The fog that blanketed Gillette Stadium on Saturday was as ominous a sign as any of what was to come.

The New England Patriots never looked like themselves when they welcomed the Tennessee Titans for a rare Wild Card Weekend game in Foxborough, the team’s first such game since 2009.

And in another rarity, the Patriots, the defending Super Bowl champions, had their hopes of another Super Bowl run ended abruptly with a 20-13 loss at home.

For Tom Brady, it may have marked his last time suiting up for New England.

The NFL has favored finesse in recent years, but this game was centered in grit. While Titans quarterback Ryan Tannehill only threw for 72 yards, running back Derrick Henry, who finished with 182 yards on the ground (a team playoff record) and another 22 receiving yards, was Tennessee's guiding light. Henry moved like a bulldozer in dancing shoes, moving with enough power downhill to burst through would be tacklers while having the finesse to bounce outside and patience to wait for lanes to open up behind his blockers.

While the Titans reverted to an offense reminiscent of another era in football, the Patriots looked sharp at times, but couldn't ever find a good enough groove on offense. New England settled for field goals on drives that looked like they were headed to a richer pay dirt and sputtered for long stretches in the second-half, failing to score any points after the intermission.

It was a bizarre half of football best summed up with New England's final drive. Backed up into the end zone with less than 20 seconds left in the game after the Patriots didn't field a long punt that rolled to the one-yard line, Brady dropped back...and threw an interception on the first play of a desperation drive.

It was a disappointing end to a disappointing game for New England. But for Brady, that interception may have been the end of his journey with the team.

For the first time in his career, Brady will be a free-agent heading into the off-season. And at 42-years-old, his position on the team, despite his illustrious career accomplishments, is anything but guaranteed.

After the game, Patriots head coach Bill Belichick was terse on what happens next.

"Right now we just finished a game. So, we're focused on this game, OK?" he told a reporter who asked if the Patriots will bring Brady back next season.

Brady was warmer than his coach, but he didn't have much to add about what his future holds.

"So, I’m very blessed and I don’t know what the future looks like and I’m not going to predict it," he told reporters after the game. "So, I wish we would have won tonight and wish we would have done a lot of things better over the course of the season, but we just didn’t get the job done."

He added that the chances of him retiring are "hopefully unlikely."

If this is it for Brady in New England, it may seem like a cruel farewell to a storied career. But it's the nature of the business. Brady is aging and athletes are only as valuable as their ACL's. And in a league that's nicknamed "Not For Long" for how short the careers of its athletes are, Brady has been maybe the biggest anomaly the game has ever seen.

But even the great ones have to have a final curtain call.

No matter what happens next, Brady’s legacy is already cemented. He’s the best player in the history of the Patriots, a six-time Super Bowl champion, probably the greatest quarterback to ever live and arguably the best professional athlete in the history of Boston sports.

But after Saturday’s loss, his future is as cloudy as the mist that surrounded the place he’s called home for 20 consecutive seasons.