The New England Patriots had little going for them Monday night.
The highly anticipated Patriots-Chiefs matchup was pushed back one day after each team had a player test positive for COVID-19 over the weekend. New England, in turn, was forced to travel to Kansas City and play the reigning Super Bowl champions on the same day. Oh yeah, the visitors were without their starting quarterback, Cam Newton, who drew a positive COVID-19 test last Friday.
Still, New England managed to give Patrick Mahomes and Co. a game and potentially could have scored a road upset had it not been for a handful of major mistakes. As such, the Patriots stood pat on Colin Cowherd's latest NFL power rankings.
"They win that game with Cam Newton," Cowherd said Tuesday on FS1's "The Herd." "I'm not going to punish them for last night, 'cause Cam Newton's coming back, according to stories this morning. Folks, right now, only team to hold the Chiefs without a touchdown in the first half of the Mahomes era. They've done it three times.
"This is a real football team. They just need Cam. I also would love if they went out and got a deep threat. But I'm not going to punish them They're upcoming schedule's got a lot of wins: Broncos, Jets. I just think they're really good with Cam. Their defense has eight takeaways, that's second most and again, they have not played bad teams. They have played Seattle, they have played Kansas City. They're playing real football teams. I have them at three."
Cowherd might not want to chalk the Patriots' Week 5 contest against the Broncos as a win for New England just yet. Although Newton reportedly is asymptomatic, NFL Media's Ian Rapoport on Tuesday reported the idea of the star signal-caller suiting up Sunday is "far-fetched." If Newton is unable to go, the Patriots once again will need to roll with Brian Hoyer and/or Jarrett Stidham, both of whom struggled against the Chiefs.
New England and Denver are slated to kick off at 4:25 p.m. ET at Gillette Stadium.
