who are top 5 guys to you?
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Brady, Brees, both Mannings(cause one is probably done), Rogers and Newton(yeah, he's THAT good).
Some of the rest would give me pause, but in this offense, with this OL, I don't think they would perform better.
Good Lord! Cam Newton with these receivers, we almost wouldn't need an offensive line!
Yes. Call me insane. Everyone mentioned looked like Ryan Leaf when their teams struggled. It would not be an improvement to what we have.
You'd mentioned that Smith plays to the level around him. The niners are one game away from the Super Bowl so he's got to be playing at a higher level than Cassel. In the game against the Saints Smith had two monsterous plays, one was a 30+ yard scamper for a TD. The other was an over the shoulder TD pass as the guy was a step from running out of bounds. Both are plays that Cassel rarely makes and if he does it isn't against playoff teams.
I do like that Cassel plays with a chip on his shoulder. The guy is tough, determined and wants to win. With that being said every NFL player should be like that. My biggest concern with Cassel is that he's a game manager. If you ask him to go out there and win the football game he might but probably won't. We're a run dominant team for a reason. When we get behind and have to stop running I don't think we have a win. Maybe I'm wrong but off hand I can't remember a single time when we've done that. You can't say the Colts game this year because we kept running the entire game and Indy was horrible this year.
Overall I just don't think that Cassel is going to be the QB to get us over the hump. He's shown hints at being good but then goes on to hold on to the ball to long, throw inacurrate passes or panics at the first sign of pressure because he held on to the ball to long. As fig said, Cassel had more than two times the sacks that Brady did with the exact same Pats line in 2008. Again to go along with fig the same Pats team was probably one play away from being 19-0 and the same team the next year went 11-5. To me that doesn't say good that just says that the team around him did about as good as they were going to do with an average QB.
Well, I, unlike you two apparently, don't discount his 11-5 season and his Pro Bowl season last year when we have a brutally damaged offense this year. There is something to be said for perspective. And in the perspective of his 4 years, he has proven to be a damn reliable QB. Elite? Nope, but certainly very good with a little help from his team-like all the others mentioned above.