Patriots

to walk in our building — whether it is the league office, whether it is the NFLPA — they don’t care,” McCourty said Saturday, before the Patriots-Broncos game was postponed. “For them, it is not about our best interest, or our health and safety. It is about, ‘What can wemake protocol-wise that sounds good, looks good and how can we go out there and play games?’”

The Patriots took several extra precautions in their trip to Kansas City: They flew there the day of the game; they put the 20 people exposed to Newton on a separate plane and distanced them; coach Bill Belichick wore two masks during the game.

Yet playing the game just two days after 20 people were exposed to Newton was madness, especially considering that the Titans’ outbreak was possibly exacerbated by a plane trip to Minnesota.

Despite the precautions, the Patriots were still crammed together in a small visitors’ locker room, in which the only modification was plexiglass shields between the stalls. The Patriots were still breathing all over each other all day. Whoknowshowmany players had the virus incubating in their system that night?

“If you get a chance to talk to the NFL or the NFLPA, we would greatly appreciate you bringing up that point and letting them know,” McCourty said. “[Those] were the same questions we were asking our union before we headed out there. But you guys saw, we took off, and we played in the game, and we came back.”

Sure enough, the Patriots announced Wednesday Stephon Gilmore had tested positive, throwing Week 5 into flux and leaving everyone nervous that the Patriots would be the second team to experience an outbreak.

Bill Belichick was asked Thursday if he had wished the NFL hadn’t played the Patriots-Chiefs game Monday. He didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no, either.

“There’s a lot of decisions and things out of our control,” he said.

It is unclear if the Patriots forced the NFL’s hand in postponing the Broncos game. But I was told that Belichick has been proactive and engaged on conference calls with the NFL in the past week. And I do know that McCourty speaks for a lot of the players in the locker room. When a report from ESPN emerged Sunday morning that the NFL still hoped to play Patriots-Broncos on Monday night, left tackle Isaiah Wynn tweeted, “Caught up in the rapture,” and running back James White tweeted a pondering emoji and a stink eye.

The NFLultimately postponed the game shortly after 9 a.m. Sunday, before more players could speak out.

But the Patriots aren’t the only ones questioning the NFL and NFLPA. The Broncos weren’t too pleased to learn Sunday morning that they were nowbeing given a bye week even though they practiced all last week.

“Injuries at an all-time high and our bye week was burned up with practices,” tweeted safety Justin Simmons.

The collective bargaining agreement states “players will be given a minimum of four consecutive days off” on a bye week, and that this period “must include a Saturday and a Sunday.” Either the Broncos will be forced to take off days this week as they prepare to play the Patriots, or they simply won’t get off days. Neither is ideal. It is unclear if the NFLPA will fight for the Broncos to get days off.

The Titans also are frustrated with the NFL’s testing protocols. Of course, the Titans perhaps shouldn’t be complaining publicly, given that the players are being investigated for holding practices on their own, which may have contributed to their outbreak.

But some major cracks have surfaced in the testing program — most notably, the 18-to-24-hour lag time between taking a test and getting the result. This lag resulted in a Titans coach potentially infecting several people two weeks ago, and resulted in Newton potentially spreading it to his teammates last weekend.

The testing results also have been inconsistent.

“The fact that we had guys with no symptoms testing positive, and we had guys with full-blown symptoms getting consecutive negative tests on multiple days, was really eye-opening,” Titans quarterback Ryan Tannehill said. “Unfortunately, really probably lost some faith in the testing system just through everything we’ve been through over the past week and a half.”

Too many players around the league are starting to question if the NFL’s commitment to safety is genuine or just public relations.

And too many players are starting to wonder if they were truly given the full picture when the NFL and NFLPA apprised them of their plans in August.

“We’re trying to continue to push the envelope to hold everybody accountable, and make sure that they have our best interest in mind,” McCourty said.