Sep 10, 2008 5 min read

New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is out for the year with a knee injury. The sky has fallen

Everything has changed.

Those preseason dreams about going back to the Super Bowl or replicating last year’s dream season, one that captivates all of New England, the Patriots making another possible run at football immortality?

Gone, baby, gone.

This is the new reality, and it’s an unsettling one.

The past seven years, ever since Brady first burst on to the scene like some supernova, have spoiled Patriots fans. The kid with the story that seemed to come right out of adolescent fiction, the sixth-round pick who steps in and guides the Pats to the Super Bowl, as if pixie dust was sprinkled on his shoulders.

That’s been the story, the one that’s seen Brady go from some nobody to a football prince, complete with the glamorous girlfriend, the magazine covers, and the three Super Bowl rings. The one that’s seen him become the best quarterback in football, the centerpiece of this franchise that’s become the best in football.

And now the story has changed.

Now the Patriots have become just another team, a gem that’s lost its luster.

That happened as soon as Brady went down Sunday, as soon as it became apparent that Brady was truly hurt. It was the realization that the reality had changed, that what we here in New England have come to take for granted is no longer here.

Let’s not kid ourselves. NFL teams are not supposed to treat these games like glorified scrimmages, rolling over their opponents, crushing them, treating another NFL team like it was just another homecoming patsy. They are not supposed to go undefeated in the regular season, every game another mini-coronation, not in a league that’s always prided itself on parity, on the notion that on any given Sunday anything can happen.

An NFL team is not supposed to be as dominant as the Patriots were last year.

But Brady made everyone better. He made his teammates better. He made coach Bill Belichick better. He made the game plan better. He made the play calling better. For that’s what great quarterbacks do. It’s arguably the most important position in team sports, and great ones make it look easy.

That, too, is what Brady did. He almost seemed to play inside a velvet glove, sensing the pressure, somehow able to avoid it, as if he had a third eye in the back of his head. This always has been his great skill, both his presence in the pocket and the sense that he was always in control, always making great decisions, as if it was his ball, his team, his game.

Until Sunday, when he was holding his knee on the ground and everything changed.

Until Sunday, when the bullet that is aimed at everyone who plays in the NFL hit Brady right between the eyes.

Which is not to say that we should be playing taps, and having a memorial service for the season. This is still a veteran team that’s won a lot of games, still a talented team with the supposed best coach in the game, one who already all but has a ticket punched to the Hall of Fame.

It is to say the reality has changed.

This is no longer about Super Bowl dreams, or running the schedule, or achieving NFL immortality. This is now about lowering expectations, learning how to survive without the sport’s best quarterback, one of the highest-profile athletes in the country. This is about trying to play better defense, and having game plans more geared to an inexperienced quarterback, and trying to win in different ways. This is about the new terrain the Patriots now find themselves walking on.

So there was Belichick Monday, sounding very much like a coach who knows there’s a lot of season left, one who knows that a season goes on, even with Brady headed for surgery – a coach who knows that injuries are as much a part of the game as blocks and tackles.

“We’ve got to do our jobs,” he said. “Coaches and players. That doesn’t change.”

And on Brady?

“He played the position very well,” he continued. “Someone else is playing that position now.”

That’s football, too.

It’s not a game built on sentiment. Drew Bledsoe got hurt seven years ago, and Brady got his chance. Now Brady is hurt, and the new quarterback is Matt Cassell, someone who has never started an NFL game, and the Pats face the Jets in New York next Sunday. The season keeps going, one way or the other.

Even if the unthinkable has happened.

Tom Brady out for the year.

And taking the incredible promise of this season with him.

(Contact Bill Reynolds at breynold projo.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)