Welcome to Another Quarterback Controversy

PITTSBURGH —  A quarterback controversy just got dropped into the middle of Super Bowl hype week. Bad combination. The country’s largest media gathering tempted with one of sports’ juiciest topics. It’ll be like a hive of angry bees swarming over a tank full of sharks in a feeding frenzy.

It looked as if we were set for a heavy dose of the Tom Brady story. You know, backup comes in and leads team to Super Bowl. So Kurt Warner, so Y2K.

Then Brady went down with an ankle injury and Drew Bledsoe came in for the last 311/2 minutes of New England’s 24-17 AFC championship game victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday.

Bledsoe, who threw a touchdown pass and made a key third-down pass in the fourth quarter, can’t be expected to just disappear and make this tidy.

This is Drew Bledsoe. The guy who quarterbacked the Patriots in their last trip to the Super Bowl five seasons ago. The guy the Patriots signed to a 10-year, $103-million contract last March.

But Brady kept the Patriots’ season from falling apart when Bledsoe was injured in the second game. He’s the guy who played well enough to convince Coach Bill Belichick to let him keep the job after Bledsoe recovered from the injured blood vessel in his chest. The Patriots went 12-3 with Brady as a starter, including that snow-covered victory over Oakland in the divisional playoffs. He made the Pro Bowl.

Now, among the multitude of questions asked by the 803,532 reporters in New Orleans this week, we’re sure to hear one posed to Belichick again and again: “Who will be your starting quarterback?”

Who should be the quarterback? It’s the ultimate barroom question. Which is fitting, since New Orleans is the ultimate bar town. But this isn’t something to be decided over hurricanes at Pat O’Brien’s. The direction of the Patriots--indeed, the future of several franchises--is hanging in the balance.

If Brady had kept rolling it would have been very easy for the Patriots to be cost-efficient, make Brady (2001 salary: $289,000) their guy and look to move Bledsoe. That would provide salary-cap relief plus an influx of talented players or draft picks.

The Chicago Bears, Washington Redskins and Tampa Bay Buccaneers are among the teams that could use Bledsoe’s services.

But if he starts and wins the Super Bowl, how could the Patriots get rid of him? The Baltimore Ravens cast aside Trent Dilfer after they won last year, so would that just become the NFL’s new trend?

That’s getting a little ahead of ourselves. He won’t get a chance to win the game if he doesn’t start. Here was Belichick’s response the first time The Question was asked:

“We’ll take a look at Tom’s situation and we’ll make an evaluation there and we’ll talk about that and make the decision later on in the week,” Belichick said.

And he’ll try to say “and” as many times as possible to throw everyone off the scent.

The first order of business is the status of Brady’s ankle. Pittsburgh’s Lee Flowers hit his leg from behind with 1:40 left in the second quarter, bending Brady over backward and rolling the ankle.

Brady limped around the sideline and limped up the steps to the midfield stage for the AFC championship trophy presentation. When asked if he could have gone back in Sunday, Brady smiled that smile of his, the one that rates a nine out of 10 on the John Elway Scale of teeth size.

“That’s a good question,” Brady said. “I mean, Drew goes in there and does a great job, and I’m not 100%. So Coach made the call. I’d have been ready if he decided, ‘Hey Tom, go ahead and go get it.’ But we were doing a pretty good job out there.”

Give Bledsoe credit for being ready to step into this pressure-packed situation even though he has had very little practice with the first-team players.

Bledsoe wasn’t happy--who would be?--so he simply avoided the media so he wouldn’t spout off. (“I missed you guys,” he joked when he stepped to the microphone after the game.)

Bledsoe’s day was much more than the numbers: 10 for 21 for 102 yards and no interceptions. The touch he showed on a third-and-11 pass he lofted to Troy Brown was perfect--and it allowed the Patriots to continue a clock-eating drive.

“He came in cold and led us to our only offensive touchdown there in the second quarter and really played pretty much error-free football the rest of the day,” Belichick said. “And that’s what we needed. You’ve got to give him a lot of credit. It was a terrific performance under pressure.”

He got a rude welcome back on his second play, when he scrambled for four yards before a big Chad Scott hit sent him out of bounds. It was similar to the violent but legal hit in the second game of the season that sent Bledsoe to the hospital ... and left him on the bench for the last 15 games.

Who starts next? Brady actually had a higher rating than Bledsoe on Sunday (84.3 to 77.9). Some coaches have a rule that a player can’t lose his job because of injury. Belichick didn’t apply that to Bledsoe during the season, so he should use his same standard: go with the guy who’s doing well at the moment. Bledsoe.

“Obviously this is the biggest game there is, and everybody wants to play in this game,” Bledsoe said.

Bledsoe said the hardest part about this season was not playing. He has mentally prepared for his return to action, whenever it came. But he couldn’t have thought his sweetest play of the year would be dropping to a knee for a one-yard loss--the play took the final seconds off the clock and sent the Patriots to the Super Bowl.

“To have that happen and to be kneeling the ball at the end of the game, that’s just a little overwhelming,” Bledsoe said.

Not as overwhelming as the media crush on this story during Super Bowl week.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at: ja.adande@latimes.com