Monday I woke with my knees throbbing—both arthritically and empathically—and, despite the sunshine streaming through my bedroom window, felt shrouded in gloom. I thought there was no way I could make it through a day of work. But I manned up, took a vacation day instead of a sick day, and left Boston for the seashore.
Walking along the ocean, with the salt and spray in the air, has always been the best cure for what ails me—on this day, the haunting vision of Tom Brady lying on the turf with a season-ending knee injury. But this isn't about Brady—hell, he has Giselle for comfort—but rather my biggest concern, namely me. All of a sudden I faced the ruination of my entire fall/winter, a season built entirely around the Patriots' schedule and the team's inevitable march to another Super Bowl. Moreover, I needed to unravel my strange, psychic connection to the sad events on the football field this past Sunday.
Last week I wrote that this New England Patriots lifer was heading off to Foxboro on opening Sunday with a sense of "foreboding"—a nagging feeling that I might be about to witness "the first precipitous decline that will mark the end of our dynasty." If "precipitous" can mean "less than eight minutes into the first quarter," then I was spot on. As one of my most astute correspondents wrote me" "Your sense of foreboding is downright scary!!!" I also found myself mulling a trivia question I posed to my cousin Jack and the rest of our Foxboro faithful as we took our seats in the stadium: name the only two colleges to produce two quarterbacks who would begin the NFL season as starters. (Answer at bottom.)
Mine is a knowledgeable football gang, but every single one of them responded immediately—and incorrectly—with the University of Southern California. USC, along with Michigan, boasts the most quarterbacks on NFL rosters, four, but on this first Sunday each school has only one starter—USC's Carson Palmer for Cincinnati, and Michigan's Brady for the Pats. Even the ocean couldn't wash away the haunting truth that one week later, with USC alum Matt Cassel now at the Pats' helm, my friends' answer had a certain eerie prescience.
We New Englanders are a hearty breed of sports fan and remarkably resilient. (Admittedly, our sports universe offers the comforts of having the world champion Red Sox almost certain to play in October, followed by the return to the court of the world champion Celtics.) Still, I was stunned by how quickly a mild sense of optimism began to surround our football franchise. It was, of course, nourished by Cassel's steady performance in place of the fallen Brady, leading to an opening game win. Fans and experts alike kept reminding everyone—most of all, I suspect, themselves—that while the loss of a record-setting NFL MVP certainly hurts, the Patriots remain a strong team facing a very weak schedule. While most surrendered notions of another juggernaut, they still anticipated the team winning 10 or 11 games and, once again, the AFC East.
And then another, further flight of fancy began to take hold. Wasn't this almost exactly the desperate scenario the Pats faced back in 2001 when the team stunned the football world by winning its first Super Bowl? On the surface there are obvious similarities. When veteran star quarterback Drew Bledsoe was seriously injured in just the second game of the 2001 season, the Pats turned to Brady, then an obscure 6'4", 24-year-old, sixth-round draft choice who had thrown only one pass in his single season in the league. Cassel is two years older than Brady was, is an inch taller and was drafted just one round lower. He has more NFL experience—three full seasons holding the clipboard for Brady and a grand total of 39 tosses—than Brady did when he stepped into the fray.
How quickly we fans can re-assess, indeed flip-flop 360 degrees. Imagining that Cassel may be the new Brady off one solid, and admittedly, clutch performance against the woeful Kansas City Chiefs flies in the face of the conventional wisdom that prevailed before Sunday. Cassel started all four pre-season games while Brady nursed a foot injury and appeared so inept that fans clamored for any replacement, and local reporters speculated he might not make the roster. There was certainly no comfort to be found in his college career. At USC, Cassel backed up a pair of Heisman Trophy winners, Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart, and actually threw fewer passes—28 in four years—than he has in a Pats uniform. On Sunday, we will witness something that is likely unprecedented. When Cassel takes the field Sunday against Brett Favre and the New York Jets, he will be making his first start since high school in Northridge, California—his first start since the last century.
Of course, the Super Bowl scenario that fans are now fantasizing about has little to do with new faith in Cassel or his sketchy resemblance to a young Brady. It is based entirely on a conviction that Patriots coach Bill Belichick is the reigning genius of the NFL. Last season, despite the 18-0 run to the Super Bowl, Belichick's "genius" faded from view, obscured by his new image as "Bad Bill," the renegade coach who was not only willing to bend the rules, but would break them for an edge. And given a chance for the last laugh, Belichick didn't look remotely smart, let alone like a genius, after the Pats' Super Bowl fold.
Perhaps a guy with a .711 winning percentage and three Super Bowl championships in eight seasons in Foxboro, shouldn't need it, but this Brady-less season gives Belichick a chance at—yes sports fans, here it is again— redemption. His Super Bowl triumph behind kid Brady reflected an ability to frame a winning game plan within the limited capabilities of a raw quarterback. While Brady threw the ball 11 times in 15 plays, or 73 percent of the time, before he went down Sunday, Cassel threw just 18 times in 42 plays, or 43 percent. Cassel made a few big plays, but most important of all in this scheme, he made no big mistakes. So while some more experienced quarterbacks found their way to Foxboro for auditions Monday, Belichick stood by his man. Cassel, though, hardly stands alone. New England is blessed with far more talent on offense than Brady inherited back in 2001: exceptional receivers, a deep array of talented running backs, and three Pro Bowlers on the offensive line.
The déjà vu-ers seem to be prevailing. After the Pats opened as a three-point underdog for their visit to the Meadowlands to play the New York Jets Sunday, the line quickly dropped by 1.5 points. (Nothing, however, could stop the Patriots' plunge from a 5-2 favorite to win the Super Bowl to a 20-1 outside choice. My friends at Cold, Hard Football Facts.com, called Brady's woes "the single most significant injury in betting circles in NFL history.")
As for me, I've had several days to nurse my psychic wounds and to contemplate my team's future. And while I recognize that there is no comfort in rejecting hope until hope is truly gone, I am ultimately condemned to be a rationalist, and, in this case, a naysayer. The view from my head, rather than my heart, is bleak. I can't envision a winning season, let alone the Patriots as a playoff team. And that Super Bowl fantasy is preposterous. The foreboding was there before Sunday and certainly nothing has happened that would cause it to recede.
Trivia Answer: The two colleges that boasted two starting NFL quarterbacks on the NFL's opening Sunday were Boston College (Matt Hasselbeck, Seattle and Matt Ryan, Atlanta) and Purdue (Drew Brees, New Orleans and Kyle Orton, Chicago).