The Renaissance of Matthew Brendan Cassel?

Why does the collective IQ of Pro Football Writers seem to dip 25% leading up to the draft each year?

Every year reams and reams are written about the NFL Draft leading up to it with Mock drafts, "Insiders", "Expert" analysis and (my personal favorite) quoting "anonymous team sources" only to have the real draft come along and resemble these lists and locks not at all. One particularly absurd storyline concerns college kids moving up and down draft boards. Whose draft boards are the moving on? New England's? Green Bay's? Tampa Bay's? Uh, no. The only boards they are moving around on are sportswriter's which, along with $2.50, will get you a cup of coffee at Starbuck's. They are utterly worthless.

There are stories to be written (like this one) however they require research, qualitative and quantitative assessment abilities, a functioning IQ and some effort compared to their "Mock drafts" which require only engaging the average sportswriter's favorite pastime: Shooting their mouths of about what they think. Case in point, this year's version of the Minnesota Vikings headed up by GM (since 2012) Rick Spielman, first year head coach Mike Zimmer and former head coach and current OC Norv Turner. All three are inheriting carryover from previous incumbents, although to different degrees, and need to use this off-season to try to get a 5-10-1 team back to the play off after a one year absence. Let us start with some background.

Please note that all stats are courtesy of:

http://www.pro-football-reference.com/

and are used with the following caveat: Stats don't mean much but they do provide some data that can be used for qualitative analysis, particularly in a relative or objective manner rather a subjective one, to indicate trends and illustrate points of view. They are of little use without context and may be used "exactly wrong" however they are what we have to work with. Doubtless there are "better" stats available nevertheless pro-football-reference.com is very good, free to all and easy to use.

In January of 2012 the Vikings were coming off a dreadful season. Donavan McNabb's career had ended ignobly in October after starting out 1-5, quarterback-of-the future Christian Ponder fared just as poorly bringing the team in at 3-13 with a QB rating in the 70's, Adrian Peterson was out with a bad ACL tear and the defence ended up ranked 31st. Rick Spielman was promoted to GM right after the season and drafted Matt Kalil, Harrison Smith and Blair as well as signing fullback Jerome Felton. Adrian Peterson returned with a vengeance to rush for over 2.000 yards while the Vikings went 10-6 and earned a wild card. It seemed like things were turned around but on further review....

Ponder had managed to nudge his QB rating just over 80 however he only managed to average a single TD pass per game the first 15 weeks (game 16 was played against Green Bay's "second team") and managed to miss the play off game entirely. Joe Webb, a wide receiver, did his best against the Packer "first team" but only managed to complete 11 passes in a pretty one-sided 24-10 loss. In the off-season Spielman drafted Sharrif Floyd, Xavier Rhodes, and Cordarrelle Patterson and signed the subject of this story, Pro Bowl QB Matt Cassel, to a glorified one year/$3.4 million "prove it" contract.

Matthew Brendan Cassel had had a very unusual career up to this point in time. Recruited by USC, Cassel spent two years behind Carson Palmer and was his back-up when he won the Heisman. In his infinite wisdom, Uncle Pete Carroll decided the following year that NFL washout and flake in general Matt Leinart would start ahead of Cassel and at one point had Cassel playing tight end! However it is that which probably made Belichick take notice of and ultimately draft the kid who never started in college to be Tom Brady's back-up in New England where he became the only Brady back-up in 14 years to start a meaningful game, Actually, he started 15 in 2008, the final year of his rookie deal after completing only 22 passes the preceding 3 years.

In 2008 the Patriots were coming of an undefeated regular season which they were looking to repeat when in Kansas City, a bizarrely mercurial constant in the Cassel story, on opening day Bernard Pollard went low on Brady at 7:38 of the first quarter and Tom Terrific was out for the year. The Chiefs were so bad the Patriots won anyway and after taking the first team reps the following week Cassel played well enough to beat Brett Farve and the Jets 19-10. Just as Patriot fans were starting to feel a bit less uneasy Miami came to town and inflicted the "Wildcat" on the NFL. Saving it until week 3 against their fierce rival the Dolphins had their way that day which ultimately decided who won the AFC East that year, the last time New England did not.

