The Brady-less Bunch in Boston

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.