FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- What unfolded Thursday night with the New England Patriots was so unbelievable that it felt like it was more fitting for a Hollywood script than a National Football League game.

Tom Brady was supposed to start, which Bill Belichick essentially confirmed about an hour before kickoff when he told Scott Zolak of 98.5 The Sports Hub in his weekly pregame interview that all of the team’s quarterbacks would play.

But no less than 30 minutes later, when players came out for warmups, Brady was headed in the other direction, to the parking lot.

What happened?

Some theorized that perhaps it was all calculated by Belichick to keep backup Jimmy Garoppolo on his toes as he prepares to start the first four games of the regular season. After all, Belichick always preaches the importance of being ready because one never knows when they might be called upon.

But this was no master plan from Belichick. Instead, it was the work of a pair of scissors.

Shortly after Thursday’s game between the Patriots and Bears kicked off, word broke that Brady had sliced his right thumb on a pair of scissors while trying to remove something from his cleats. It was later described as an accident and that Brady would be OK in time.

Enter Garoppolo.

“Pretty suddenly before the game, I didn’t think I was going to [start] and then some stuff came up and I got tossed in there,” Garoppolo said. “It was a good test, I guess.”

Garoppolo passed it decisively, finishing 16-of-21 for 181 yards with one touchdown and no interceptions, his best work coming at the end of the second quarter in leading the hurry-up offense to a touchdown drive.

When the game was over, he was asked if he had spoken to Brady.

“I haven’t even gotten a chance to yet,” he answered. “I found out literally right before the game, so it was pretty sudden.”

Belichick wasn’t interested in going into details about what happened to Brady, starting by stating the obvious, “I made the decision to just play Jimmy and Jacoby [Brissett].” When pressed about details of Brady slicing his thumb, Belichick said with a minor level of annoyance, “I made the decision for him not to play tonight.”

At the same time, Belichick seemed pleased with the way Garoppolo handled the sudden change.

“That’s part of football. Things happen that are unexpected, and he’s been prepared for that since the day he got here,” he said. “Sometimes things happen, things change, and you have to adjust to them. On offense, the quarterbacks, we refer to that as an audible.”

And with that, Belichick smiled.

This was an audible no one could have seen coming.