No more excuses Matt!

must be Sum Yung Boi from a (far) Eastern University

Pioli has not bought in YET

Hard to say where the speed-versus-power tipping point is found. There’s more than one way to skin a cat. It’s great to have a middle that forms an unshakeable pivot for your defense, but the stronger of a pivot it is, the less it likes running from sideline to sideline. All it might take is Cassel having that one more area throw available, and a larger area, to boot. Or having that one more guy who runs a great route and wins the tie for the ball.

Football games last about 3 hours. After 2 hours, the elephants were limping off the field, exhausted, and suddenly Alexander’s heavy cavalry were the biggest, baddest players on the field, and the victory was total. Heh. You’d think the team with elephants would have the edge on a sloppy field…

While the roll-out might be the changeup for SOME teams, the straight drop might (ought?) to be the changeup for the Chiefs, working mainly because your style of play conditioned the D away from bull-rushing up the gut.

Like I said, just my opinion.

It is a process to upgrade the offensive line with mobile huge men

but at what point is powering-up to defeat that stronghold no longer worth the trouble? Or why not just be good eNOUGH to run the freakin’ legs off anybody big enough to manhandle you. KC commonly made NTs irrelevant just by running around them last season. Give Cassel big targets for area throws on both flanks – CHECK, and again, make those ginormous NTs irrelevant and enjoy a power advantage against the guys quick enough to cause Cassel problems in space.

You can always go back to something more straight ahead if defenses go smaller and quicker against your original offense.

In sum, what I saw last year was a VERY well-coached O-Line comprised of some good, smart linemen. The weak link was still the passing game on the skill player end of things. You have to make ‘em pay on the back end when they blitz you. KC went from 4-12 to 10-6 because Cassel-to-Bowe made teams pay on the back end. Cassel-to-? was why that division-winning record didn’t culminate in playoff victory.

I think the idea is to avoid those as much as possible. And Haley’s not afraid to run a screen or a draw in that situation, because Charles and McCluster CAN get the first if you spread the defense out and get either one of ’em the ball in space.

And if the D leaves its elephants on the field in 3rd-and-11, I’m still moving Cassel around, and STILL play-faking, even if it’s stupid for the LB to bite, Jamaal can make ‘em bite ANYway. More likely, though, the D goes into nickel in that situation, and it’s not about elephants, anymore.

Kind of like using a pair of jacks and a bunch of 2-by-4s to build a scaffold. You get nowhere just working one jack or the other. You have to raise both ends if you want to raise the platform.

I always talk about getting OL first, then the rest, but a smarter man (for instance, Pioli) appears to try to get better across the board, a little at a time.

And I was one of those people. But not anymore.

It looks from Matt’s performance last year in comparison to the previous one that he is at least owed the benefit of the doubt. Carry on as you will, oh seer of gloom and doom. The Ides of March are long since past and Cassel remains. What more of magic do you require?

the Breaston signing. Bringing in Kevin Curtis for the playoff game (unfortunately singular) spoke volumes about where they thought they were..

As usual, it seems less aggressive than what other teams have done, especially now that we’ve seen some of the FA movement.

Could it be, possibly, that all us Cassel apologists actually see key weaknesses in the supporting cast that we feel are more important?

As a fairly longtime NFL watcher, I’ve seen tons of teams go on a QB-HB merry-go-round and never make progress, beyond us fans concluding that the organization sucks at choosing QB/HB, when the main problem with the org is they put QBs and HBs into situations that aren’t conducive to their success.

Guys like Aiken and I want to see the TEAM make more progress before making a final judgement on Cassel.

Have I seen things I’d like to have seen Cassel do differently? Yes. No question. BUT I see continual improvement from Cassel AND there are things – like forcing the ball into coverage against the 3-man rush – that a very good QB might do, especially if the pass rush has been getting to him on previous plays, and the one receiver he thinks has a chance to make a play on the ball zigs when Cassel thought he’d zag.

Do I wish that Cassel grasped the situation better? Sure I do. But after the D successfully sells him on the idea that quick pass is his main option, especially if they’re dirtying his jersey on a regular basis, these are the kinds of mistakes that are made. And what I see as the problem is his lack of a quick target when the DID blitz, earlier.

Pioli has made two fairly significant moves to address the problem from the WR direction. That’s why a ’Post entitled “No more excuses Matt!” is, while grammatically incorrect, quite timely.

Guys like Aiken and I are going to be putting Mattie under a microscope this season. Cassel is more likely than ever to

1. win a playoff game
2. be seen as THE weak link on an otherwise well-rounded team.

I personally feel that QBs that are good enough and can make all the throws are less rare than most fans think. Again, I come back to Kurt Warner, who was GREAT for a nice little stretch, but couldn’t win a job before, and lost his job not long after. Why? Because Vermeil built a great team as a platform for a strong-armed QB, and, as it deteriorated, someone younger, with better feet looked a lot better than Warner. What Martz missed was that Warner was the same guy, but the team wasn’t the same team…

… how Cassel is the logical product of a team that’s well-constructed.