The Patriots dispatched the useless 49ers with ease next but the following week in San Diego Cassel did not play well against Norv Turner's Chagers while Philip Rivers did and New England was down 27-3 going into the 4th quarter, 3-2 after it and everyone wondered if Cassel wasn't going to be able to pull it off after all. He hadn't started since high school and it was looking as if it might be a long season without Brady. Nothing could have been further from the truth as for the rest of the season not a single loss would be able to be attributed to Cassel.

The next week brought the Denver Broncos to Foxboro where Cassel destroyed hapless Jay Cutler 41-7 putting up a 136+ passer rating followed by an easy win over the Rams setting up the annual Indy game. Close throughout, Cassel was leading the Patriots down the field trailing 18-15 in the fourth quarter when with a little over 4 minutes left on second and two David Thomas appeared to not hear the whistle and finished his block. Third and one on the Colt 31, a very makeable field goal for Gostkowski, became 3rd & 16 at the 46 and the game was over for New England, now sporting 3 losses with the season only half over. There was very little room left for error. For a QB with exactly 7 starts since high school playing at the NFL level, that was pressure.

Buffalo went down easily the following week however the next Monday night brought the 6-3 Jets to New England in a battle for first place. In one of the best ever MNF match-ups. With the Jets up 24-13 with 4 minutes left in the third Cassel threw a perfect deep ball to Jabar Gaffney behind the coverage for what looked like a certain score only to have Gaffney not catch it. It was perfect, dropped directly over his shoulder in stride, hitting his hands. Undaunted, Cassel kept the heat on the Jets and after a quick Jets 3-and-out he drove the Patriots 78 yards and completed the two-point toss to enter the 4th quarter down only 24-21. A forced fumble on the next NY drive led to a Gostkowski field goal to tie it.

But Brett Farve wasn't done yet. A 67 yard drive of his own put the Jets up 31-24 and with a minute 4 seconds left in the game, the table was set for a fantastic finish but.....this wasn't Tom Brady under center, it was Matt Cassel making his 9th start since high school going up against the likes of Revis Island and yet....8 plays later Cassel spiked the ball on the Jets 16 yard line with 9 seconds left. Last play off the game. Randy Moss. Darrelle Revis. End Zone. Corner. Cassel delivers the perfect pass with Revis draped over Moss where only Randy can get it. Right there and then Bill Belichick very well cost them the 2008/9 super bowl as he elected not to go for two points again but rather take the tie and chance overtime. Bad choice. The Patriots never had the ball again as NY won the toss and methodically drove the ball into New England territory where they simply kicked an easy field goal.

Cassel was outstanding the rest of the way, putting together back-to-back 400+ yard games, 5 QBR's well over 100 in the last seven games with one exception: Neither he nor the team could handle the monsoon rains November 30th as the Steelers handed them their 5th and last loss of the season. In that one game, Cassel’s QBR fell from 95 to 89 FOR THE ENTIRE YEAR. In the end, the Dolphins, Jets and Patriots all finished at 11-5 but because New England had the tougher schedule and lost to the two AFC division winners they faced (that the Jets and Dolphins did not have to face) while NY and Miami lost to NFC teams they lost the tiebreaker on conference record. Nevertheless Matt Cassel had arrived. Or so I thought. I had no idea how short memories in the NFL are.

At this juncture I would like to address the point of the 2014 draft. If anyone thinks that Teddy Bridgewater will ever be able to match Cassel's performance in that Jets game, despite the fact that he can't even get his wobbly ball down the field, let alone possess the ability to thread the needle against the likes of Revis, I would like to suggest that you seek psychiatric help immediately. And if you think Cassel somehow "lost it" somewhere, ask Mike Tomlin if he would rather face the Vikings with Cassel, whose win in London cost Pittsburgh a play off spot last year, or Bridgewater, wait until he stops laughing and see if he doesn't hit you. This isn't a real conversation. Not only is Bridgewater (literally, for now) not in the same league as Cassel, it is as if they don't even play the same sport. After what the Vikings went through with Ponder.......

