All the surprise story QBs this year(Ryan, Flacco, Cassel, Pennington) are on well coached teams with good to great running games. Cassel is prolly on the team with the worst running game of the four, but he has Welker and Moss, that more than compensates. Rather than trying to trade or draft a messiah QB the Jets should focus on being a well coached team with a good to great running game. Sort of like Miami.
NE to Franchise Cassell No surprise here and it guarantees the Jets can never get him. Now they trade him out of the division if Brady is ok. "The New England Patriots have decided to ensure that quarterback Matt Cassel won't be an unrestricted free agent, as scheduled in March. Sources told ESPN senior NFL analyst Chris Mortensen that the Patriots will use a franchise tag on Cassel that will give the team two options: Trade him if all goes well with Tom Brady's rehabilitation from a knee injury or keep him because all is not well with Brady. The Patriots' intention to franchise Cassel was first reported by the National Football Post. That would mean the Patriots would have about $29 million in salary cap space tied up in two quarterbacks, with Brady earning almost $15 million and Cassel guaranteed over $14 million. However, the cap jumps to $123 million per team, which gives the Patriots $94 million to manage the rest of their roster." http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=3809444
I don't want Patriot trash I would like to see what we have in Clemens and Ratliff before going the Free agent route. Or Drafting a guy like Bradford
The Chiefs did it with Jared Allen last year. It's up to the player and his agent to go to the league if they feel he is just getting franchised to trade. More than likely, the Pats have already been talking to Cassel and his agent about this. BTW, the cost for signing a franchised player is 2 1st round picks.... the Lions have more than that.
Or maybe they are just franchising him to prevent him from going to the Jets and in an effort to get value in return as part of a trade. Whatever you need to tell yourself to get to sleep.
They could never prove that they're franchising him simply to trade him away due to Brady's injury. Cassel is insurance right now, so if Brady rehabs and can come back, we trade Cassel for some serious picks, if Brady can't come back then we at least know we have a good QB to manage the games for us next year. The best lawyer in the world wouldn't prove that the Pats only franchised Cassel to seek compensation in a trade.
