Patriot Moves...

When news came down yesterday afternoon that the Patriots had decided to trade Matt Cassel as part of the Mike Vrabel deal to Kansas City which was announce Friday I was struck with two thoughts: 1. Brady's knee must be fine and 2. we had better have gotten paid off in this thing.

I'll take the first one first. Once the NFL announced that the cap was going up this offseason, keeping two quarterbacks making $14 million apiece wasn't so far-fetched. However, even with the cap going up, that's a lot of money to be tied up in one position, especially since you can only play one at a time. But, until the Patriots were sure that Brady's knee was going to be fine, there was no way that Cassel was going anywhere. I guess that answers that question.

The second thought is the reason I'm not happy with this trade. All the Patriots got in return for these two players was a second round pick. We should have gotten a lot more. OK, I understand that with Vrabel moving up in age it could simply be a situation where I think he means more to the Patriots than he would to other teams in the league. That happens all the time in sports. He's perfect for this system so we view him as a better player than the rest of the league, who just sees a 34 year-old linebacker entering the last year of his deal. And Cassel only has a year of starting on his resume, so his value probably isn't as high as the Patriots would have liked it to be. Obviously, I wasn't expecting multiple first rounders. But, being more realistic this still should have brought in multiple middle round picks as well. A 2nd, 5th and conditional 4th next year would have made me much happier with the way this deal went down.

If I'm a Kansas City fan, I'm thrilled here. You got two great locker room guys and two solid pros and all it cost you was a 2nd round draft pick and cap space, which you had in spades anyway. Now, a word of warning: there is a reason that Cassel was almost cut in the preseason. No one remembers this now, but people were mildly surprised that it was Matt Gutierrez that was the last QB cut at the end of camp instead of Cassel. He didn't exactly wow everyone in preseason. And the team had plans to bring in Chris Simms to be Brady's backup, but when Brady got hurt Week 1 they didn't think he would have time to learn the system and had to go with the guy who had been a backup here for 4 years. Let's just remember that next year Cassel will be throwing to Dwayne Bowe, not Randy Moss. If Pioli doesn't make a couple more moves and get some help around the guy then it won't matter how great this deal looks in March.

-Now, to the off-field activity. When I was working at Gillette Stadium we were always working on Saturdays, even in the off-season. There would always be a party with a high maintenance guest who would require we come in and just double-check what we've already double-checked. But the one day that the staff wanted us no where near the place was the day they had cheerleading try-outs. Of course, the one day that we would have happily gone in to help console the girls who didn't make the squad was the one day that the higher-ups made sure there was no need for us. It always would bum me out that I couldn't go watch this spectacle... until today. Maybe I wasn't missing that much after all. Sorry, Shelley, I don't think it's gonna happen for you.

-Oh, and hey, I finally dug the Christmas lights out from under the remaining snow yesterday and got them stored away. Just made it in before March... and the foot of snow we're allegedly getting on Monday.