The Week that Was Week 1 in the NFL

Tom Brady, Tom Brady, Tom Brady. That's what everyone's been talking about today. It's what everyone will be talking about tomorrow. It'll be what everyone talks about when looking back on this season of Brady doesn't get to play another snap.

I know it's a big deal. I know that this team went undefeated in the regular season last year. I know he's the leader of the Patriots. I know he's the poster boy for the NFL. But can his injury really impact the League that much?

Yes.

Yes when all of New England wants to see if this team can reproduce what it did last year.

Yes, when the NFL needs a "bad guy" team, it gets it in the Patriots. People watch them because they hate them. And they hate them because most other NFL fans are jealous of their success (I know I am). They're the top draw in the League. They're the New York Yankees. ESPN oogles alllll over them.

Yes, because then, maybe, a team like Buffalo can win the AFC East. Really? Buffalo?

Yes, because the Colts and Chargers need a foil. Both teams' fans hate the Patriots. Sure, they don't like each other either, but the feeling is most intense with the Pats. And who really wants to see two vanilla teams (the Chargers and Colts) play for the right to get into the Super Bowl. (Don't get me wrong. I'd love to see that, being a Chargers fan).

So Brady's bum leg is huge. And Yahoo! Sports' (and fellow Cal alum) Michael Silver is reporting that Brady will be out for the year.

But for now, there are other pressing issues that we've come to learn from the first week of the NFL season.

• I know it's one game and I know it was against the Seattle Seahawks, but the Bills, as mentioned earlier, look good. They look damn good.
• Also looking good? Those damn Cowboys.
• Speaking of damn...damn, Michael Turner should have been an NFL starter at least three years ago.
  
• Welcome back Willie Parker and Donovan McNabb.
• Give Drew Brees his MVP award already.
  
• Jaguars, Chargers and Colts fans, don't freak out. It's only week one. And, Bolts fans, don't you remember that the team started 1-3 last year and then got to the AFC Championship game?

More on that last point, though. Jerome Bettis, on Football Night in America before the Colts-Bears Sunday night game, today said that with the losses by the Jags and Bolts, the uncertainty of the Colts with a banged up Peyton Manning and the uncertainty of the Pats because of a injured Brady, that the new contenders in the AFC are Pittsburgh, New York (because they have Brett Favre) and Buffalo.

What?! This is the NFL. We don't know anything about any team after one week of football. There are 16 weeks left in the season and I will, at least at this point of the year, still go with Jacksonville, San Diego, Indianapolis and New England as the AFC's best.

Let's wait a month (and even more than a month) before we replace the conference's stalwarts with a team like the Jets.