In less than a week it will be inflated football season again, which is one we actually can enjoy. But because of the residual effects of deflated football season, this will be a training camp like no other in the Bill Belichick/Tom Brady Era.

Ever since two games into the 2001 season, this has been Brady’s team. Even when he blew out his knee in the opening game of 2008 and backup Matt Cassell went 11-5 with an 18-1 team, there was never any question whose team the Patriots were.

In one sense that remains true today. Brady may be suspended for the first four games of the season as an outgrowth of the worst investigation since Inspector Clouseau was working ineptly for the French Surete in “The Pink Panther,” but does anyone think for a minute he won’t be back Oct. 9 to the dismay of the Cleveland Browns?

When you look at it that way, nothing will really change this summer, but in another sense everything will be different because it has to be, and managing that could be a daunting task for Belichick.

Brady is legendary for guarding practice reps and game appearances more intently than the Secret Service guards the President. Belichick well knows how ornery he can be if he feels he’s not getting the practice time he needs, and so has been reluctant to pull Brady even with double-digit leads.

Yet this summer, Belichick is not preparing Tom Brady for the Sept. 11 season opener in Arizona, and therein lies the horns of a dilemma.

With Brady sent to the cooler for the first month of the regular season, the Patriots will be Jimmy Garappolo’s team even while they’re also Brady’s. So how will practice time with the first team be divided and will it meet the needs of a young quarterback who has never thrown a pass that mattered in the NFL and the demands of a very insistent veteran?

The same holds true for the four preseason games, especially the third one against the Carolina Panthers in Charlotte. That game is generally viewed as the audition for the new season, so who starts the game? More importantly, who spends the most time on the field with the starters?

Surely the snaps taken with the first unit will be carefully catalogued and well chronicled by a hyperventilating media. This will be a tricky matter for Belichick to maneuver even if Brady is understanding, which he may not be. Petulance seems to increase as quarterbacks age, their patience wearing thin as the years erode the amount of time they have left to win more championships. Turning practice reps over to someone else is not often high on their agenda except on days their shoulder feels like the AC joint has been filled with sawdust.

If Garappolo struggles early in preseason will it require he get more practice reps and playing time, time which will be taken from a guy who is legendary for wanting to take every snap in every practice and every game? And what will it mean for the starting offense in general as Belichick prepares a new starter at quarterback for the season opener for the first time in 16 years?

Will the starters make the usually limited number of preseason appearances or will Belichick feel the need to have them together with Garappolo deeper into preseason games than normal? If so, what of Brady?

It seems unlikely Brady will ever be seen out there directing a make-shift lineup of scrubs and duds, because who would risk the game’s premier quarterback in such relatively meaningless circumstances? Yet every snap he takes with the regulars is one less young Garappolo gets at a time when the latter will need every rep he can to prepare for his first September close-up.

Some have already tried to spin the understudy’s month-long turn in the starring role as a good thing, one that will allow Garappolo to gain valuable experience against live fire while Belichick has the opportunity to better evaluate whether he’s the quarterbacking future of the Patriots. Such logic usually comes from the mind of Pollyanna.

There have even been a few who have tried to argue this is a good thing because the 39-year-old Brady gets a month to rest his soup bone. Trust me, starting quarterbacks don’t need rest in September. They need it in December, after the wear and tear of another season of making several thousand throws has taken its toll and his shoulder feels like someone has been dropping bowling balls on it for four months.

So how will Bill Belichick handle this dilemma? No one knows, just as no one who is honest has the slightest idea whether Jimmy Garappolo will be up to the task handed to him by an NFL justice system administered by Judge Roy Bean.

That is what will make this an unusually interesting summer. Normally the only thing one looks for at training camp in August is that the chief medical officer not too often be seen at work.

This year however we’ll have inflated interest in how often the starting quarterback is at work. Both the real one and the raw one.