FOXBORO — We’re not going to talk about That Game.

You know the one.

That Game last February in Phoenix, against the Team Who Must Not Be Named.

We’re not only not going to talk any more about it, we’re not going to give it another thought.

It is behind us. It’s so far behind us, it’s not merely in the rearview mirror, it’s totally out of sight. Out of sight, out of mind.

Especially since That Game has been driving us out of our minds for months.

Now, finally, there’s a game this afternoon, at Gillette Stadium, against the Kansas City Chiefs.

A new season is about to begin for the New England Patriots.

We don’t care if it’s perfect.

Last year, the Patriots became the first team since the ’72 Dolphins to win every game in the regular season, only to lose That Game.

It was a bitter reminder that going 11-5, as the Patriots did in 2001, but then going on to win the Super Bowl, is much better than going 18-0 and then going down to defeat in the Super Bowl, as the Patriots did last year.

Can the Pats get back to the Super Bowl this season? And, if they do, can they win?

Yes. And yes. As long as superstar quarterback and supermodel consort Tom Brady stays healthy.

And is he healthy?

That is the question Patriots fans have been asking themselves all summer, as Brady did not play in a single preseason game.

As always, you get no answers from the Pats, who could give the State Department lessons on safeguarding secrets.

The good news is that Brady has yet to miss a game since coming off the bench when Drew Bledsoe was injured in the second week of the 2001 season. He’s started 127 in a row, including 17 playoff games.

The last time we saw him in action was in That Game.

The Patriots could have made history last season. They came oh-so-tantalizingly, painfully, heart-achingly close to perfection — to an undefeated, 19-0 season — only to let it slip through their hands.

Literally.

An interception slipped through Asante Samuel’s hands. Eli Manning slipped through the hands of several would-be tacklers before throwing the dream-devastating, nightmare-causing pass that David Tyree somehow held against the top of his helmet.

But we don’t want to talk about That Game.

That’s in the past. Gone. Forgotten.

Forgotten?

If only that were true.

How can we forget how, with the clock winding down and the pressure ratcheting up to nerve-racking intensity, Brady engineered a breathtaking scoring drive, taking the Patriots 80 yards to a touchdown, the final six yards coming on a pass to — who else? — Randy Moss, giving New England a 14-10 lead with just 2:42 left to play in Super Bowl XLII.

All season, Moss and Brady had given us the most explosive, most exciting, pitch-and-catch combination ever seen in New England (Sorry, Curt Schilling — we know you think that distinction belongs to you and Jason Varitek in 2004). Brady set an NFL record by throwing for 50 touchdowns — 23 of them (also an NFL record) to the marvelous Mr. Moss, whose combination of speed, size, hands, and athleticism made him virtually unstoppable.

Knocked around throughout Super Bowl XLII by waves of rushers, Brady came through in the clutch, as he has so often throughout what is shaping up as a Hall of Fame-caliber career.

But the New England defense couldn’t hold the lead, and so there are only three Lombardi trophies, instead of four, in the trophy case at Gillette Stadium.

Now it’s time to move on, to begin again the quest for that fourth trophy.

It’s a new season, which the Patriots enter with a league-record 19-game regular-season winning streak, a remarkable run that broke their own record of 18 straight, set in 2003 and 2004, when they won back-to-back Super Bowls.

The streak should reach 20 this afternoon against the seemingly overmatched and certainly under-experienced Chiefs, who have 15 rookies on their 53-man roster, and whose quarterback, Brodie Croyle, will be starting just his seventh NFL game.

Finally, Patriots fans have something to look forward to.

At long last, they can focus on This Game, This Season, and put That Game — the one nobody wants to talk about, the one every New England fan wants to forget — behind them.