The New England Patriots are entering their facility in positional waves for workouts Wednesday.
Running back Rex Burkhead spoke from Gillette Stadium at 11:30 a.m. ET. Left tackle Isaiah Wynn was home and hadn’t entered the facility when he spoke to the media at noon. Safety Adrian Phillips was at Gillette Stadium while speaking to the media at 12:30 p.m., and fellow safety Devin McCourty was home by the time he talked at 1 p.m.
According to NFL protocols, weight rooms cannot house more than 15 players at once.
McCourty said that Patriots cornerback Stephon Gilmore, who was still on the COVID-19/reserve list as of Tuesday at 4 p.m., was not present at Gillette while the safety was working out.
“No, I mean he’s still going through the process, so I’m not sure exactly how that works because we’ve all been in it at different times,” McCourty said. “So, I’m not really sure if he’s allowed back in or not. I haven’t talked to him yet today so I guess we have to all see how that works moving forward. I would say, Bill Belichick is probably a better man to ask about that than I am.”
McCourty did say he was able to keep in touch with players on the COVID list like Gilmore and Cam Newton through Patriots virtual meetings.
“The thing with virtual meetings is everybody’s able to be on virtual meetings,” McCourty said. “Everybody’s able to crack jokes and laugh and then the same thing through our text messages and different things like that. So we’ve been able to — we haven’t cast off anyone that’s tested positive and kind of kick them off the island. They’ve still been with us and been able to hang out as much as we’ve all been able to hang out by looking at a computer screen.”
Gilmore posted to Instagram on Monday that he’s “ready to be back in action.” If he remains asymptomatic and is cleared by a Patriots doctor, Gilmore should be able to play Sunday’s game against the Denver Broncos, according to the NFL’s COVID rules.
