Patriots cornerback Isaiah Bolden suffered a head injury in the fourth quarter of Saturday’s preseason game at Green Bay, which was suspended shortly after he had to be immobilized and taken off on a stretcher.
Pats coach Bill Belichick offered an update on Bolden’s status Monday morning, a day after the Patriots announced Bolden had been released from the hospital and would fly back with the team to New England.
“I talked to Isaiah yesterday, and he’s in good spirits,” Belichick said on WEEI’s “The Greg Hill Show.” “(He’s) recovering, obviously. So we’ll just take it day to day. Just take it day to day. But certainly (he) seems a lot better today than it looked like Saturday night, so that’s a good thing. It’s good for him to fly back with the team and everyone to see him. He’s got a lot of support here.”
A source told the Herald’s Doug Kyed that Bolden has a concussion. According to the NFL Network, Bolden woke up Sunday with a headache. His timeline for a possible return is unknown.
Bolden’s situation partially motivated Belichick to cancel previously scheduled joint practices at Tennessee on Tuesday and Wednesday. The Patriots will still play the Titans in their preseason finale Friday, but instead practice on their own this week in Foxboro.
“(I) just felt like, for a number of reasons, it was the best thing to do for the team. I talked to Robert (Kraft) and Jonathan (Kraft) about it, and we all collectively felt like that was the best thing to do,” Belichick said. “There’s a number of factors involved but, obviously, the seriousness of the injury was part of it.”
Belichick also remarked about the work of the Patriots’ medical staff, which attended to Bolden immediately after he went down. The 6-foot-2, 205-pounder collapsed to the turf after absorbing an inadvertent helmet-to-helmet hit from teammate Calvin Munson early in Saturday’s fourth quarter.
“I thought it was really impressive just watching the situation, the doctors,” Belichick said. “There’s Dr. (Scott) Martin and Dr. (Gian) Corrado, who’s an emergency doctor, Jim Whalen — those guys were right on top of it. I walked out there to see, and I don’t know anything, but just watching them and the way they handled it all was fantastic.”
MassLive first reported Bolden suffered a concussion.