On Sunday morning, reports came out that the Patriots have another positive COVID test to deal with. Per ESPN’s Adam Schefter, the test came back positive and the individual who tested positive is now being re-tested. If that re-test comes back positive, New England’s Monday game with the Broncos, which had already been postponed due to a positive test, would be in jeopardy, as the NFL has stipulated that teams have to have two straight days of no positive tests before any football activity can resume.
The Patriots traveled to Kansas City for last week’s Monday night game with the Chiefs three days after quarterback Cam Newton tested positive, and cornerback Stephon Gilmore, who had close contact with Newton, tested positive on Tuesday. At that point, head coach Bill Belichick made the decision to close the team’s facility from Wednesday through Friday, re-opening on Saturday for practice in preparation for a Broncos game that may now have to be postponed… again.
Cornerback Jason McCourty has been trying to get answers on league policy from the league and the players association, and he’s not happy with what he’s heard — especially about the fact that many who contract COVID don’t show a positive test until days after their initial exposure.
“I think outside of here, the people that don’t have to walk in our building — whether it is the league office, whether it is the NFLPA — they don’t care,” McCourty said this week. “For them, it is not about our best interest, or our health and safety, it is about, ‘What can we make protocol-wise that sounds good, looks good, and how can we go out there and play games?’ I think what I kind of learned personally throughout this situation is it is going to be up to us as individuals in this building to just really take care of one another.
“If you get a chance to talk to the NFL or the NFLPA, I’d greatly appreciate you bringing up that point and letting them know. That’s something we talk about, and we are dealing with it. We’re moving forward and it’s obviously in the back of our mind.
“That’s why we’re just trying to do everything we can — we’re distanced. Even today while we were in, we’re totally distanced, we all have masks on, we all have the Oakley shields on, and we have a mask on underneath our helmet. We weren’t in the building, really, at all today. So we’re doing the necessary things to stay as safe as possible.
“But without a doubt, that’s a thought — the same way you guys are sitting there thinking about it like, ‘Hey, they’re getting on a plane on Monday [to go to Kansas City], well, those days don’t really add up with the incubation period.’ That was the same question we were asking our union before we headed out there.”
If the Patriots-Broncos game is unable to go as scheduled, the league has a couple of options. It can try to move the game to Tuesday, which it already did with the Bills-Titans game after the Titans were once again unable to go through more than two days without more positive tests. At this point, that Tuesday game is unlikely to be played as the Titans announced yet another positive test on Sunday morning, bringing that team’s total to 24 players and staff.
Or, the league could move the game to later in the season. At this point, the Patriots are scheduled to have a Week 6 bye, and the Broncos’ bye is in Week 8. The NFL already moved the Week 3 Steelers-Titans game to Week 7, giving both teams a Week 3 bye, while moving the Steelers-Ravens game from Week 7 to Week 8 and giving the Ravens a Week 7 bye.
But obviously, and in a larger sense, the NFL is going to run out of options in a hurry. It may be that the best thing to do is to shut things down for a week or so, put an 18th week on the table, and get to the point where things are more manageable. Because McCourty is right: At this point, the NFL and NFLPA (who, ridiculously enough, haven’t even agreed no gameday testing) appear to be more concerned with optics than getting the COVID protocols to a more workable point.
As we have seen in the nation’s capital, that is not a paradigm that will go well for anybody involved.