The Patriots-Broncos game Sunday will be pushed back to Monday, at 5:05 p.m. Eastern — a similar scenario to what happened for New England’s Week 4 game against the Chiefs — the NFL announced Thursday night. The game will be on ESPN.
The Patriots stayed on track to play the game when all of Wednesday’s COVID-19 tests came back negative Thursday morning, a league source confirmed.
A likely scenario is that the Patriots will keep their facilities at Gillette Stadium shut down for a third straight day Friday, with the possibility of opening up Saturday pending another round of negative COVID-19 tests. This would allow the team to conduct a light practice Saturday and a walkthrough on Sunday.
Gillette Stadium remained closed and practice was canceled Thursday, though players and coaches still needed to report for another round of coronavirus tests as the club continued preparations under what coach Bill Belichick called “not ideal” conditions.
The game statuses of quarterback Cam Newton, as well as cornerback Stephon Gilmore, who said he is asymptomatic, are unknown. Belichick didn’t have an update on how Newton is feeling but said players on the COVID-19 reserve list, which also includes rookie Bill Murray, would participate in the virtual meetings.
"There’s nothing more important than the health of the team,'' Belichick said. "I mean, without a healthy team, you don’t have a team. So, that is priority No. 1, I would say, not only for our team but also for their families and people that are close to them.''
The possibility remains the Patriots could return to the practice field Friday (likely for a condensed game-plan install) and Saturday (for a walkthrough), but that would be contingent at least on Thursday’s tests coming back negative.
‘“There’s nothing more important than the health of the team. I mean, without a healthy team, you don’t have a team. So, that is priority No. 1, I would say, not only for our team but also for their families and people that are close to them.”’
Bill Belichick
Belichick was asked about his level of concern about getting the team together in person before the game.
"Those are all the questions that we are asking, and again, we are relying on doctors and the people in the field to take everything under advisement,'' the coach said. "I’d say that they have a big role in making those decisions. Really, these aren’t football decisions. These are medical decisions.''
Without more information in hand, Belichick said, it’s hard to look to the future, even the immediate future.
"Where we are today, I don’t think we can plan too far ahead and start talking about Saturday, Sunday, a bunch of other days,'' he said. "There’s a lot that can or can’t happen in the meantime, and as things change and if there are positive or potentially negative developments, then we will look at those.''
While preparing to play without actual practices is a difficult ask, teams are very experienced with doing things remotely as offseason programs and the beginning of training camp were run virtually because of the coronavirus.
"We’ll just do the best we can with the opportunities that we have,'' said Belichick. "So, that’s some teaching off of diagrams and things like that, there’s looking at our opponents and then there’s simulation, if you will, of how plays would be run, assignments and so forth, and doing it in the format that we have available to us.''
Belichick indicated things can still be accomplished and there is give and take with the players even though its virtual.
"There is an opportunity to cover things and get things taught and explain them and have players ask questions and have coaches get together and put together game plans based on the same format that we are using,'' Belichick said. "Again, it’s not what we would choose to do because we have that option and we don’t do it this way, but this is what we can do, so we’ll do the best we can with it.''
Belichick said the club “followed all the NFL protocols” when asked if he regretted bringing players who were deemed to have close contact with Newton to Kansas City on Monday.
When asked if he regretted having to play the Chiefs that night, Belichick said, "There’s a lot of decisions and things that are out of our control. I am trying to focus on the things that we have control over.''
He also addressed the unsubstantiated ESPN report that Newton and Gilmore were spotted having dinner together Friday night.
"Yeah, again, all the information and everything involving testing and 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 feel like we did everything that we could control. I think we did everything properly with the extra plane, the extra buses, the same-day travel, etc. There’s multiple things we could list there. In terms of a lot of individual, specific questions, I’d say all those get thrown into the general medical field.''
Jim McBride can be reached at james.mcbride@globe.com. Follow him @globejimmcbride.