It’s been a very unusual few weeks for the Patriots.
Following the Week 4 game against Kansas City, the Patriots have had only two real practices due to a number of COVID cases on the team. The Gillette Stadium facility has been shut down three times, which caused the Week 5 game against Denver to be moved to Week 6.
The Patriots also have made several adjustments with having meetings virtually and players coming in for workouts at different times.
This past week, the Patriots only practiced on Thursday and had Friday’s session canceled at the last minute due to another positive COVID test.
Following the 18-12 loss to the Broncos, a number of Patriots players were asked about the lack of practice time, but they did not want to make any excuses.
Here’s a collection of what was said.
Matthew Slater: “You know, I mean there's no script for this. So just take it one day at a time. This is affecting us all differently. And that's understandable, I get that. But again, we made a decision that we were going to play this year and I think all of us understood the potential scenarios that existed when we opted in. And that doesn't mean that it's easy when you're faced with them, but we have to do the best that we can to remain committed to the choice we made to play football. We're blessed to be doing what we’re doing, and if we're going to do it, we need to commit ourselves to doing it at a high level. That's what we chose to do, and it's not easy.
“I mean, look everyone's dealing with this. There’s countless people who have had their lives turned upside down and they're having to find a way to provide for their families, they're having to find a way to, to keep food on the table, to keep the lights on. So our situation, certainly, in light of others is not all that bad, but still I think it's not easy for guys with kids and families, but look, we made a decision, we have to be responsible, we have to be selfless with what we do inside and outside of the building and then we have to commit ourselves to our craft because look, nobody can get this year back. I can't go back next year and say, ‘Oh let's do this over.’ This is a year that goes past and we'll never get back so let's try to maximize it.”
Devin McCourty: “No, we have been in, I don’t know why they call it like a super intense reopening, so we’ve been very spread out. We've been in a lot of virtual stuff so, with the couple cases we had, we really haven't been in close contact with each other. And then I think both teams have been dealing with this, as you know around the league, people have been dealing with it, so we knew we just had to come out and play football and we have to play better. It wasn't all bad today but, we definitely have to just get going. Make more plays. And we got to do it. It’s kind of turned into a broken record of coming back here and saying we just got to do this or do that. Like we're close, but we got to find ways to win games and we got to do it right away.”
James White: “Bill [Belichick] kind of said it a couple of days ago – it’s kind of like a day-by-day, hour-by-hour type of thing. Things may pop up, things may not, you’ve just got to adjust. You get an alert if there’s not going to be practice, if there is going to be practice. Like I said, we kind of know that could happen, every team knows that could possibly happen if somebody pops up with a positive test, things of that nature. Like I said, you’ve just got to find a way to adjust to a little adversity. We just didn’t play good football today.”
Ja’Whaun Bentley: “There are no excuses, I am not an excuse guy, so it is what it is. We all knew going into this game today that there would be some adversity and we plan to take it on and continue to take it on to the best of our ability.”