Patriots-Seahawks monitoring air quality concerns ahead of Sunday’s game

This week, Major League Baseball was forced to postpone and move a game from Seattle to San Francisco due to the dangerous air quality in Washington because of the ongoing wildfires on the West Coast. As the Patriots prepare to take on the Seattle Seahawks this weekend, there is a concern with the air quality and player safety inside CenturyLink Field.

At moment, both Patriots coach Bill Belichick and Seahawks coach Peter Carroll say they’re optimistic that the weather and [...]

This week, Major League Baseball was forced to postpone and move a game from Seattle to San Francisco due to the dangerous air quality in Washington because of the ongoing wildfires on the West Coast. As the Patriots prepare to take on the Seattle Seahawks this weekend, there is a concern with the air quality and player safety inside CenturyLink Field.

At moment, both Patriots coach Bill Belichick and Seahawks coach Peter Carroll say they’re optimistic that the weather and wind currents will help the situation in Seattle.

"We’re aware of it," Belichick said on Thursday. "We’ve looked into it a little bit. I think the forecast that I’ve seen — we’ve tracked them over the last couple of days — looked really pretty promising, that there’s some wind currents coming in from the Pacific. Not that I know anything about wind currents or meteorology or anything here, but this is other people telling me that that’s going to help. And certainly by the end of the week, it sounds like as early as Friday, things could start to clear up a little bit."

"We’ve seen a turn in the weather patterns coming for the weekend that should help us out," Carroll told the New England media this week. "We’re tuned into it. It looks like the predictions — if you’re paying attention to the science — the predictions are that it’s going to move out some here, but anything could happen."We ha e to be ready for something to vary, but we think it’s going to be fine."

As of right now, the Patriots are preparing to leave for Seattle on Friday. This marks the first time the Pats will travel during Covid-19. As it turns out, the health pandemic isn’t the only thing on the team’s radar. Belichick also pointed out that the Patriots have to be ready for anything and that includes a potential venue change.

"From our standpoint, we’re going to control the things that we can control," Belichick said. "We’ve talked about possibly some things that we might be able to do a little bit differently if necessary. Right now, I don’t really think that it appears that’ll be necessary. But we’ll monitor the situation and see. I’d say right now, it’s tracking to where we don’t anticipate a major problem, but we’ll be prepared if things change."

mdaniels@providencejournal.com

On Twitter: @MarkDanielsPJ