So the NASA bureaucrat says, “This could be the worst disaster NASA’s ever experienced.”
And in the end, he turned out to be right.
I was one of the vast majority of Pats fans arguing it at the time.
So while it might seem contradictory to say his “finest hour” belongs at No.
13 on his “Greatest Hits” list, I regret nothing.
He created the culture of winning here.
This was the season where he fell short.
So it belongs here.
Just not in the top dozen.
It’s not necessary to go into a ton of detail here.
Suffice to say that teams that lose the Super Bowl traditionally do not recover the following year.
The 69.6% playoff rate would refute the notion of a Super Bowl runner-up jinx.
What they got to kick off the season was the worst of circumstances.
Something that never happened before or after in Tom Brady’s 23-year career.
He missed games with an injury.
With the exception of the first half of the 1st quarter of Week 1.
Rated TV-MA for GOAT violence.
Before he established himself as the Typhoid Mary of Patriots Lower Leg Injuries.
He was on the field when Wes Welker blew out his ACL (non-contact injury).
Destroyed Rob Gronkowski’s ankle in the 2011 AFC championship game.
And then just for laughs knocked Stevan Ridley out cold in another playoff game and forced a fumble.
But they did the opposite.
Belichick kept them focused and motivated.
He brough Cassel along slowly.
With fewer than 25 pass attempts in his first two games, both of them wins.
Then let him off the leash.
Over a 13-week span, Cassel had north of 30 attempts in 12 of those games.
The peak being a 51-attempt shootout against Brett Favre, then with the Jets on a Thursday night.
That is particularly memorable because Moss caught it right in front of where my brother and I were sitting.
And judging by the incoherence of a lot of KJRs since, I’ve kept that promise.
And became just the second team in the 16-game era to go 11-5 and miss the playoffs.
They just did it in a year where 11 games wasn’t good enough.
As for Cassel, Belichick traded him to Scott Pioli’s Chiefs that offseason for a 2nd rounder.
Not a bad haul considering he’d been drafted 230th overall four years earlier.
In his other 11 years in the league playing for six other teams, he was 26-40.
And never forget 2008 when someone tries to make the case it was only Brady all along.
