How about Brady?
I was thinking about it. I may actually make more sense to trade Brady than Cassel.
This is not to say I think Cassel is a better QB than Brady, his not. But simply the trade makes more sense.
Brady is worth more on the open market (in terms of picks).
And while I am pretty sure Brady hasn't had his last great game. There is a very decent possibility he has seen his last 16 game start season. He has a bad knee, and two bad ankles. Nobody ever fully heals, even if he is fully recovered for training camp he will always be at a high risk of re-injury on every sack. Cassel on the other hand hasn't taken that many that he is banged up.
Cassel will cost less on the cap. So take the money saved and the picks players acquired in the trade and beef up the defense. Go back to playing pre-2007 Belichick football.
And if Cassel goes down the drop off between Matt and Kevin is not as great as Tom and Kevin. But it wouldn't matter cause we won't be a team that depends on the QB a ton of TDs to win. We will go back to being a defense wins championship team.
Fact is we need to invest more in the backup QB if Tom is the starter than if Matt is. And the starting QB costs more.
We're still on this? I mean, come on.
First off, Brady is worth more on the open market than Cassel for a reason: he's much better. LeKevin Smith has played well this season, should we trade Seymour or Wilfork and let him start? Pierre Woods was adequate filing in for Adalius, maybe its time to ship AD for picks? Get my point?
Second, talk about trading low - yes, Brady is worth more on the open market, but could his value be any lower than coming off of knee surgery? On the flip side, trading Cassel now would be trading him high. No doubt Cassel has proved himself and will be a good QB somewhere, but one can't help but wonder how he would fare without Moss & Wes Welker. When you compare his season to Brady's last season, it becomes apparent they're not in the same league.
Furthermore, Cassel's going to cost only a few mill less a year than Brady. Brady - according to Football Outsiders - had the highest "Value over Replacement" of all time last season. He also averaged 12 points more a game with the same weapons than Cassel is this season. I can't think of another player in the league aside from Peyton Manning who could possibly be worth a 12 point drop off in production to a team. Is a few mill a year worth sacrificing 12 offensive points a game?
Lastly, as for putting picks and money into the defense, for all the complaining about the defense this season, up until Adalius Thomas got injured, it was averaging only giving up 2 points more per game than last season. This was with an injured Rodney Harrison, Deltha O'Neal at CB, and integrating 2 rookies (Guyton and Mayo) into the mix. I don't think the defensive outlook is as grim as people make it, in fact, with a good draft and a good offseason, the Pats seemed prime to put together one of their more solid defenses in recent years.
Not to mention we owe Brady 16 milli in bonus money, so unless I'm not understanding the repercussions of trading a guy, I think we'd owe him that money.
So we'd be paying 16 million dollars to trade one of the best quarterbacks of all time to pay his backup a few million less per year, sacrificing roughly 12 offensive points a game, in order to get perhaps one or two more day 1 picks (understanding that the draft is still a crapshoot and only half of Day 1 picks even make it in this league).
Tell me how any of that sounds like a good idea to you.
EDIT: OK, so after reading a few articles, and maybe someone like Miguel can correct me if I'm wrong here - but to trade Brady, we would then have to pay off the remainder of his signing bonus in the season in which he was traded...so, what I said above is true, trading Brady would make NO financial sense and whatever savings Cassel would have would be more than undone.
