Nov 17th 2008 2:30PM by Ryan Wilson (author feed)
Filed under: Patriots, AFC East, NFL Fans, NFL CoachingI’ll admit to being baffled by the idea that Matt Cassel, after a half-season of mediocre football, will be in line for a big payday come the offseason. Mantzouranis does a splendid job of explaining why it’ll probably happen, but $9 million per, which is what Peter King suggested last night on NBC’s , is an insane notion.

According to Football Outsiders, heading into Week 11, Cassel ranked 27th in QB efficiency behind Sage Rosenfels, Dan Orlovsky and Seneca Wallace. Of course, this doesn’t include his masterful, “death by 1000 two-yard passes” effort last Thursday night, but one above-average performance doesn’t suddenly make him an NFL starter, does it?

Well, King puts forth an idea in today’s MMQB column, and NFL.com’s Adam Schefter mentions it as well: Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels will almost certainly get a few head-coaching offers this spring, and assuming he accepts one of them, he might want to bring Cassel along with him as package deal. I can see the preseason marketing material already: “Josh and Matt will save [insert name of chronically underachieving NFL franchise] one dump-off pass at a time!”

Anyway, Schefter’s take:Continue Reading