Author: Staff (Page 85 of 142)

Who knows? Cassel is coming off another injury, and he’s mediocre to begin with. The Chiefs are getting a lot of love from some analysts, but Cassel is still a huge question mark.

Also, here’s this nugget about the Chiefs:

There’s no doubt that there’s enormous risk involved in drafting a quarterback in the early rounds, and the Chiefs had other issues facing them in recent years. But the team just has to get it in its mind that it’s a risky but necessary part of building a Super Bowl contender. This city has been force-fed free-agent and traded-for passers for more than a generation, and other than reaching the AFC title game with a rented Joe Montana in 1994, it has been more than a generation since Chiefs fans have had a home-grown quarterback to embrace as their own.

When Miami took Ryan Tannehill with the eighth overall draft pick in April, the Chiefs became the NFL team that has gone the longest without selecting a quarterback in the first round. That’s a statistic almost as embarrassing as having gone 18 seasons without a playoff victory. Yet the clock keeps ticking, the calendar keeps turning, and the Chiefs refuse to embrace a fact most successful franchises see as obvious: You just don’t win big without drafting and developing your own quarterback.

So when the Chiefs traded a second-round pick in 2009 for Cassel and aging linebacker Mike Vrabel, Cassel was seen by many as just the latest placeholder until the team gathers its nerve and selects a quarterback with its top pick. Cassel also represented an additional face of the New England invasion, and it didn’t help that he showed only a bland, watered-down version of his personality in his first two years with the Chiefs.

You have to get a quarterback if you want to win it all, and it doesn’t look like Cassel is the guy. KC needs their running game to come back strong this year, and we’ll see if Peyton Hillis flakes out again.