Patriots: NFL rushing into Pats-Chiefs Monday is medical negligence

The NFL using one day’s worth of negative tests in New England to justify Patriots-Chiefs is insane.

Following Cam Newton’s positive coronavirus test, the Patriots are the latest guinea pig in the NFL’s on-the-fly plan to tap dance around COVID-19 cases, unless they happen to cluster.

Based on what we’ve seen on Sunday, too, the league isn’t willing to wait out the virus’ intubation period, and will snap into action at the first sign of good news.

Because the NFL forgot to formulate a COVID-19 backup plan, they’ve chosen to use the absolute minimum evidence to justify the acceleration of the scheduling of a Patriots-Chiefs battle that, when it’s contested, will include Brian Hoyer under center for New England, removing a good bit of the marquee intensity that the league was banking on anyway.

As of Sunday afternoon, the game is set for Monday night at 7:00 PM only because the team has avoided a Titans-like outbreak…for the time being.

Well, Adam, the best-case scenario would be the Patriots’ star quarterback not contracting the coronavirus, but I guess beggars can’t be choosers.

In fairness, the NFL’s entire house of cards is predicated on the idea that we can trust the rapid tests they’re using, despite a proliferation of false positives already. Their choice to jam games into mid-week windows is an attempt to cover up the fact that they didn’t bake in an extra bye week in case of emergency, nor did they opt for additional weeks prior to the postseason, nor did they figure out how to make a bubble of any kind work, even with the advantage of just one measly game per week.

And so now, even though it cannot be ruled out that some members of the Patriots have contracted the virus, which may not show up until Monday or Tuesday, the team will be herded into a plane and sped off to Arrowhead Stadium Sunday, with Monday night’s game plotted out on a bed of crossed fingers.

Of course, the positive test isn’t just a random singular Patriot — it’s Cam Newton, the center of the team’s game plan and social life. We’re meant to believe that contact tracing has already ruled out close contact with Newton? Hasn’t the entire roster had remarkably close contact with Newton, more so than any other member of the team?

Instead of continuing the holding pattern and delaying this game until a later date — when, not for nothing, Newton might be available to play quarterback — the NFL will instead put their faith in a contagious disease choosing not to spread from the center of attention to the rest of the roster.

Under the radar, they did this with the Falcons in Week 3, too, when CB AJ Terrell was presumed the lone positive, which has apparently been confirmed in the wake of the snap decision to play the game.

Given a second chance at things with a more prominent name at the center of the disaster and one outbreak already raging, the NFL is banking everything on a set of Sunday morning tests, and not on months of medical knowledge about how the virus replicates.

And the entire counter-strategy is to more strenuously cross their middle and pointer fingers while turning the other way.

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