Down and out
Patriots fans glum as star Brady is lost for season
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That collective "whffft" you heard 7 minutes and 27 seconds into the Patriots' first regular-season game after last season's crushing Super Bowl defeat was the sound of several million New England fans sucking in their breath as Tom Terrific was helped off the field Sunday.
The mass exhale you heard yesterday was not one of relief, but of profound resignation.
No matter that this is football and injuries happen and Matt Cassel performed admirably, leading the team to victory.
In an instant, our New England winter just got longer. Our expectations got a whole lot lower. Our improbable sense of football dominance became meeker.
"It's a dark day in Title Town," said Dan German, an HVAC technician who spoke for many fans as he whiled away his lunch break in the shade of the Public Garden in the Back Bay.
Many saw Number 12 as crucial to avenging that "1" in last year's 18-1. Even the most optimistic fans adjusted their predictions from Super Bowl-bound to playoff berth hopefuls once they heard that Tom Brady would miss the rest of the season.
And forget about Patriot Nation feeling spoiled by the Celtics' 17th crown and the Sox' recent successes. This is New England. This is our century. And we'd suffered so long. Even another Sox World Series win wouldn't take away the pain of a Patriots plunge from contention.
"I want both," said Matt Murphy, German's coworker. "I'm greedy."
Added Murphy: "With the team we had, nothing less than a title would have worked."
And now?
"I really don't know what to think," said Dina Mortada, a Suffolk University student, crossing Boston Common.
"We're really depressed," said Jordan Boss, a fellow student and season ticket holder wearing a replica jersey of Pats linebacker Tedy Bruschi.
"Chances are, like, slim," said Martin Lopez, a Boston high school student waiting at a bus stop in Downtown Crossing.
Not surprisingly, a tinge of glee from elsewhere in the sports world accompanied reports of New England's agony. A headline on the back page of the New York Post - "
Of course, plenty of outsiders have joined our ranks. Take Glen Muir, who treks from Toronto to watch Boston-area teams win. He was at the game Sunday when Brady went down and everyone in his section went "Ahhhhhh."
"It was not fun," Muir said as he tried on Patriots gear at Champ Sports in Downtown Crossing and declared that he's not giving up on this season yet.
"It does not have to be the end of the world," Muir said, adding that the team still has enough weapons to contend without Brady. Muir was not alone in his sanguine view.
"If he's out of the spotlight, maybe the team will step up more," said Rebecca Bascom, a special educator visiting from Canton, N.Y., who was playing on Boston Common with her daughters, Elizabeth, 7, and Madalyn, 4. "But I think they'll have their work set out for them."
Other fans sought solace in the fact that Brady was once an unheralded backup who led the Pats to their first championship after Drew Bledsoe went down in 2001. Maybe Cassel is the next Tom Brady. Or maybe the Pats will find a suitable replacement.
"We have got to get Daunte Culpepper!," Dino DiGiovanni, who runs a news stand in City Place, was shouting out to anyone listening, saying that New England should pick up the former Pro Bowl quarterback who once played with Randy Moss, the Pats' star receiver, but recently retired.
Either way, DiGiovanni, whose stand is adorned with a sign proclaiming the place "Dino's Sports Central," is tempering his optimism.
"Ten wins max," he declared, as a small crowd of customers nodded sadly.
"It is sad," said Donald Wright, an investment banker who was walking along Newbury Street. Wright expected the Monday Night Football party he planned to attend last night to be morose, almost as funereal as the Super Bowl post-party he attended in February after the Pats' defeat.
"It was like someone had lost a relative," Wright recalled.
But all was right for Wright, originally from New York and a Giants fan. Now, he's ruing the loss of the Pats as a worthy opponent.
"I was really looking forward to our dominant defense standing up to your offense for a rematch," he said. "This sort of takes the sting out of that."
Patriots fans ready to root for Cassel or Culpepper or perhaps someone else sounded as though they were still shocked by the sting of Brady's injury.
"You never know what's going to happen," mused Robson Mauro, an immigrant from Brazil who was strolling along Washington Street with his infant son, Sam, and James, his 4-year-old, who smiled when a reporter indicated the Brady jersey he was wearing.
Said the father: "He doesn't really understand what just happened."
David Filipov can be reached at filipov@globe.com.
