Matt Cassel

By Dalton Del Don

Forget about whether Terrell Owens is released, where T.J. Houshmandzadeh signs or if Brett Favre is finally retired for good, the biggest offseason story is what will happen to Matt Cassel.

Not only did Mel Kiper recently call him better than Matthew Stafford or Mark Sanchez, he also said Cassel was the superior quarterback to Aaron Rodgers and Jay Cutler. Now, I fully admit I’m a card-carrying member of the Cutler fan club (OK, I actually started the club), but he did throw the second most picks in the NFL last season and hasn’t quite progressed like I expected. Still, he remains a budding superstar, so this assumption seems pretty far out there. Cassel did impress with a 14:4 TD:INT ratio and a 7.5 YPA mark over the second half of last year, but he also took 47 sacks and played in a system highly conducive to posting nice looking stats.

Cassel no doubt improved as a player as the season wore on, and there’s still plenty of room for further growth as well. However, having Randy Moss, Wes Welker and most importantly, Bill Belichick at his disposal should not be overlooked. Greg Cosell recently wrote an intriguing article highlighting the fact New England went almost exclusively to the shotgun formation after realizing Cassel’s weaknesses. In fact, over the season’s final six games, he operated out of the shotgun spread an amazing 88 percent of the time, so any team willing to trade for him better be the right fit schematically.

NFL insider Mike Lombardi thinks it will take more than just a first round pick to acquire him, which seems about right. Of course, the Patriots will hold onto Cassel if they are truly worried about Tom Brady’s recovery from multiple knee surgeries, but after Cassel accepted the franchise tag ($14.65 million), he would actually count more against the cap than Brady ($14.62 million) for 2009. In all, that’s almost 25 percent of the team’s cap tied to just one position. Expect a trade to eventually happen, and while I do like Cassel’s future better than Stafford’s, buyer beware.


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2 responses to “Matt Cassel”

  1. Dreamweapon Avatar
    Dreamweapon

    Could not agree more. I laaaaaauuuugh at whoever pays through the nose for this guy. He was admirable, in a Matt Saracen sort of way, as an inexperienced guy thrust into the spotlight, but it is just me or are we talking about the guy who just took a team with an 18-game win streak in ’07 and returned almost all of their talent, and helmed them to a January watching games on TV? I’m sorry, is that now some great feat? If so, well, it’s a damned dismal tide, these ever-receding expectations. He’s not Jesus. He’s Brady. He’s not Manning or Favre, or even McNabb or Rivers. To me, even the notion that this guy is the best young QB outside of Matt Ryan in the entire league (and that is precisely what Kiper is saying if he says the guy is better than Rodgers or Cutler, as they, along with Ryan, seem to be the best 25-and-under talent at that position) is absurd. It’s almost enough to make me disregard Kiper’s professional opinions entirely. Maybe the guy is Matt Hasselbeck. Is that worth mortgaging your franchise to get? Because it seems like there are cheaper options in that tier.

    I just want to know if Bernard Pollard is getting a slice of that $15M, because he singlehandedly made Cassel a rich man. But for that single tackle, 95% of the league’s fans don’t even know his name right now. Pollard was pretty much the same as a lotto ticket, and like the cashier at the 7-11 who sold the winner a ticket, it seems only just that he get a taste.

  2. RotoScoop Avatar
    RotoScoop

    Ya, Kiper is taking a leap here. With Brady saying he’ll be ready for Week 1 today, a trade looks even more likely. Minnesota?

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