We still don’t know much about the illness that has kept Patriots linebacker Jamie Collins off the field for four weeks.
But team president Jonathan Kraft went out of his way last night to say it wasn’t the team’s fault.
During a pregame appearance on 98.5 The Sports Hub, Kraft went to great lengths to dispel the notion that Collins’ virus (which has been reported to be not MRSA) came from the team facility.
“I think, without getting into too much detail, I don’t think that, fortunately, this was a situation where that could happen,” Kraft said, via Adam Kurkjian of the Boston Herald. “Jamie’s getting better and getting stronger every day.
“I know people in non-football life that end up with really bad viruses that get knocked out of their professional lives for a while. You hate to see it happen to a professional athlete. It obviously resonates much more loudly than it does in our normal lives, but this was something that doesn’t have us worried about the physical infrastructure at the facility.”
Even when asked about the team’s rivalry with Peyton Manning before the game, Kraft circled back to the topic of Collins.
“I just want you to know, we take really good care of the physical facility,” Kraft said. “We always have a heightened sense of intensity around the cleanliness there. There wasn’t anything related to Jamie’s particular issues that had to do with the facility.”
Collins returned to practice Friday, so it’s possible that he could make his return to the field soon. But he was away from the team facility for a few weeks while ill, which made the speculation about whether it might spread to teammates natural, which Kraft is obviously sensitive to.
