Oh Captain, My Captain…

Suddenly, food doesn’t taste as good.

Stars seem to twinkle less.

Rays of sunshine are few and far between.

Tom Brady is out for the season.

After a winter, spring, and summer of discontent, Patriots fans like me Sunday morning were as giddy as kids on Christmas.

We had endured the painful, improbable, and referee-aided Super Bowl loss to a team unlikely to make the playoffs this year, the New York Giants.

We muddled through the pointless NFL preseason, casting a wary eye at reports of Brady’s mysteriously injured foot which kept him out of every practice contest.

Then, just two days before the season began, the Patriots’ filed their weekly injury report, and for the first time in 56 games, a stretch dating back to the start of the 2005 season, Brady was not listed at all. 

Who says fate doesn’t have a sense of irony?

With the NFL’s easiest schedule, a healthy and rested Tom Brady, and an infusion of young talent on both sides of the ball, another run at a perfect regular season and march to the Super Bowl seemed not only possible, but probable.

Then, before it all began, it was over.

With less than eight minutes to go in the first quarter of the season’s first game, Brady was gone.

Kansas City Chiefs safety Bernard Pollard (who?) lunged at Brady’s legs as the future Hall-of-Famer delivered a 28-yard strike to Randy Moss.

Brady crumpled to the ground in agony and New England held its collective breath.

We watched for signs that our QB, who seems so superhuman at times, would be okay.

As fate would have it, I wasn’t at home in front of the tube when the world learned Tom Brady is, indeed, mortal.

Family business had me in a Trussville Mexican restaurant Sunday afternoon.

My girlfriend left the table momentarily, and I started watching the game on my cell phone just seconds before Pollard’s hit.  (Slingbox is the greatest invention you’ve never heard of.)

As Sunday returned to the table, I shut the game off.

She could tell I was in shock.

“I think Tom Brady’s hurt,” I said.

“Oh, poor Tommy,” Sunday said, as if I just told her he was having a bad hair day.

All afternoon I kept telling myself that it wasn’t that bad.

It had to be good that Brady walked to the locker room without any help, right?

Sadly, no.

Monday delivered the feared ‘worst case scenario’:  Brady, torn MCL and ACL, done for the season.

How could this be?

Professional athletes get injured all the time.  It’s part of sports.

But when it’s your favorite player of all-time—a guy who could seemingly do nothing wrong since he stepped onto the scene in 2001—well, it hurts.

It seems like it was just yesterday when the Jets’ Mo Lewis knocked Drew Bledsoe into next week, and introduced the world to the Sarah Palin of NFL Quarterbacks.

Tom Brady was, even among Patriots fans, a virtual unknown with little professional experience to speak of.

For a kid with no business being on the field, Brady had confidence about him.  You could tell he had been preparing for that moment his whole life, even if no one had been watching. 

It certainly helped that Brady had matinee-idol good looks.  As one teammate famously said, “Men want to be him, and women want to be with him.”

My dad, brother and I sat transfixed every time Brady did a TV interview, our man-crushes barely hidden by our tongue-in-cheek moniker for our new gridiron hero: “Captain Gorgeous”.

By now, you know the rest of the story:  Unknown sixth-round draft pick leads perennial loser team to Super Bowl glory.  And then does it again, and again.

Since that day, Brady has thrown 50 touchdowns in a season, won the NFL MVP award, and cemented himself as one of the greatest quarterbacks in history.

For seven years, week-in and week-out, Tom Brady has brought adventure, drama, and joy to my fall weekends.  (Lord knows the Syracuse Orange stopped doing THAT ten years ago.)

Now, we have 15 games and an entire year to endure without Tom Brady.

I bet it’s been fun for my friends to guess where I’m at in the Kubler-Ross model of the five stages of grief.

-Denial: “Brady’s NEVER been injured.  I SAW him walking after the injury.  There’s no way he’s out for the year.”

-Anger: “Bleeping, bleeping, Bernard Pollard!  Are you bleeping kidding me?  Bernard Pollard?  Who the f is Bernard Pollard?  It was a dirty hit from a jealous league.  Bleep.”

-Bargaining:  “Tom Brady has a torn MCL and ACL?  I have two of each!  I’ll donate mine if it will make Brady play again this year!”

-Depression:  “What’s the point of getting out of bed?  Tom Brady’s not going to play today.”

-Acceptance: “You know what?  Maybe Matt Cassel isn’t so bad, after all.”

Ah, who am I kidding?  I’m nowhere near ‘acceptance’ yet. 

In recent years, a strange thought would creep into my mind as I watched Tom Brady play: “We’re another day closer to Brady’s retirement.  God, I’m going to hate that day.  I don’t want this to end.”

Now, we’ve fast-forwarded the clock another year without a full Brady game in the books, and that makes me sad.

What if the knee doesn’t respond well to treatment and he’s not the same player next year?

Some quarterbacks play into their 40s, but what if Brady decides there’s more to life than football and retires in another year or two?

What does he have left to prove?

As the days have passed, I’ve grown more used to the idea of Brady being hurt.  I’ve gone from thinking ‘the Patriots are doomed’ to realizing the Bears recently went to the Super Bowl with Rex Grossman.  (Rex Grossman!) 

I think it would be silly to dismiss the Patriots’ chances of going to the Super Bowl just because Matt Cassel is now under center.  The team is still strong, and Cassel must know SOMETHING because he’s been standing behind Carson Palmer, Matt Leinart, and Tom Freakin’ Brady all these years. 

Still, I’ll watch this season with a heavy heart.

Regardless of what happens this year, I feel incredibly privileged to have watched Tom Brady play for the past seven seasons.

I just hope beyond hope the ride isn’t over just yet.