"Fear and Loathing" in Foxboro?''

With apologies to the late Hunter S. Thompson, it sure seems like it.

Go right down the list:

-- The star quarterback's best friend has been banished from the team.

-- The young quarterback the Patriots got rid of is turning into a star of his own in San Francisco.

-- The star quarterback has turned 40 years old and every once in a while he starts to look like it.

-- The star quarterback's relationship with his future Hall-of-Fame coach always had been a little mysterious at best, long on respect, but a little more complicated when it comes to day-to-day friendship.

All this and another Super Bowl to chase, another prize on the path to the Hall of Fame and the football immortality that comes with it, both for the star quarterback and the legendary coach.

These are the stakes as the playoffs start, the pressure gets ratcheted up, and it becomes all about survival. Win and advance. Let someone else worry about the style points. These are the stakes both Tom Brady and Bill Belichick have been dealing with for a long time time now, stakes that often must seem as if they long ago got built into the schedule.

This is well worn terrain, the combination of all the cheers and all the pressure that comes with them.

And the price tag for all this?

Every year the pressure gets greater.

Especially now with Jimmy Garoppolo showing signs that he might have been able to become an NFL star here in New England, if only the timing had been right.

One suspects that this hasn't been the easiest of years for Brady. not with turning 40, the birthday in the NFL that all but seems to be outlined in neon.

The banning of his friend Alex Guerrero somehow seems like cheap symbolism.

In the days afterwards Brady reportedly seemed downright testy when asked about the treatment of Guerrero, unusual behavior for him.

Brady always has been cool and composed in press conferences, avoiding difficult questions as if they were blitzing linebackers trying to get into his face. It's all part of his charm, of course, this ability to be the boy-next-door during press conferences, a stone killer on the field. But there was no secret that he wanted little to do with the Guerrero questions, this man who is both his business partner and his close friend.

Was it simply the fact that he didn't want to talk about his friend? Or was it one of those times when to talk publicly about Guerrero was only going to throw gasoline on the fire, burning everything in the process?

Leadership can come in many forms.

It's no secret the Patriots long have lived inside their own bunker. It's also no secret that this long has been one of the tenets of Belichick's coaching faith: Build a bunker. Stay in the bunker. Keep everyone else out of the bunker.

We all know how that has turned out.

But somehow this all seems different.

Maybe it's because so much of it seems to be playing itself out in public, no insignificant thing when it comes to the Patriots. And maybe it's because it involves both Brady and Belichick, the two biggest forces in this amazing Patriots' story that's gone on for almost two decades. And maybe, just maybe, it's because this seems so unlike the Patriots, all this intrigue and all this drama happening in the middle of a season, the kind of drama that might play itself out in so many other places, so many other other teams, but not here.

"Fear and Loathing'' in Foxboro?

Not yet.

Even if it's starting to feel like the end game is getting closer.