"The show must go on," says Randy Moss. And the Patriots will have to be in New Jersey next Sunday, and back in Foxboro the Sunday after that, and so on. But it could be a long, long season. For seven and a half minutes, Tom Brady was in charge of the Patriots offense. And then, suddenly, he wasn't. And nobody this morning seems to be indicating anything other than season-ending surgery.

The right leg that troubled Tom through the preseason looked fine at the beginning. But it was his left leg, that got hit in a bad way by Chiefs defenseman Bernard Pollard. (And, please, Randy and everyone else, just stop with the "it was a dirty play" crap. It wasn't.) And words like "torn ACL" started flying around Foxboro. And Matt Cassel suddenly became the Man of the Hour.

Cassel was far from horrible; after the 0-4 preseason, we wouldn't have been surprised to see him flinging the ball around willy-nilly. He threw a couple clutch passes to get a drive going from the 1/2-yard line, found Randy in the end zone for the first TD, and managed the offense reasonably well. Of course, all this has to take into account that just about everyone ranked KC at/near the absolute bottom of the league. And while we're moping and glooming, the defense didn't exactly inspire a ton of confidence, letting the Chiefs' backup Damon Huard run a couple long drives, too.

But whatever. They survived, they're 1-0; now we have to consider the big picture. Brady's due for an MRI today, and we're sure Coach Bill will rush to tell the media what they've learned. We joked not long ago that 6-10 might win the AFC East, but then we saw Buffalo dominate Seattle. And do the Patriots even have 6-10 in them, after yesterday? Like we said...could be a long year. Or Cassel will do for Brady what Brady did for Bledsoe all those years ago. We'll see what Bill has up his sleeve

Red Sox won...game and a half behind Tampa...division lead on the line this week at Fenway...yeah, sorry, we're distracted at the moment.