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Player Spotlight: Matt Cassel
Posted by rkelly8686When you take a look at Matt Cassel’s 2008 stats and you factor in the appointment of Charlie Weis as Chiefs’ OC, you realize that Kansas City is faced with a paradox: Charlie Weis loves to employ the spread offense which frequently has at least 3, but often 4 or 5 receivers on the field at a time. But Cassel struggles in multiple receiver sets where it’s tougher to read defenses and throw the ball downfield. (With the stats below, receivers are counted as anyone who lines up out wide or in the slot; thus, running backs and tight ends flexed out are counted as receivers).
So what should the Chiefs do? Forcing Cassel into the spread could be like fitting a square peg into a round hole. I thought about the Chiefs possibly utilizing Cassel more in the shotgun which would give him a little more time to avoid the rush and a better look at the defensive alignment. However, that idea was put to rest once I saw these stats:
Cassel’s metrics show him as an average passer when in the traditional offensive formation: under center and with only 2 wide receivers. However, when forced to perform in the Todd Haley-friendly (and soon to be Weis-friendly) shotgun-spread formations, Cassel enters JaMarcus Russell-territory. No one expected Cassel to do as well in Kansas City as he did in New England but not even his biggest critics expected his passer rating to drop 20 points. Perhaps he and Weis can come up with some sort of a compromise as to what kind of offense they are both comfortable running and Cassel can show why he was worth $63 million. Or perhaps it was just the “Patriots system” that made Cassel in 2007 and in 2008 he showed why he was a 7th round pick.
However, I’m not ready to label the Cassel trade a disaster for KC just yet as he needs more than one season to prove his worth. With the way that Jamaal Charles finished his 2009 season look for the Chiefs to feature him prominently in 2010 which could actually help Cassel’s numbers just as Chris Johnson did for Vince Young. Expect shorter passes to boost Cassel’s completion percentage but that will inversely affect his yards per attempt. As for his QB rating, Cassel’s such a high-volume passer that his rating has no choice but to go up. His 69.9 season passer rating was the lowest in six years for a QB who had at least 490 pass attempts. Weis loves for his QB to spread the ball around a la the pre-Welker/pre-Moss Patriots who didn’t have a 1000-yard receiver from 2002-2006. While that may ultimately hurt Dwayne Bowe’s numbers, it should boost Cassel’s back into fantasy relevance. He may never live up to his $63 million contract, but at least for 2010 he is a high-end QB2 who could see a spot-start during bye weeks.
Tags: Dwayne Bowe, Jamaal Charles, Kansas City Chiefs, Matt Cassel, Player Spotlight
January 30th, 2010 at 11:16 am
Interesting analysis, but I have a couple of comments.
It’s generally well accepted that it’s easier to read defenses out of spread sets, and the goal usually isn’t to throw the ball downfield. In 2008 when Cassel was in New England, he (and the Patriot offense) really took off when they started employing more shotgun spread looks (i.e. they put him in the spread upwards of 50% of the time), and it was a direct contributer to his back-to-back 400 yard games and the overall success of the offense that season.
In Kansas City, the receiving core is awful, quite frankly. After Chris Chambers and Dwayne Bowe (who managed to get suspended for 4 games) there is not a single receiving option that scares a defense, and really, players that are not as smart as say, Wes Welker (and his ability is key to the Patriot offense and fits well with Cassel’s skills), and are unable to make option routes and other adjustments. I’ve heard it said that often times Cassel looks like he’s expecting his teammates to do one thing, and they don’t do it - his football IQ is higher than that of the other guys. When your 3, 4, 5 receiving options are Bobby Wade, Quinten Lawrence, Mark Bradley, and Terrance Copper, good luck. Chris Chambers actually came out and said that the receivers often have run the wrong pattern in terms of depth or even route (i.e. running a man route against zone coverage) which makes Cassel look bad, since he’s throwing to the spot the receiver’s supposed to be.
The other reason Cassel is likely more successful in Kansas City out of traditional formations is the defense is forced to honor Jamaal Charles out of the backfield on runs, draws, and screens, etc. When they’re spread out, they get to play pass all the way and take advantage of the Chiefs’ lack of viable receiving options.