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FOXBORO - It took New York City paparazzi to ferret out what the local sports media apparently missed Sunday night.

Patriots' quarterback Tom Brady was filmed Monday outside the New York apartment of girlfriend Gisele Bündchen wearing a walking cast on his right foot and favoring it noticeably.

But while Patriot Nation may be on the verge of panic over this news as Super Bowl XLII approaches, its members should remember one thing.

Brady heals fast - especially when a Super Bowl championship is on the line.

The eighth-year signal-caller out of Michigan has gone this route before, having entered a shortened period of preparation for Super Bowl XXXVI with a sprained right ankle that caused him to miss more than half of his previous game. Brady left the 2001 AFC Championship Game at Pittsburgh's Heinz Field with 1:40 left in the first half. He had just completed a 28-yard pass to Troy Brown on third-and-8 from the New England 32, but as he released the ball, he had his legs taken out from underneath him by safety Lee Flowers and rolled his right ankle as he bent over backwards.

Drew Bledsoe, who had been injured early in the season and lost his starting job to Brady, replaced the then-second-year veteran for the remainder of the game and led the Patriots to a 24-17 victory.

There was only one week between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl that season, because the regular-season schedule had been pushed back a week after the Sept. 11 attacks upon the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., Brady and Bledsoe shared the practice snaps in the week leading to the game with the St. Louis Rams in New Orleans, but when game time came, Brady was behind center and never skipped a beat.

He led one of the most memorable final drives in Super Bowl history in the last 1:30 of play, taking the ball from the Patriots' 17 to the St. Louis 30 to set up Adam Vinatieri's game-winning 48-yard field goal that gave the Patriots their first Super Bowl championship.

Now, six years later and with Super Bowl XLII against the New York Giants looming on Feb. 3 at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., Brady will have two full weeks in which to heal. The severity of his injury is not known, and was not acknowledged by the Patriots' media relations department when contacted for comment late Monday by The Associated Press.

The Patriots are not scheduled to practice again until Thursday and Friday of this week, and will depart Sunday for their Super Bowl headquarters at the Westin Kierland Resort and Spa in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Patriots' coach Bill Belichick did not mention the injury during his press conference Monday. The Patriots will not have to issue an official injury report until a week from Wednesday.

The film clip that New England didn't want to see appears on the celebrity gossip site TMZ.com. It's 1:18 in length, in which Brady and Bündchen are shown arriving at the supermodel's apartment in a Cadillac sport wagon. Neither of them acknowledges the presence of the photographers.

Brady, wearing sunglasses, a hooded sweatshirt, leather jacket and jeans, appears for about 50 seconds in the video. He has a sneaker on his left foot and the plastic boot cast on his right foot, and is clearly limping as he walks from the car to the apartment steps carrying a box of flowers and a duffel bag.

Brady was seen limping late in Sunday's 21-12 victory over the San Diego Chargers in the AFC Championship Game at Gillette Stadium, possibly the result of a sack by Igor Olshansky and Stephen Cooper for an 8-yard loss early in the final drive of the game. Brady still completed a pair of important third-down passes to Kevin Faulk during the game-ending possession, but both may have been slightly inaccurate because Brady's back foot was injured. The first pass was overthrown and Faulk made a diving grab on a third-and-11 play, and the second was thrown behind Faulk and low, but the veteran running back made a difficult catch and turned the play into a 14-yard gain. In a regularly-scheduled appearance on Boston radio station WEEI Monday morning, Brady only alluded to the possibility of an injury.

"There are always kind of bumps and bruises," he said. "I'll be ready for the Super Bowl. I'm not missing this one. I'd have to be on a stretcher to miss this one. There will just be some treatment this week and, like I said, games like this you get a little nicked up, but it's nothing serious."

Brady has started 124 consecutive games, but he has also consistently appeared on the Patriots' weekly injury reports for his right shoulder, stemming from a separation he suffered in the 2002 regular-season finale against Miami. Despite the weekly listing, Brady threw an NFL-record 50 touchdown passes in the 2007 regular season.

Since leaving the 2001 AFC title game, Brady has missed only one snap in a game due to injury. But that won't prevent a sudden hike in the drama quotient as the football world ponders what effect this will have on his performance in the biggest game of the year, with a perfect 19-0 season on the line.

MARK FARINELLA may be reached at 508-236-0315 or via e-mail at mfarinel@thesunchronicle.com