Tom Brady's absence had a ripple effect in the preseason for the Pats.

This has been one of the most useless and perhaps the very worst preseason ever. Or at least within my memory of the NFL, and the 30 plus years I’ve been watching football. There has been noise lately that it is time to do away with the preseason because teams no longer use the games to fine tune their plays or even evaluate players, and fans don’t get to see the starting players play anyway. Here in New England, we’re not even completely sure if Tom Brady is alive and well, let alone in football shape. In years past, Brady was awarded a special parking spot at Kraft Stadium because he was the first to arrive and the last to leave the practice facility through the offseason, during training camp, and the preseason. This year, Brady no longer has the parking spot because he wasn’t even around for most of the winter, was barely here for training camp, and, most disturbingly, did not play at all in the pre-season.

Brady’s absence from the practice field and preseason games caused a ripple effect, in that very few members of the first-team offense played. Last season’s receiving touchdown leader, Randy Moss, caught four passes in the one preseason game he played. The Patriots reception leader, Wes Welker, caught just three passes. Running back Laurence Maroney rushed for a total of 44 yards. Patriots preseason ticketholders were treated to an offense that featured LaMont Jordan, C.J. Jones, Ray Ventrone, and Kevin O’Connell, a virtual who’s who of “who dat?!”

The scary part of all this is that the Patriots preseason offense ranked 31^st among all NFL teams. They ranked 24^th in third down conversions, fourth in fumbles with nine, and 29^th in total points. In short, they were absolutely dreadful. Defensively, they were just as bad. In most of the defensive categories they ranked 16^th or 17^th among all teams. They couldn’t stop the Buccaneers running game, which ran up 170 yards on the ground. The secondary was picked apart, not only by Donovan McNabb, but also by the likes of quarterbacks Kevin Kolb, Kyle Boller, Brian Griese, and David Carr. This did not look like the same team that won 18 games last season and came within a whisker of perfection. Yet, on paper it is virtually the same group of players. The roster changed very little over the winter.

I would love to chalk it all up to Coach Bill Belichick playing mind games with the rest of the league and the fans. I truly want to believe that he was simply keeping all of his cards close to the vest, refusing to reveal even the slightest bit of his scheme for total domination (again!). But I simply did not see enough in the four pre-season games to make me believe that the Patriots are going to march gloriously to the Super Bowl at the end of the season again. There seem to be far too many questions about far too many aspects of the team, to believe they will win more than a handful of games this season. It’s unbelievable to me that so many football prognosticators are again picking the Patriots as the team to beat in the AFC after their showing in the pre-season. If they do go on to have another great season, then the case for doing away with the pre-season games will have been made.