Patriots: Stephon Gilmore tests positive for COVID-19 and proves NFL was reckless Monday night

Patriots DB Stephon Gilmore tested positive for coronavirus after the NFL rushed into Patriots-Chiefs on Monday night.

The NFL played a game of chicken this week with the novel coronavirus, something we should all know by now is a loser’s game. When Patriots QB Cam Newton came down with a positive test and isolated himself from the team facility on Saturday morning, the NFL’s inclination was to search for any way possible that Pats-Chiefs could be played this week, instead of doubling down on protecting the athletes involved.

Of course, as most of us know by now, a rapid negative test (even two or three of them) does not accurately determine who is and who isn’t a carrier of the disease. It takes several days to adequately parse out the situation, but several days was deemed to be an impossibility by the league.

We simply had to send Brian Hoyer to the lions on Monday night, heath and safety be damned!

And after escorting the Patriots in a hurry down the highway, giving them two planes (one of Newton’s close contacts, and one of…honestly, who on the Patriots didn’t have close contact with the quarterback?), and rushing them out of Kansas City the second the game was completed, we received another positive test on Wednesday in the form of Stephon Gilmore.

Surprise, surprise.

So, that’s Gilmore and practice squad DT Bill Murray thus far, finally enough to cause a full cancellation of practice in New England.

And for all those Patriots fans working conspiracy theories about how the league would have treated this if Patrick Mahomes had been the initial positive instead of Newton, you’d better hope against hope that we’re not about to find out.

Gilmore and Mahomes shared some very close contact after Monday night’s game, fully sanctioned by the NFL.

This disastrous positive test, and any further spread that results from it, clearly falls on the league’s lack of thorough planning and desire to cover for their own incompetence by playing a Week 4 game with two backup QBs by any means necessary, health and safety be damned.

We weren’t being alarmist when we pointed this out on Sunday, and we’re not being alarmist now when we note the NFL has now created a disaster within the walls of their two most prominent franchises.

Sending good thoughts for the health and safety of Gilmore, as well as every Patriot who shared his plane, and every Chief who grappled with him. This didn’t have to happen.

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