I was at a bridal shower for my cousin in Massachusetts on Sunday, and so I wasn’t able to pay too much attention to the New England Patriots’ season opener. At one point, I went downstairs to use the bathroom and stopped at the bar in the American Legion hall, where a group of elderly men were watching the Pats-Chiefs game. I lingered there for a few minutes, waiting for the score. When it appeared, I saw that the Patriots were up by seven and that all was right with the world, and I returned to the party.

After the bridal shower, I stopped by my aunt and uncle’s house, where my uncle had set up the television in the yard, and was watching the game on the outdoor patio. I turned to the TV, and was shocked to see that the score had narrowed. It was now 14 to 10, Pats. This didn’t seem right at all. Isn’t this game in Foxborough? I thought. What is going on here? Then I heard some ominous rumblings from the announcers ... Tom Brady left the game in the first quarter ... Tom Brady has not returned ... Tom Brady injured his knee ... Matt Cassel is now the quarterback ... The four horsemen of the apocalypse are entering the stadium ...

For Patriots fans, the idea of Matt Cassel taking snaps is something of a doomsday scenario. Matt Cassel hasn’t started a football game since high school, as he spent his entire time at USC backing up Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart. In other words, he’s a professional back-up, and unless you’re a Jets or Bills fan, you don’t want to see him anywhere near the field, ever. At my aunt and uncle’s house, all the men who watched Matt Cassel enter the game while we women were at the bridal shower had immediately thrown in the towel and turned their attention to other matters. About 15 minutes after the game concluded, my cousin Adam, who’d spent much of the afternoon playing with his dogs, glanced at the television and noticed that the Patriots had managed to eke their way to victory. “Hey, the Patriots won!” he said. Everyone gasped with surprise. The collective attitude seemed to be: “Well, what do you know?”

Later that evening, I glanced at Yahoo NFL, where I saw a disturbing report indicating that Tom Brady was out for the season with a torn ACL. It was the saddest sports news I’d seen in quite some time, because even if Matt Cassel proves to be competent and serviceable, he’s no Tom Brady. Tom Brady is almost always a joy to watch, a tough, smart, fearless athlete. Last year, when people were whining about the Patriots running up the score on their hapless opponents, I felt that the sports fans of the world had lost their minds. Here was a great quarterback, in his prime, attempting to do something nobody had ever done before, and people didn’t want to see it? They were bored? I understand that people hate the Patriots because of their evil genius coach, the humorless and Darth Vader-like Bill Belichick, and Spygate and all that, but last year’s offense was a work of art. In a league that’s all about parity — mediocrity, the cynic might say — this rare example of excellence was truly something to behold.

I’ve reminded myself that football is an intense and physical game, a game that becomes more amoral and violent with each passing year, and that injury and pain are an inevitability. When Tom Brady left Sunday’s game, his streak of 128 starts was the third longest ever; at some point, he was bound to get hurt. But his existence had always seemed so charmed — “For Number 12, a Gilded Age,” the Boston Globe proclaimed on Sunday, in its annual “Tom Brady is so Awesome!” story — that I believed he would shake off his pre-season troubles and once again lead the Patriots to the promised land. And now he’s out. For me, the football season just got a lot less fun. Rooting for David Garrard and the Jaguars, or Jake Delhomme and the Panthers, just doesn’t have the allure. Plus, now we’re going to be inundated with even more hero worshipping Brett Favre stories, and who wants that?

So it’s not that I have anything against Matt Cassel. I hope he does well. I hope that the Patriots play hard, that the defense is as suffocating and tight as it’s been in the past, and that the running backs have terrific seasons. Nope, my sadness doesn’t have anything to do with Matt Cassel. It has to do with Tom Brady, because I miss him already.