In the spring of 2009 the Patriots slapped the franchise tag on Cassel guaranteeing him a raise of about 14 million dollars for the sole purpose of ensuring that they received some compensation from Matt's new team. I thought that the Patriots should have kept him until Brady was 100% ready to return but they wanted their compensation for the 2009 draft. Out in Kansas City, the "Twilight Zone" of the NFL, the Chiefs were coming off a dismal 2-14 season when former Vice President of Player Personnel for the Patriots from 2001 to 2008 Scott Pioli took over as GM.  In the summer, he negotiated a six-year, $62.7 million contract extension with Cassel, organized a trade with former colleague Thomas Dimitroff, which sent longtime Chiefs tight end Tony Gonzalez to Atlanta and sent longtime RB Larry Johnson to the Bengals after seven games.

The Chiefs won twice as many games in 2009 going a paltry 4-12 as Cassel struggled mightily with a team devoid of offensive prowess, passing for less than 100 yards on three occasions, achieving a negative value for adjusted yards per attempt in two of them. He did manage at least one good winning outing beating the 9-7 Steelers in a good match and thoroughly dominated the Browns in December only to have his defence and special teams give up 2 KR TD's and a 70 yard running play that went for a score in a heartbreaking loss.  Leading a very bad team Matt limped home with a QBR of 70.  In hindsight, Matt likely learned a lot about himself that year as over the course of two seasons he encountered the entire spectrum of the NFL experience except for the post season.

Following the season, Pioli hired Belichick Alum's Charlie Weis as offensive coordinator and Romeo Crennel as defensive coordinator and after a decent draft KC went in to the 2010 season with a much improved defence and at least some hope. After squeaking by San Diego and Cleveland to open the season 2-0 despite sub-par efforts Cassel hit his stride in game three annihilating the 49ers and went on from there. A five game winning streak clinched the division with a week to go and Matt Cassel finished the season with a QBR well into the 90's, a play off berth and a Pro-Bowl selection.

In 2011 however, another setback almost derailed his career entirely. After starting the season 4-4, Von Miller and Elvis Dumervil joined up to sack Cassel in the fourth quarter and when he went to get up his throwing hand was broken. Matt had surgery the following week and was out for the season. At this point in Cassel’s career, even though he had spent a season leading a very poor 4-12 2009 KC squad, Matt’s Career QBR was 83, roughly the same as Jay Cutler’s was heading into last season and the same as Matt Stafford’s career QBR, with a 28-26 record.

Then came 2012. A broken throwing hand is a tricky situation for an NFL quarterback and Cassel had a devil of a time making the adjustment. After the surgery the hand is a different hand structurally and it takes time to adjust to it, especially when a few inches can mean the difference between a touchdown and a pick six. Brilliant in the first half, accuracy could escape him entirely in the second. Add to that a team that wasn’t very good to begin with disintegrating around him and you get the fans booing him out of town. Cassel’s highest QBR of the season (85) barely surpassed his average which included the brutal 70 year.

Kansas City seems to be the “Twilight Zone” of the NFL. After a 9-0 start last year, soft schedule notwithstanding, the Chiefs finished out the season 2-6 and blew a 38-10 lead in their lone play off appearance. This year they will likely revert to 7-9, 4-12 or 2-14 – It is what they do. Next Year Alex Smith will join the long line of QB’s who has watched the franchise disintegrate around him.

In 2013 Rick Spielman signed Cassel with Minnesota on a one year prove-it deal and Matt was back in form but the tandem of Frazier and Musgrave liked him not at all and chose to stake their jobs on Christian Ponder. It turned out to be a very bad bet for them. After 3 straight loses to open the season with Ponder, the third one being to former Tom Brady understudy Brian Hoyer’s Cleveland Browns, Frazier finally started a former Tom Brady understudy of his own and Cassel put up a QBR of 123 in beating the Pittsburgh Steelers at Wembley. Indeed had it not been for Cassel’s deep TD pass to Jennings to seal the win the Steelers would have ended up going to the post season as their furious comeback fell short by that score exactly.

