The Patriots have a confirmed positive on Friday and potentially a second one, and this could finally be the cancellation that throws the NFL out of wack.
The NFL’s decision to play Patriots-Chiefs nearly two weeks ago on Monday may be the league’s dumbest in a long, long time.
And this is the league responsible for making Deflategate a thing.
Just two days after Cam Newton tested positive, ruining the Patriots’ QB plan and sending their season into a dark place, the league decided it could depend on rapid testing to clear the team to hightail it to Kansas City and start Brian Hoyer in a disastrous rush.
The Pats lost the game handily, and then got positive tests back for Bill Murray and Stephon Gilmore shortly thereafter. Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs were put at risk. The Patriots, who traveled in close quarters, were absolutely jeopardized. And all the beginning-of-season opt-outs started to make a lot more sense.
Two days before they were set to play a once-delayed battle with the Broncos, the Patriots have two more positives out of their players, one of which remains unconfirmed. And so, the NFL will now have to figure out how to cram this game somewhere into the rest of the season; nobody has a bye week to work with.
If the game could not be played Sunday, the NFL would be presented with its toughest scheduling challenge to date. Both teams, the Patriots and Broncos, had their byes last weekend and bye flexibility is gone. https://t.co/HMCsLPbd8l
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) October 16, 2020
Nice one, NFL geniuses! You already exhausted Option A (play the game two days later and act like nothing happened!) and Option B (use their bye weeks to delay a deadly disease’s spread). Now, we’re onto Option C.
Neither the Broncos nor the Patriots have any room to spare an additional game. Is this the cancellation that triggers Weeks 18 and 19? Does the Super Bowl move? Do we choose to ignore this likely-meaningless game for Denver and make the Pats’ playoff push that much tougher?
Or do we learn absolutely nothing from Pats-Chiefs and rush a bunch of testing in an effort to play this one Sunday, too?
Cam Newton and Stephon Gilmore returned to Patriots practice. pic.twitter.com/0oGdJQ49Jz
— Mark Daniels (@ByMarkDaniels) October 15, 2020
Whatever the NFL chooses, we have no doubt it will be the dangerous and incorrect call.
Just one day after Cam Newton and Stephon Gilmore returned to practice, we’re nearly back to square one. The spread has been disastrously un-slowed.
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