Assuming everything continues to trend in a positive direction with negative COVID-19 tests in New England, the Patriots will host the Denver Broncos Monday evening at Gillette Stadium.
As they should.
Unlike a week earlier, when the NFL hurried the harried Patriots to Kansas City for a haphazardly rescheduled game with the defending Super Bowl champions, New England hosting the Broncos is exactly how the league should be navigating its weekly schedule concerns through a pandemic.
When the decision was made by the league and its players to push forth with 2020, these were the types of issues that had to be planned for and flat-out expected.
Two key differences as to why the Patriots should not have played last Monday night in Kansas City and should certainly play this Monday evening in Foxborough?
Simple, time and travel.
A week ago, Cam Newton tested positive on Friday, just two days before the scheduled Chiefs game. Even with the game pushed back more than 24-hours, New England traveled and played well within even the low-end estimations of the incubation period for the virus. Despite ongoing testing, there was no way to know if or how far the virus had spread through Newton’s teammates.
Maybe that would have been relatively worthwhile risk if it had been a home game, as was the precedent sent when the Falcons played at home a couple days after cornerback A.J. Terrell tested positive.
But forcing New England’s travel party – players, aged coaches and the rest – to board busses and planes to Kansas City less than three days after Newton tested positive and had been interacting with all on the practice field was a rolling of the dice at best and an egregious, potentially dangerous error at worst.
It certainly was not, as NFL chief medical officer Allen Sills put it, the “safest” decision.
Now, though, the time is less of an issue and travel isn’t a consideration.
Stephon Gilmore tested positive on Tuesday. He’s not been around teammates since he played all 56 snaps against the Chiefs on Monday night and the subsequent flight home, which had him on the plane with other already higher-risk Patriots who’d been close contacts with Newton.
The team shut down its facility and has been operating remotely all week. If all continues to go well it will return to the practice field on Saturday – four days removed from Gilmore’s test – and play on Monday evening – six days after the Defensive Player of the Year was found COVID-19 positive.
There will be no travel involved. In its own building, New England can keep its players as safely distanced as possible, something that wasn’t an option in the tiny visiting locker room at Arrowhead Stadium.
Is it a certainty that the Patriots are coming out the other side of their mini coronavirus outbreak? That Newton, Gilmore and practice squad defensive lineman Bill Murray are the team’s only three players affected by the virus? That there is no risk of continued transmission, including to the visiting Broncos?
Nope. But those are the relative risks players, coaches and staffs agreed to when they reported for training camp and committed to playing in 2020 while some of their brethren decided to opt out of the uncertainty and health concerns of the season.
If the NFL – the league, the teams and the players – remain focused and committed to playing the 2020 season in as complete a fashion as possible in this new coronavirus world, the Patriots playing the Broncos on Monday evening at Gillette is exactly the calculated and reasonably managed risk that was always going to be in play.
