I was looking for the punchline to the thread, figuring the OP was looking to annoy (1) the pro-Bledsoe group and (2) the pro-Cassel group in a single thread. Apparently, this is a serious argument.
First, Bledsoe was not sacked excessively during the seasons he was at his best (an average of 1-2 times per game up to 1999), and he threw a ton of passes his first few years. The knock on him those years is he forced passes figuring he could get by on his arm. I am not going to cut and paste his career sack statistics so you can review them
here if you doubt my summary. He started to take damage in 1999 when the team declined and offensive line staffing suffered. He then went to Buffalo (not a great offensive line) but worked on releasing the ball faster and cut those numbers down before he went to Dallas. He was never a mobile QB, and given the number of times he was asked to throw did a pretty fair job at not getting sacked until his later years. If your history of Bledsoe starts with 2001 and ignores the 6 or 7 years and thousands of drop backs prior to that, you may have some argument. Otherwise, watch some game tapes of his first 6 years with a decent line and update your knowledge of team history and Bledsoe.
Second, Cassel can move, unlike Bledsoe, and is effectively a rookie. He is much more mobile than Bledsoe was at all points of his career. As one of the announcers pointed out during the Broncos game, Brady's otherworldly ability to sense pressure and unload the ball would have cut the sack number by 1/2. That would still be a high number for Brady, but no QB avoids a sack when a nose tackle blows through the center and guard in less than a second. That doesn't even allow for set time. In the event you have a short memory, recall that Brady was sacked 5 times in the Super Bowl and dropped a ton of times without being sacked. Is the line play this year significantly improved, or is Cassel's play the sole reason he is getting sacked all of those time? He does hold on to the ball at times, but at least half his sacks should be credited to the line play.
There is no comparison. Neither Bledsoe nor Cassel are half as bad as you try to paint them to be. Bledsoe was much better than your limited memory seems to indicate, and Cassel has been progressing in his first year as a starter and learning the starter role as pretty much any first year starter with knowledge of a system might. He is showing progress, and I suspect many of his initial critics either have to concede that point or accept any position they now have is sour grapes and a refusal to eat crow for predicting his failure.
