I would argue that his explanation is too simplistic. It seems to me that the injury more likely was a combination of Faulk’s one-game suspension; Morris’s late pickup of the blitzing Pollard; and Brady’s lack of playing even one down in the Patriot’s four preseason games. Dilfer assumes that Faulk would have been in the game at that precise moment if he had not been suspended which may or may not have been the case. Also nothing was said about the fact that Brady hadn’t experienced the speed even of a preseason game much less adjusted to the increased speed of a regular season game.

My take on the torn ACL injury would be to assign one-third of the blame to Faulk for his suspension; one-third to Morris’s late pickup of the blitzing safety; and one-third to Brady himself for not getting rid of the football sooner.