Kansas City Chiefs QB Matt Cassel Has To Start Going Deep

In 2009, Kansas City Chiefs QB Matt Cassel completed 55% of his passes. It was a major drop from his 2008 season with the New England Patriots when he completed 63.4% of his passes. Chiefs coach Todd Haley said at one point this offseason that anytime you're hitting over 65% of your passes, you're probably doing something right.

Well, Cassel has started completing more of his passes in the 2010 preseason. He's completed 75%, 73.7% and 60.9% of his passes in limited action thus far in the preseason. Those are very good numbers.

The problem? He hasn't gone deep.

Here are his passing numbers with the yards per attempt in parentheses.

• 6/8 - 25 yards (3.1)
• 14/19 - 125 yards (6.6)
• 14/23 - 85 yards (3.7)

"I think in every offense you want to have the ability to make big plays," Cassel said Tuesday afternoon. "Also, when you get those big chunk plays it makes it a lot easier to not go for second and third down each and every time. You want to have the ability to (make big plays) and there have been a few times where we have kind of missed opportunities throughout the preseason to have that happen."

It seems as if the Chiefs haven't even tried to go deep. I would say that's by design (since its preseason) but that was the case last year as well. Most of their top passing plays this preseason have been on run and catches.

"I think when you look at the preseason itself we haven’t really gone into a game in which we game planned and broken down all the film and gone into it," Cassel said, perhaps giving a reason the Chiefs haven't opened up the offense.

I don't think this is a game planning thing. It seems that it's similar to last year when the Chiefs were unable to stretch the field the majority of the time.

We'll see if things change in 2010 because that's something the Chiefs will have to do if the offense will become any sort of a threat.