I heard Kansas City Chiefs GM Scott Pioli on Sirius XM NFL Radio on Wednesday talking about the Senior Bowl, the upcoming draft and looking ahead to 2012, particularly with the quarterback situation. Pioli indicated that the Chiefs would talk to Kyle Orton, an impending free agent, but throughout the entire interview I got the impression that Matt Cassel is the man heading into next season, which shouldn't be a big surprise at this point.
On that note, there was some interesting Cassel talk on 810 WHB this morning. ESPN's Jeff Chadiha was the guest and both he and the host Steven St. John, had some very interesting nuggets. I'll present it here without comment (and thanks to Clay Wendler for the heads up on the interview):
Steven St. John: "I've heard that once Kyle Orton took that team over and became the starting quarterback, there were a lot of people in that organization, and even in the locker room, that had that reaction like, 'Oh wow this is what it's like to have a really good team leader.' No, seriously. 'OK, this is what it's like to have the quarterback as the real leader you can get behind.'"
Jeff Chadiha: "I can say this now because he's gone but I remember having a conversation with Todd Haley about last year and he said that when his dad came in -- and his dad's been a longtime personnel guy with the Steelers and obviously saw a lot of talented players come in -- he said when his dad watched Cassel closely the first time they had him here, he told Todd, 'I don't think you can win with this guy.' Now, in year two when everything was bright and rosy, things changed a little bit but that was the first impression that Haley's dad had and his dad was a personnel man for a long time."