Bill Belichick Breaks Silence On Patriots’ Latest COVID-19 Test Results

The New England Patriots placed three players on the reserve/COVID-19 list. Veteran quarterback Cam Newton was the first Patriots player to test positive for the virus. Star cornerback Stephon Gilmore has coronavirus, too. Defensive tackle Bill Murray ended up on the list, too. Head coach Bill Belichick talked about the COVID-19 situation in New England and the players whose tests returned positive.

Gilmore’s test returned positive four days after Newton had his results. It happened right after the New England Patriots made their way to Kansas City to confront the Chiefs on Monday.

Media members asked coach Belichick if Patriots planned to keep players who were in contact with Newton home from the road game.

“We followed all of the NFL protocols,” the head coach said.

Bill Belichick is not concerned about the COVID-19 situation

Adam Schefter from ESPN reported that Gilmore had dinner with Newton on Friday. Newton had his test Friday morning and didn’t get his results until early Saturday morning. Some say he had his test late Friday night. Belichick didn’t say anything on Newton’s encounter with Gilmore. Was it outside of the facility?

“Again, all the information, and everything involving testing, contact and everything else — all the information that we had, we processed through medical people on our end, medical people in the league and followed the protocols,” Belichick said. “I did feel like we did everything that we — that we can control. I think we did everything properly with the extra plane, the extra buses, the same-day travel, etc., etc. There’s multiple things we could list there. In terms of individual, specific questions, I’d say all of those get thrown into the general medical field.”

The New England Patriots will meet the Denver Broncos at Gillette Stadium on Sunday. They will work remotely Thursday.

“There’s nothing more important than the health of the team,” the head coach said. “I mean, without a healthy team, you don’t have a team. So, that’s priority No. 1. I’d say, not only for our team but also for their families and people that are close to them. So, that’s always our No. 1 concern. And we’ll try to do everything we can to make that the best that we can make it. That’s the way it’s always been. That’s not going to change. So, whatever we have to do to do that, then that will be what we do. We always approach it that way. This is different but it’s really based on the same criteria.”

New England has lost two games in the regular season. They have a 2-2 record at this point of the season, and Belichick looks forward to improving that record.