Here’s the question:

Would you have taken 11-5 after the first week of the season, when we all found out that Tom Brady was done for the year, and the new quarterback was Matt Cassel, the same Matt Cassel who had not started a game since high school and was so bad in the preseason that there was speculation that he might even be cut?

Be honest, now.

Would you have taken 11-5?

Of course you would have.

We all would have.

Taken it and ran out the door before someone changed their mind.

So let’s sing no sad songs for the Patriots, even though their season is done and no one’s even been to a New Year’s Eve party yet, even though we’ve all gotten used to the Pats playing in January as if it’s part of the schedule. Save the sad songs for someone else.

The Patriots were better than any of us had a right to expect after that first game back there in September when Brady limped off the field in the first quarter and our hopes for this season limped off with him. Back there when it all seemed like some football version of Armageddon, the MVP of the league out for the year and the Patriots essentially looking at 15 more weeks of garbage time.

The fact it didn’t happen should not be taken for granted.

The fact it didn’t happen is a tribute to several things, not the least was the emergence of Cassel as a quality NFL quarterback, someone who got his chance and turned it into gold. The more he played the more it became obvious what he was doing on the roster in the first place. The more he played the better he got. The more he played the more apparent it became that he can play for a lot of teams in the NFL, that all he had needed was the kind of showcase this year gave him.

It also was one more example of how good a coach Bill Belichick is, if we needed any more evidence of that.

On Sunday, he said, “This is a mentally tough team, a resilient team.”

What he didn’t say is that he is the reason why his team is so mentally tough, so resilient. This is the culture he has created in Foxboro, from the free agents he signs, to the college players he signs, to the stars, to guys just trying to hang on to a roster spot. It runs through the locker room like a beam of light, passed down from the veterans to the rookies like a secret handshake.

There’s no overestimating this. You can argue all you want about whether this was Belichick’s best coaching job or not, but there’s little question that it was a great one.

Eleven and five with this team?

Please.

For it wasn’t just the loss of Brady, as symbolic as that was.

It was Rodney Harrison and Adalius Thomas. It was Laurence Maroney and James Sanders. For a while it was LaMont Jordan and Vince Wilfork, then Tedy Bruschi, and, you get the point. It was always somebody, a drum roll of players heading off to the injured list. And, yes, injuries are as much a part of the NFL as a point spread, but eventually they take their toll, so often the reason why some teams are in the playoffs and some are not. Mental toughness can only take a team so far. So can coaching.

And in the end, it’s the reason why this team is now putting the pads away, the season over, the only thing left being the might-have-beens.

In the end, the surprising thing is not that this team isn’t going to be in the playoffs, but that it went to the last day of the season before it found out it wasn’t going to be in the playoffs.

So sing no sad songs for the Patriots.

For this team didn’t figure to go very far in the playoffs anyway, even if it had gotten in. In a sense, its 11-5 record was a bit of a mirage. The Pats benefited from a relatively easy schedule, fattening up on the woeful NFC West, with wins over the 49ers, Cardinals, and Seahawks, and also getting to play the woeful Chiefs and the Raiders. What, in some years, might have been difficult matchups turned out to be relatively easy.

This is not meant to minimize the 11 wins, as much as to try to sort out this season into a certain perspective. In the games they had to win — the Jets and Steelers at home — the Patriots didn’t do it. In short, they had opportunities to not only make a statement, but to play their way into the playoffs and failed to do so.

They were let down all year by a defensive backfield that simply wasn’t good enough if you’re trying to be a great team, and an overall defense that’s growing old before our eyes. For a franchise that built its reputation on its defense, on Belichick’s schemes and its overall toughness and intelligence, that was a seismic shift.

The fact they were able to overcome this and win their last four games, regardless of who they were against, is certainly to their credit. But it also was a little bit of an illusion. They squeaked out a win on the road against the 4-12 Seahawks, beat up on the awful Raiders and blasted Arizona in the snow and cold of Gillette, in a game where the Cardinals should have been sued for consumer fraud.

But, in the end, they paid for past sins, specifically the losses at home to both the Dolphins and the Jets. Ultimately, they weren’t good enough, even with all their heart and all their resilience, even winning 11 games.

Eleven and five?

No one would have believed that back in September, on the day Brady got hurt and everything changed.

So save the sad songs for someone else.

This team went further than it should have.

breynold@projo.com