If Tom Brady Misses 2008, Who Are More Screwed—The Patriots Or Fantasy Owners?

In terms of “Gasp!” factor, the injury sustained by Tom Brady yesterday during the first quarter of yesterday’s 17-10 Patriots win over the Chiefs scored somewhere between watching two cars colliding and your significant other saying “we need to talk.” With Yahoo and ESPNews reporting sources saying that the injury could be season ending, there are two groups of people who are knocking on wood, clicking rosary beads and praying to a Voodoo Doll of New England backup Matt Cassel–Patriot fans and Fantasy football owners who drafted Brady. So the question we pondered last night, since we’re the latter, is that if the reports are true about Brady’s missing 2008 season, who stands to get screwed–the Patriots, who Brady led to the Super Bowl with 50 regular season touchdowns, or the fantasy owners who expected the quarterback to lead them to a fictitious championship with more of the same? We discuss after the jump.

• The Patriots: After the game, Randy Moss said “I was like a kid standing in front of the candy store, I kept looking back to see if he was coming out.” Moss, the recipient of 23 touchdown passes from Brady last year, understands what the man means to this team. Cassel came into the game after Brady’s injury, and while he did complete a TD pass to Moss, he went 13-for-18 for 152 yards–calling them pedestrian numbers would be an insult to ambulatory people everywhere, especially considering Mr. Bundchen’s record setting 2007 MVP season.
  So what now? Well, analysts said that once Cassel came in, they had to simplify the playbook, which hurts players like number two receiver Wes Welker because of the slashing routes he likes to run. So even if Cassel does master the playbook, we doubt NE head coach Bill Belichick would trust the intricacies of it to anyone other than Brady. So that means a lot more work for their running backs Laurence Maroney, Sammy Morris and LaMont Jordan. But if Cassel starts to sputter, and teams start to stack the box against the run to make the QB try to beat them, you’ll be seeing a lot of incomplete and low scoring affairs, a far cry from the almost 37 points a game they scored last year. It leaves the Patriots depending on a defense that, while technically sound, is a lot older and not used to being on the field a lot. That’s going to change in a hurry.
• Fantasy Owners: “He was in a lot of pain… when you hear a scream, you know that.” Those are the fine words of Kansas City safety Bernard Pollard, the mean, mean man who put the hit on Brady that could cost him the year. The scream he was talking about came from Brady, but it could’ve come from one of the millions of Fantasy owners who drafted him in the early rounds of their draft, somewhere between picks four to eleven, according to Yahoo and ESPN. So basically, most of these people picked lost their first round pick for the year, which basically dooms you for the season. Because while there are running backs and wide recievers that come on like gangbusters during mid-season (like Green Bay’s Ryan Grant last year), it’s impossible to find a QB replacment of Brady’s talent.
  So if you gambled with him (because of his pre-season broken foot) in the first round, and ended up having to play catch up with the other positions, thus pushing your second QB choice to the eighth round or so, you’re screwed. You’re going to have to either live riding the ups and downs of a JaMarcus Russell or trade away a top RB or WR for a Derek Anderson-type, overpaying because any league worth its salt will have players chomping at the bit trying to take advantage of a Brady owner who has all of a sudden seen his team go down for the count.

So who will be worse off? The freaking Patriots, of course! They’re an NFL team whose playoff chances just probably went bye-bye, not some dork’s pretend team that bouys the athletic hopes and dreams he once held as a teen. (sniff) Nope, those teams don’t matter at all. Now if you’ll excuse us, we have to go see if Jake Delhomme is still available on the waiver wire.
Lackluster showing without Brady should give Patriots more cause for pause [ESPN]
Image [AP]