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Its simple: The VAST MAJORITY of QBs taken outside the top 15 picks of the first round are abject failures. Theres no indication that O'Connel will ever be able to play at an NFL level, despite the fact that Cassel can.
Could you please provide where you get your facts for this? Also, what do you consider "abject failure"? Why don't you give us a short run down of the QBs drafted from 2000 to 2006 who were drafted from the middle of the 1st round to the end of the 3rd who were "abject failures" in your mind. I am limiting to those years because players drafted in 2007 and 2008 haven't been in the league long enough to make a decision on unless they are out of the league.
For me, I consider the player an "abject failure" if that player was either cut outright. Players who become permanent back-ups play a very important role and should be considered failures.
Cassel's success does not guarantee O'Connel's success. It does not even mean that O'Connel has a better chance of success. Unless they're all a product of the system, the two are simply unrelated.
All QBs are products of the system they play in. All of them. Every single one. So to act like being a "product of the system" is a bad thing is just plain foolish. The reality is that players like Marino, Montana, Young, Bradshaw, Plunkett, etc, were successful because of the systems they were in. Anyone who says otherwise doesn't understand the game of football.
If you compare O'Connell's attributes to Cassel's attributes, O'Connell seems to be better than Cassel athletically. Where there is question for us laymen is in O'Connell's mental attributes because we've never seen him play outside of a few pre-season games. By all accounts, though, O'Connell matches Cassel there. Is it wrong to HOPE that O'Connell will be better than Cassel. Nope. Its not wrong. Nor are they unrelated. Only time will tell if O'Connell will have similar succeess in the Patriots system as Brady and Cassel have had before him.