preseason tilt against the Bears after making “significant progress” in his recovery. He said he is still tired and looking to hydrate after the warmup period of practices.
“I’m here to play ball, I have a family to take care of,” Dawkins said, “and I want to do whatever is going to keep my mind on my routine and the other stuff leave to the doctors and people who study that stuff — just like we study plays.”
