Patriots game postponed; team has 4th positive COVID-19 test

The Patriots game against the Denver Broncos won’t be played on Monday evening after all.

On Sunday, the NFL postponed the Week 5 matchup after a fourth Patriots player tested positive for Covid-19. According to ESPN, the game has been rescheduled for next Sunday.

The NFL sent out the following statement:

"This decision was made to ensure the health and safety of players, coaches and game day personnel and in consultation with medical experts. [...]

The Patriots game against the Denver Broncos won’t be played on Monday evening after all.

On Sunday, the NFL postponed the Week 5 matchup after a fourth Patriots player tested positive for Covid-19. According to ESPN, the game has been rescheduled for next Sunday.

The NFL sent out the following statement:

"This decision was made to ensure the health and safety of players, coaches and game day personnel and in consultation with medical experts."

The game was rescheduled to next Sunday, Oct. 18, because that was the Patriots bye week. This means the Patriots essentially just had their bye week without knowing and are now scheduled for 12 games in a row to finish out the 2020 season.

This all happened due to coronavirus.

According to multiple reports, the Patriots shut down Gillette Stadium on Sunday after having another positive test for Covid-19. This marked the third person in Foxboro to test positive this week and the fourth overall.

The problems started last weekend when Cam Newton tested positive for Covid-19. The team found out late Friday night on Oct. 2 – after Newton took an early test and was in the building and at practice. The NFL pushed their game in Kansas City a day later and the Patriots travel to Missouri on the same day that they played.

That decision might have been costly.

Due to Covid-19’s incubation period, it was impossible to tell if any of the Patriots on the team buses or multiple airplanes had the virus. As it turned out, people did. Stephon Gilmore, who played 100% of the defensive snaps, tested positive on Wednesday. He reportedly had dinner with Newton the evening before the quarterback found out about his positive test.

The Pats also had practice squad defensive lineman Bill Murray test positive this week. The multiple positive tests forced the league to shutdown Gillette Stadium on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. The NFL also pushed the Patriots-Broncos matchup from Sunday to Monday. Instead of practicing, the Patriots held virtual meetings. With no new negative results, the Patriots returned to practice on Saturday.

As it turns out, the negative tests before that day didn’t mean everyone was in the clear. The inconsistent incubation of this virus has made it tough to determine when teams and players are set to resume. The Patriots were set to have a walkthrough on Sunday, but that never happened.

On Saturday, Bill Belichick accurately described the team’s situation as "hour-by-hour."

"One thing that we’ve learned this year repeatedly has been we have to be ready to adjust and adapt to changes and modifications in the way we do things and in some cases decisions that really come down to a very short amount of time that we have to be ready to adjust to," Belichick said. "We’re certainly taking things day by day, probably hour by hour would be more accurate. We’ll just see how we progress and then as we find out more on our end or if there are other things externally that we can’t control that affect us, then we’ll deal with those as they come."

At least one Patriots player vented his frustration at the situation on Saturday. Jason McCourty said he felt like the NFL and NFLPA truly didn’t care about player safety and it was on the Patriots to look out for themselves.

"Between the players, the coaches, the administration, the staff, it is up to us to take care of one another, to make sure physically we are all set, make sure mentally because 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. "We’re trying to get games played and we’re trying to get the season going. For them, it is not about our best interest, or our healthy 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."

mdaniels@providencejournal.com

On Twitter: @MarkDanielsPJ