Chiefs vs. Patriots: Game will officially be played on Monday

The Chiefs and Patriots now have a new official time on Monday for kickoff.

The Kansas City Chiefs and New England Patriots have emerged from the news of potential COVID-19 outbreaks on each side relatively unscathed. Both sides have been cleared to play each other after all in Week 4 and the time has officially been set for Monday, per Adam Schefter.

The Chiefs were originally scheduled to host the visiting Patriots at Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday afternoon in a showdown of AFC contenders on Sunday afternoon. Unfortunately news leaked that Patriots starting quarterback Cam Newton—it still sounds weird to type that—had tested positive for COVID-19 and would need to be quarantined. From there, news also leaked that the Chiefs had a player test positive as well in quarterback Jordan Ta’amu. Suddenly the scheduled contest appeared to be in jeopardy.

Both teams went on to test the rest of the organization and came out healthy, which means the NFL feels good enough about the situation to let the teams play just one day later.

The Monday scenario is about as good as it gets for both teams, but especially so for the Chiefs, for a number of reasons:

• The team has already prepared for the Patriots, so it means their practice and game planning won’t be wasted by having to wait a future week, had the game been completely rescheduled.
• The schedule from the next three weeks for the Chiefs already featured 3 games in 12 days. Every day this game was delayed was going to cut into that shortened time of rest as the Chiefs must play consecutive short weeks (Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday in Week 5 and the Buffalo Bills on Thursday in Week 6).
• The Chiefs will only be down a single player and he was on the practice squad. The Patriots meanwhile will turn to Brian Hoyer under center, making only his second start since 2017.

Since Andy Reid‘s arrival as head coach, the Chiefs are 3-3 against Bill Belichick’s Patriots.