TV's position? A positive spin

Resilient Patriots will find their way

The hand-wringing and fretting over the loss of Tom Brady was palpable among football fans in New England last Sunday when the Patriots quarterback went down with a left knee injury in the first quarter against Kansas City.

When it was announced Brady would require surgery and be out for the rest of the season, pessimists (and even some optimists) thought the team's season was doomed.

But some television broadcasters think the Patriots will find a way to get the job done behind Matt Cassel.

"There's no doubt that you don't lose a Tom Brady and get better," said Troy Aikman, the former Cowboys star quarterback who is Fox's lead NFL analyst. "But I think that this team is resilient enough, we've seen it for too many years. I believe this team is still going to have a really good year. I expect Matt Cassel to play well, I really do. Kurt Warner stepped in and [the Rams] won a Super Bowl [in 1999]. That's how Tom Brady got his opportunity. I know this, there's something about Matt Cassel that they saw that they liked when they drafted him."

Aikman expects it to take time before Cassel makes the job his own, but because of coach Bill Belichick and the depth of talent on the team, it won't take as long as it might for some teams.

"Are they going to be the same team as far as what they do and how they do it?" said Aikman. "They won't be this week. With each week, as he gains more confidence in what he's doing and what he's being asked to do, I'm sure they'll expand things a little bit. By the second half of the season, maybe they will be doing the things they would've been doing with Tom Brady. I still think this team is going to win a lot of football games."

Belichick's strength, said Aikman, is the ability to adapt.

"When Tom first took over, that team wasn't a team that was going up and down, throwing the football to people like last year," said Aikman. "The identity of that team offensively, they've taken what they've had, and then Bill Belichick is unique.

"The last year with the personnel they had, it was, 'Our personnel allows us to throw the football and beat people that way,' and that's how they beat the teams. I have enormous respect for Bill Belichick and his versatility, in taking personnel and molding the game plan around that. I think they'll be fine."

One of ESPN's NFL analysts, Keyshawn Johnson, said Brady's loss will have a significant impact on the Patriots, but he said seeing how the team does without him will be revealing.

"If they lose their next four games, there's no interest," said Johnson. "People don't care. The story will be written - loss of Tom Brady, loss of season. Now, if Matt Cassel goes out there and puts some games together like I envision, looking at the schedule that he'll be able to do, then obviously the [focus] will be, 'Oh, they can plug another quarterback from the late rounds and it's the system. It's not so much Tom Brady. It's the system. It's the coaches.' That's what you'll start to hear if Matt Cassel has some success and that will drum up even more interest in what the New England Patriots are capable of doing as the season continues to go on."

Another ESPN NFL analyst, Cris Carter, believes the Patriots are better than the 2001 Super Bowl champion team.

"I don't like to draw the comparison because how many times can you catch lightning in a bottle with Tom Brady?" said Carter. "I just believe once every lifetime, but this football team is, position by position, better than the 2001 team that went all the way. It's impossible for them to play the way they've been playing. Last year, they were in shotgun formation 70 percent more than any team in the history of football.

"The reason why you do that is because you have one of the elite athletes that's ever played quarterback and you happen to have two No. 1 receivers in Wes Welker and Randy Moss. So they will change and the game plan that we saw after Brady went out totally changed. The Patriots do it better than anyone. They make a game plan to try to win a game. The Patriots can win in more ways than any other team, that's why they've been successful."

If you're CBS Sports, which is scheduled to air eight more Patriots games this season, there is obvious concern, but the network is hoping the potential subplots will create more interest, not less.

"Time will tell and all that, but I guess what I would say is we don't want to lose a big star on any team, let alone a Tom Brady," said Rob Correa, the executive vice president of programming at CBS Sports. "But the silver lining for CBS is that maybe the Patriots will now be in a playoff race, which makes other teams, the Jets, for example, more relevant late in the season. You could have a playoff race in the AFC East now. We'd prefer to have Tom Brady playing for the Patriots, but if not, those are the potential positives anyway."

Nancy Marrapese-Burrell can be reached at marrapese@globe.com.