New England Patriots Football Blog

The New England Patriots will be without the services of star quarterback Tom Brady for the remainder of the season. Brady tore an ACL in the Pats season opener against the Chiefs on a play that looked eerily similar to ones that have taken down Ben Roethlisberger and J.P. Losman in recent years. A Chiefs blitzer fell forward into Brady’s knee, striking it with his helmet and causing the leg to buckle sideways.

Matt Cassel, who looked terrible in preseason play, will take over the starting QB job at New England. Cassel was a backup QB at USC in college, so he hasn’t started a football game since he was in high school, which was 9 years ago. Cassel was able to lead the Patriots to a 17-10 victory over the Chiefs after Brady left the game, but the Chiefs are also expected to be one of the worst teams in the NFL this season, and at times they looked better than a Patriots team that was 19-1 last year.

Patriots QB Tom Brady did not make the trip to Tampa Bay for the Pats second preseason game on Sunday night. He is currently sidelined with an injury, although details at this time are hard to come by. Most rumors speculate that it’s a foot injury. Brady wore a brace around his injured right ankle last January during the week before the Super Bowl, causing some to think that maybe he wasn’t playing at 100% when his team was upset by the Giants. Brady had trouble escaping pressure from the Giants D-line that entire game, and it didn’t help that the Pats offensive line was holding up the door for them to get through on every snap.

The Patriots added some depth to their offensive line with the signing of John Welbourn earlier this week. The offensive tackle started all 16 games for the Chiefs last year. Don’t expect the same playing time for Welbourn this season, as the Patriots are a little more solid on the O-line than the Chiefs, who pretty much let defenders through at will last season.

The New England Patriots seem to be one of the few teams in football that can honestly say they don’t have a quarterback controversy. Starter Tom Brady will likely sit out for most (or even all) of the Patriots first preseason game on Thursday as the Pats try out some backups in case Brady ever goes down. I don’t blame them. The last time the Pats had their regular starting QB go down to injury, the backup QB came in and carried the team to multiple Super Bowl titles. The injured starter would never be the same (Drew Bledsoe just cleaned my windshield on my way to work. It wasn’t dirty, but I felt bad and threw him a buck anyway).

Good news for Patriots fans: three players were removed from the physically unable to perform list and are now present at training camp practices. Wes Welker, Ellis Hobbs, and Bo Rudd were all removed from the list over weekend. That can only mean good things for a Patriot team that was one of the healthiest in football last season, with the exception of that mysterious foot injury that plagued Tom Brady through the Super Bowl and into the offseason.

It could be a sign that the Patriots offense is two dimensional, or it could be a sign that the Pats defense is improving, but either way QB Tom Brady was frustrated with the performance on his side of the ball during camp yesterday. The offense was working without WR Randy Moss, who put up the gold standard of a season for a wide receiver last year and pretty much carried the team through an undefeated regular season.

The offensive line seems to be the source of the trouble for the Pats, with too many defenders getting to Brady before he had time to get through his reads. It was also hampered by supurb play from rookie linebacker Jerod Mayo, who I think is going excel beyond all expectations in his first NFL season.