With their bye week to regroup followed by a home game vs the 1-3 Panthers and a road trip to 0-5 New York it was looking like the Vikings just might claw their way back to 0.500 when tragedy struck. During preparation for the Carolina game Adrian Peterson’s two year old son was murdered. Valiantly Adrian tried to go on but was only able to rush for about 60 yards on 10 carries as the Vikings went down 35-10. Frazier used all of this to somehow justify putting Josh Freeman in against the now 0-6 Giants who were eternally grateful as in the most dreadful MNF tilt ever the GMen won their first game of the season.

After that disaster, the Vikings sat at 1-5, Cassel was 1-1, Freeman 0-1 and Ponder 0-3 so Frazier in his infinite wisdom decided Minnesota’s best chance was to go with the guy with zero wins and the most losses. It worked out great – for the opposition. Minnesota lost to the Packers and the Cowboys and was losing to the lowly Washington Redskins 27-21 when Ponder was injured and left the game in the third quarter.  Cassel came in and the Vikings put up 10 unanswered to win 31-27. And yet, the following week Ponder again started however by the time he was pulled after yet another pick six Seattle was up 38-13 in the fourth Quarter. The Vikings did outscore the Seahawks 7-3 the rest of the way but most of Seattle’s starters were likely already in the showers by that time.

Amazingly, some would say unbelievably, Ponder started yet again the following week despite the Vikings being 2-8 and Ponder either losing or leaving the game with Minnesota behind in every single game he played in. And he didn’t lose. Of course he didn’t win either as the Vikings wasted an opportunity to beat the Packers with Aaron Rodgers out of the lineup.  Scott Tolzien gave way to Matt Flynn who, severe tendonitis and all playing in his first game as a Packer since his record setting performance in 2011, partnered with Ponder for a thoroughly inept overtime resulting in a tie game. Ponder started one last time the following week against Chicago. By the time Cassel got under center in the third quarter the Vikings were behind (surprise, surprise, surprise Sgt. Carter) 13-7 however Matt was able to rally them from behind yet again for an overtime win.

With the Vikings now 3-8-1 and Cassel responsible for all three wins against his loss that tragic week against Carolina Frazier finally gave in and made Matt Cassel the starter in Minnesota. Cassel had the Vikings up 26-22 when the officials gave Baltimore the win on two very bad calls in the final drive. With 9 seconds left the Raven’s Marlon Brown was clearly bobbling the ball (you can look it up on Wikipedia -  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Cassel) on his way out of bounds however the official on the field overruled the replay official and the score stood for reasons unfathomable. It has been speculated that the win kept the Ravens in the play off hunt and thus helped boost subsequent television ratings.

Cassel finished out 2013 beating Nick Foles and the Eagles, in the midst of a play off dogfight themselves, where he surpassed Foles’s 103.5 QBR with a 116 of his own by a score of 48-30 and by beating Matt Stafford and the Lions on the last day of the season sandwiched around perhaps the teams poorest effort of the season in a 42-14 whopping by the Bengals. In the end, Cassel was responsible for all five Viking victories, the two lop-sided losses and the win over Baltimore that counted as a loss. Frazier and Musgrave were fired. Cassel exercised his option to void the final year on his deal at first opportunity. As soon as free-agency began Spielman went on the hook for $5.75 million to bring Cassel back for 2014.

So 2014 could be the year that Matt Cassel re-establishes himself as the quality starter that this writer has believed him to be ever since that Jets game all those years ago. It could be the year Matt Cassel goes back to the play off. It could be the season Cassel returns to the Pro Bowl. Looking at the Vikings schedule, with games against Brady and Brees during the first three weeks of the season it is almost impossible to envision Zimmer and Norv Turner starting a Teddy Bridgewater at QB against those two with Cassel on the bench however the same could have been said about Ponder last year and yet it happened. On the plus side, the Vikings get their bye week 10 and could conceivably run the table from there with their most difficult games early. At this time of year, everything is possible.