Brady Done for Seasons, Career

And so ends the era of dominance in Beantown.

Before moving on to my larger point, ProFootballTalk.com is speculating that there is a chance New England's most beloved star (oh if only Big Papi were less Dominican) could miss all of next year and quite possibly all of 2010. Apparently post surgical knee infections are no joke. You can read about all the gory details here but the long and short of it is this - if the current treatment does not rid Brady's knee of infection, the surgery will have to be performed all over again. With new screws and a new dead guy's ACL. This new surgery could not take place until the infection has been completely cleaned out and the recovery from a second procedure is not nearly as routine as recovery from the first.

I always was a little suspicious about the short timetable on Brady's recovery. He tore both major knee ligaments in the most severe way possible. It takes most players longer than 12 months to recover from an injury like that yet we were to believe it would take the great Tom Brady a mere 8? Now you go throwing this crazy, extremely rare infection (occurs in less than 0.05% of patients) into the mix and we are clearly looking at early 2010 before the knee is 100%, best case scenario.

In just 9 months, the Red Sox and Patriots have choked away chances to cement their place in history. The Patriots lost to an inferior team in a game they took too lightly. The Sox failed to complete an unlikely comeback in a game that was more than winnable. While all this was going on, something was happening that may have gone unnoticed, at least in the City of Champions; everybody else got better.

Ok, that is not totally fair, plenty of teams got worse. However, as we sit almost halfway through an NFL season and as we look ahead to a new Red Sox season some six months away, both teams are staring down the barrel of mediocrity. The Patriots find themselves outside the top 10 for the first time since god knows how when. Above them are teams that couldn't beat their reserves but a few years ago. Teams like Buffalo, Tennessee, New York (Giants), Carolina, and yes, even the Arizona Cardinals.

While the Sox may have finished second in the AL this season, making the playoffs next season is no sure thing. Tampa Bay will be that much better with one more year of experience and plenty of new blood added to the mix. The rest of the AL East will be a dog fight with the Yankees new 300 million dollar payroll and the Blue Jays picking up where they left off 2008. The other divisions on the junior circuit will be no cake walk either. Anaheim is not getting any worse, neither is Texas, Chicago or Minnesota, and Detroit can't possibly suck as much as this past season.

Only time will tell whether these dire predictions come to fruition but facts are facts and I'm no stranger to twisting them to support whatever story I concoct. Whether Tom Terrific ever returns to form remains to be seen. I say no way. Whether the Sox find a way to replace the Manny, Ortiz 1-2 punch remains to be seen. I say forget about it. Whether any New England team can win a championship before I have grandchildren remains to be seen. I say don't count on it.