FOXBORO - Doesn't matter, Tom Brady said.

Sixty degrees and a cold rain? No problem. Just under 90 with the feel of an instant transition from March to August? Bring it on.

It's time to play football again, and the Patriots' ninth-year quarterback couldn't be happier, regardless of the capricious weather conditions of a June minicamp.

"It's a lot of fun to play," he said Saturday after a steamy minicamp practice on the Gillette Stadium practice fields. "And I think all of us are fortunate to be able to play and mentally deal with all the things you need to deal with as an athlete. I think we all realize that we're way overpaid, and it's fun for everybody to come out here and play. I'm always excited to be out here. It's what I love to do."

Brady has been winging the ball around the premises for some time now, under the auspices of the offseason conditioning program and various "passing camps." But with the full squad present and only a few of his targets (Wes Welker, Ben Watson and Kelley Washington most noteworthy) in the training room for rehabilitation programs, the two-time Super Bowl MVP said it certainly has the feel of a brand new season. And that means a return to the Patriots' Square One mentality, regardless of what might have happened in the last game of the 2007 season or what has transpired since.

"Every year has been a different year," Brady said during an 11-minute meeting with local media. "This is a new team and there are new challenges. You come out here the first day, and it's not like this is the 2007 team revisited. There are new players and there's a new element to what we're going to face. We don't pick up where we left off last year. We're starting where everybody else is starting."

Brady said he is calling upon the example of his coach, Bill Belichick, to put aside whatever disappointment he may have felt at the close of the Patriots' 17-14 loss to the New York Giants in Phoenix.

"Any time you lose a game, it's disappointing," Brady said. "And that one, because it's the last game of the year, it's very disappointing. But we've lost a lot of games in the past, and the more you focus on what happened and what you can't control, the less energy you're going to focus on the things you need to do.

"Coach Belichick, I'm sure, gets it out of his mind pretty quickly," he said. "You evaluate the loss, you hope you learn from it, and you move on. You gain the experience and the knowledge of what got you beat, and you try to incorporate those into what you do this season."

For one thing, Brady said, the natural turnover of players from one season to the next has brought new blood to the team - players who weren't subject to the disappointment of an 18-0 season that didn't reach 19-0.

"There's a lot of new guys who weren't a part of that," he said. "So they don't bring any of those memories or that energy in here. The guys who've been here, Coach Belichick's really been preaching to us that what happened last year is something for us to learn from and go on from. In life, you don't reflect too much on what happened in the past, you try to learn from it and build on it. We can only control what we did today, which in this case, was a really good practice."

Brady also said he tried to compartmentalize the non-football issues apart from the football issues this offseason. The lingering effects of the "Spygate" scandal, and more recent peccadilloes such as offensive tackle Nick Kaczur's arrest for possession of illegal pain-killers and his participation in a federal DEA sting to apprehend the supplier, don't do anything to help Brady win football games, he said.

"What those stories create are nothing about football," he said. "We come out and we play football and that's what we're here to do. That's really what we try to focus on when we show up here. The other stuff, you really can't control. You control your decisions, and whatever decision you make, you pay for the consequences, and you move on. Justice has been paid."

Brady said he understands that today's near-instantaneous dissemination of news will not keep controversies on the back burner for long. "We're just in a different cultural climate right now," said Brady, who has been a frequent target of the paparazzi as a result of his high-profile personal life. "With all of the information that's out there, everybody can grab a hold of it instantaneously. We're all human beings, and we make mistakes ... like everything, you try to learn from things you wish you didn't do, and at the same time, you understand that there's a reason for making those decisions. Like I said, when we show up here, Coach does a pretty good job of keeping us focused.

"That's our job, so when you show up here, you're focused on your job," he said, "When you leave here, you focus on other things. I think part of being mentally tough and being in any career is showing up to work and doing your job. That's what we get paid for, and that's what we're here to do, to play football."

Brady's ankle injury in last year's AFC Championship Game was a cause celèbre in the weeks leading to and following Super Bowl XLII. But he said Saturday that any problems are long since gone.

"The ankle feels great," he said. "It feels really good. I've been able to do pretty much everything. I'm still slow, I still can't jump, I don't lift very much ... that hasn't changed."

He also said he's even been moved to be gracious to the winning quarterback of Super Bowl XLII when their paths have crossed during the offseason.

"I saw Eli (Manning) a couple of times," Brady said. "Of course you congratulate him. To win the Super Bowl is a great accomplishment. There's only one team that gets to do it each year, and we've been fortunate to do it a couple of times, and it's an exciting feeling and there's a lot of things that come along with it. You just hope you get to enjoy it when you go through it.

"I hope we can go through that again at some point," he added.

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