How will the 2008-2009 New England Patriots fare without Tom Brady?
Then again, perhaps we can find something positive in this 2008 Patriots season. The season now lines up as an interesting experiment. This is the year we find out exactly how valuable Tom Brady really is as a football player. It has been my contention that Tom Brady is actually one of the more underrated players in the NFL. Without Tom Brady there are no championships. He has won with bad receivers and good receivers. He has won as a game manager and as a gunslinger. Bill Belichick has struggled to win elsewhere when Tom Brady was not his quarterback. Tom Brady has always won. Regardless of what he was surrounded by. Remember 2001? This was a Patriots team that was 0-2 and heading nowhere. They had lost their first two games to the Bengals and the Jets. I repeat: the Bengals and the Jets. And then the Brady era began. And you know the rest. So now we face an interesting proposition. How will the 2008 Patriots fare? Virtually the same roster returns from the team that damn near became
