For Pats, relief at football's return

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- The parking lots surrounding Gillette Stadium started to fill early on Thursday for the Patriots' first preseason game, hosting the Green Bay Packers. And why not? It was a beautiful day for tailgating.

More importantly, for the Patriots and their fans, it was finally a day for football.

Kim Kimball, from nearby Franklin, was among a group of four Pats supoorters -- with niece Aliey Armstrong, daughter Alissa Jordan and family friend Jess Havican -- all clad in the home team's attire. They had gone to the Super Bowl in Arizona earlier this year and basked in the glory, before the offseason drama put a damper on things.

"It's just good to be back at the stadium, just to be here and know the season's starting again," said Kimball, wearing a Tom Brady jersey. "It's been a long time between Feb. 1 and now."

A long time and a lot of talk about air pressure, PSI, text messages, suspensions, appeals, settlements and seemingly everything (except football) in between.

"It's ridiculous," Kimball said. "Absolutely ridiculous. It was so overdone and it's just a non-issue. New England doesn't care about it. It's the rest of the planet. I think it's because we win and they just want to find something."

The Siok family from Lee looked like a football house divided.

Ryan Siok, also wearing a Brady jersey, grew up "a huge Patriots fan," she said. Her husband, Brian, somehow grew up in Massachusetts a Packers fan. So far, the Packers are winning the numbers game for this family from the western part of the state. Hayden, 11, had on a Rob Gronkowski No. 87 jersey, while younger brothers Zavien, 7, and Daxon, 18 months, sported Green Bay jerseys.

But there is one thing on which they were in agreement: Football minus Deflategate is a good thing.

"We were actually talking about it on the way here," Ryan said. "It happened. Maybe it shouldn't have happened. But I feel like they're such a good team and they could play well no matter what. So I hope it's a good game."

Even the Packers fan sided with the Pats on this one.

"I think it doesn't really matter," Brian said. "Rules are rules; don't try to break them. But it doesn't really matter. They're both really good teams. So it doesn't really matter as far as competitive advantage.

"I'm just looking forward to seeing my team for the first time ever. So that's real cool."

The home crowd was, of course, overwhelmingly supportive of its embattled quarterback. From the first glimpse of Brady when he ran onto the field for warmups a few hours before game time to his final snap of the game in the first quarter, the crowd roared at every opportunity.

That included when he took the field to start the game. There had been much speculation whether Brady would see the field at all in the first preseason game. He didn't play in the Pats' first preseason game last year.

But Brady may have spilled the beans Thursday morning when he posted on Facebook: "Good to be HOME! Helmet is on … I'll see you tonight Gillette Stadium!!!"

There were more than a few T-shirts and signs in and around the stadium imploring NFL commissioner Roger Goodell -- or, more likely, U.S. District Judge Richard Berman -- to "Free Brady." For a little while, anyway, Brady was free to focus on football and not his protracted disagreement with the commissioner over Deflategate.

He started and played just two series, attempting four passes, with one completion -- a 10-yarder to Brandon Gibson -- before back-up Jimmy Garoppolo took over at the end of the first quarter.

Even Brady's teammates were surprised to see him on the field.

"I actually didn't know until he stepped on the field for the first series," said running back Jonas Gray, who rushed for a 55-yard touchdown and a two-point conversion in the second quarter with Garoppolo at quarterback. "Those personnel decisions, you never know who's in there, never know who's going to play, especially these preseason games. So it was nice to have Tom out there, get his mind off everything else."

Head coach Bill Belichick, in his typical fashion, gave nothing away on his decision to start Brady over Garoppolo.

"We played a lot of players tonight," Belichick said.

When pressed further, he responded, "We played all the guys that could play."

Yep. Thanks, coach.

Even Garoppolo didn't know what was going to happen in advance, saying he learned at the same time the rest of us did that Brady would be starting. That could very well be his status until a final determination is made on Brady's four-game suspension, which seems to be under interminable appeal.

"I'm taking it day by day," Garoppolo said. "I'm going into it pretty much the same way I would, whether this was going on or not. Whether you're the backup, starter, third-string, whatever it may be, you have to have the mindset that you're the starter. In training camp there's a lot of repetition, a lot of guys mixing and matching, so you have to be able to play with multiple guys."

There is, of course, a noticeable difference in chemistry and electricity when a future Hall of Famer is quarterbacking than when a second-year backup is in. And one wonders whether Belichick was already sending a message of defiance to the NFL and the rest of the league to have Brady actually take snaps so early in preseason action.

"You can tell when Tom's out there," Gray said. "There's obviously a different presence about the game itself. He sees things better, obviously. He's done it for a long time. So it was nice to have him out there. I originally didn't know he was going to play, but it was cool to have him out there, cool to have our leader out there."

Other than Brady, the starting offense looked nothing like the one Kimball and her friends saw the last time the Pats took the field. He was without his favorite targets, tight end Gronkowski and wide receivers Julian Edelman and Brandon LaFell, among several others.

When Brady left the game, chants of "We want Brady" reverberated throughout Gillette. But with the suspension looming, Belichick must find out what he can expect from his back-up.

Garoppolo, the Pats' second-round pick last year, appeared in six games in 2014. He completed 19 of 27 attempts with one touchdown. Now, he could be the starting quarterback when the Super Bowl champs kick off the NFL's season on Sept. 10, hosting the Steelers.

Garoppolo had a rough game Thursday, though. He completed 20 of 30 pass attempts for 159 yards but was sacked seven times for a los of 52 yards.

"I didn't really get a chance to break it all down yet, see the film, but you can always get the ball out your hand faster," Garoppolo said. "There were ups and downs. We've got a long way to go, obviously. Eleven points isn't by any means good enough. There's room for improvement."

The Patriots lost, 22-11. It may have been a preseason game, but Belichick was not happy with the results. (Brady did not speak to the media after the game.)

"Well, it's pretty obvious tonight we've got a lot of work to do," he said. "[We] played a lot of players, certainly [did] some good things, certainly a lot of things we've got to correct and work on. We'll just get back to work tomorrow on some of the things that obviously we need to do a better job of. I don't think we did anything well enough on offense, defense or special teams really to the level that we need to be at. We'll work on everything and try to keep improving."

One thing's for certain: The fans are fired up. And it's still only August.

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Maureen Mullen is the sports editor of the Daily Item in Lynn, Mass. She is also the author of Diary of a Red Sox Season, 2007 with the legendary Johnny Pesky, and Yogi Was Up with a Guy on Third, conversations with 53 of the 64 living Hall of Famers

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