As I’m sure most foot­ball fans in New Eng­land are already aware, Tom Brady’s season is over. It was announced today, a day after he suf­fered a painful-​looking shot to his left knee, that he will undergo surgery and miss the remain­der of the season. ESPN has a full report on the story.

The mood in Boston is sour. My mood is sour. I so should have taken my roommate’s advice when draft­ing my fan­tasy league play­ers. She rec­om­mended not draft­ing my favorite team’s play­ers because if in the unlikely event they got injured (or played poorly), I would be doubly upset. I politely dis­agreed and drafted Tommy.

There are only two pos­i­tive things I can come up with regard­ing this dis­as­trous injury:

1. Matt Cassel played sur­pris­ingly well. He didn’t screw up once. ¹
2. I drafted Eli Man­ning as my second quar­ter­back. I get the best of both worlds here. If he man­ages to play well then my fan­tasy team will do well and I’ll be happy. If he man­ages to play very poorly, I’ll cackle and be happy.

Look­ing on the bright side, there are a lot of great play­ers on the Patri­ots team, even if they are a little long in the tooth. If every­body does their part, and maybe a little more, the team still might manage a descent season if Cassel can just keep the ball safe. There have been plenty of NFL teams that have done alright with lack­lus­ter quar­ter­backs. *Cough* Giants. Bears.

I sup­pose we’ll have to wait and see what hap­pens. For now, I’m very sad about season that I was so excited for. I didn’t expect the Patri­ots to be fan­tas­tic this year, but I was excited nev­er­the­less. Hope­fully the team can rally around the new play caller and still make a run at the play­offs. I think this will be Cassel’s last shot to make some­thing out of his NFL career. Hope­fully he does well.

1. Although even this is some­what depress­ing; the best I can say about him is that he didn’t screw up. I also thought that he was helped by the offen­sive line play­ing good and a great run­ning game that was absent the entire pre­sea­son.↩