Patriots' Eventful Past Season Is Washed Away

As Lone Loss Lingers And Spygate Fades, Team 'Starts Fresh'

FOXBOROUGH, Mass., July 24 -- A couple dozen fans lined up around the fence guarding the New England Patriots' outdoor practice fields Thursday morning. Rain had forced the Patriots to move their first training camp practice indoors and close it to the public, but that didn't stop their most ardent followers. They showed up to shout encouragement as players made their way to the field house by Gillette Stadium.

"It's our year!" one man shouted toward a group of players. "This time we'll get it done!"

The Patriots didn't get it done last season, although they set many NFL offensive records and became the first team in league history to win 18 straight games to start a season. But just when they were about to stake their claim as the greatest football team ever, they lost to the New York Giants, 17-14, in Super Bowl XLII.

"It's tough to put seasons behind you," veteran linebacker Tedy Bruschi said after the morning practice. "It's tough to win Super Bowls or lose Super Bowls. It takes a lot of experience, a lot of maturity."

The Super Bowl defeat was followed by an offseason in which public pressure applied by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and the disclosures of former Patriots video assistant Matt Walsh kept New England's videotaping scandal in the headlines for months. All of that led some observers to question whether the three Super Bowl titles orchestrated by Coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady should be considered tainted.

Now Spygate seems to be a fading memory. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, after punishing Belichick and the Patriots last fall when they were found to be illegally taping the play signals of the New York Jets' coaches during the season-opening game at Giants Stadium, basically declared the league's investigation over after interviewing Walsh in May.

Walsh didn't have evidence to support a Boston Herald report that the Patriots had videotaped the St. Louis Rams' walk-through the day before their Super Bowl meeting in 2002. The newspaper apologized for the story, calling it erroneous. Specter expressed outrage over the Patriots' conduct, but others on Capitol Hill said they were not interested, and these days Brett Favre's standoff with the Green Bay Packers is at the forefront of the news.

So the Patriots are left to try to pick up the pieces from one of the most deflating defeats in sports history, starting over from scratch in their quest for a fourth Super Bowl triumph.

"Long way to go," Belichick said. "One step at a time -- that's the mode we're in right now. . . . It's really not about last year. It's about this year. That's what we're going to concentrate on."

Said Brady: "It didn't turn out the way we would have liked, but sometimes that happens. We're moving forward. . . . It all starts fresh. It started today."

Brady practiced in the morning and showed no aftereffects from the ankle injury that was huge news during the buildup to the Super Bowl. He said his arm is sound, but he feels no need to throw all-out for two practices per day throughout training camp. He'll pick his spots, he said.

Brady spoke Thursday of giving himself a bit more of a reprieve during the just-completed offseason than he had previously, when he'd been a winner of one of the prime parking places at the Patriots facility awarded to players for excellence in the team's offseason workout program.