Brady will be back and bringing HELL with him - Patriots Planet - New England Patriots Forums and Message Boards

Hawg73 · 09-08-2008, 10:33 AM

I had a girl
Now she's gone
She left town
Town burned down
Nothing left
But the sound
Of the front door closing forever

Gentle rain
Falls on me
All life folds back
Into the sea
We contemplate eternity
Beneath the vast indifference of heaven

--Warren Zevon

Better Days are coming

--Hawg73’s late Mother

The sight of Tom Brady laying on his back showed fans who have followed his pro career from it's beginning something we’ve never seen before—the ugly sight of The King of the World with abject fear and pain in his eyes. Brady The Fearless scared out of his wits. That was a wake-up call if I've ever seen one.

Brady, through his words and actions in his 8 years in New England, had seemed somehow impervious to the same hammer of the Gods which falls at random on other, more mortal, players, but we got reminded in a hurry that the guy is actually made of flesh and bone. He didn’t always win, didn’t always save the damsel in distress or the kitten up a tree, didn’t always maintain an ethereal cool and composure, but did it often enough so that we weren’t really sure if he was a regular human being or not.

Now we know that without question he is of mortal flesh and that leaves us collectively staring at the gathering storm clouds over Foxboro and contemplating something that was somewhere between highly unlikely and unthinkable before Bernard Pollard folded his knee in a direction it wasn’t designed to fold— that we are now fans of a mediocre football team.

In an instant, it all changed. What a bleeping shock. Warren Zevon was correct in that heaven doesn’t really give a shit about us and it’s indifference is vast. If there is a God then he seems to be tossing darts in the dark. Just screwing around. You or I could be next-- only fewer people would care.

While the post-mortem has yet to be made official and it is possible that his 2008 may not be officially over, I think we all know that Brady’s knee is ****ed and with it any chance the Patriots had to add another trophy to the case. So it goes. The question is, how bleeping bad is this going to be?

It seems like every icon in New England sports history eventually has something bad happen to them. Orr had the knees, Larry the back, Tony C got beaned. By comparison, the situation with Brady shouldn’t be as bad and modern techniques make recovery from knee surgery practically expected. It’s not life or death, but that doesn’t mean this injury won’t have some serious implications. Few teams have ever depended on a guy like the Patriots do Brady and now we’re going to have to move on for a while and see what life is like without him for a while. The 2008 season is over. We aren’t going anywhere.

Maybe, in some weird way, that is exactly what we need.

Patriots fans have become so accustomed to success that it is almost impossible to relate to anything else. We are spoiled, pure and simple. Our expectations are out of whack with NFL reality and the Brady era has made us that way. Having to live without him might just give us the swift kick in the ass that we needed to help us better enjoy what is down around the bend and in the meantime, find out whether the Patriots really are a one-man gang or will be able to mutate enough to handle the nightmare scenario that every last one of us contemplated while watching Matt Cassel in the preseason, but none of us believed would actually happen.

We’re underdogs again. Instant underdogs. We’re going to watch the whole thing play out and know that it won’t be pretty at times, but underneath it all lies a challenge that is both monumental and not without appeal. We get to follow a team that will have to fight their asses off every week just to keep their heads above water. A team that has a chance to really show what they are made of in a way that was impossible before yesterday. It ain't all bad, because nothing is.

It’s like a bad sports movie with a twist ending where the snooty rich kids suddenly have to switch places with the kids from the wrong side of the tracks and learn some of life’s important lessons in the process-- such as: better days are coming.

I’m not worried about winning any playoff games or even winning the AFC East at the moment. Playoffs?....PLAYOFFS????....I just want the Patriots to walk in there and keep punching people until they wipe the giddy smiles right off their faces. Just keep scrapping until there are no more games to play and maybe, just maybe the home fans will understand that we aren’t entitled to anything and actually wake up and try harder to pick the guys up a little. A catharsis of sorts. That wouldn't hurt because, for once, they need us again.

My guys are underdogs again for the time being, but Brady will eventually be back-- and he’s going to be bringing hell with him, but until then, LET’S GO…..ummm….MATT!!!