Matt Cassel arguably had the unluckiest stint in New England. After serving as a backup quarterback for the first three years, his official rookie year came in 2008 after starting QB Tom Brady was hit in the knee during the season opener against the KC Chiefs, sidelining him for the rest of the season.
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Cassel played exceptionally well in Brady’s stead, pulling off an 11-5 record, yet the team couldn’t make the playoffs. Then, in 2009, he was traded to the team that ‘accidentally’ gave him a playing chance — the Chiefs — along with Mike Vrabel.
While Cassel had the unluckiest year in Foxborough in 2008, it was also the break he needed. The star quarterback’s stock shot through the roof, so the Patriots decided to franchise tag him, meaning any team that wanted to trade for him would have to give up two first-round picks. The tag also would have cost the team a whopping $14.65 million, so it rightly confused Cassel why the Patriots didn’t let him hit free agency.
“It was a wild circumstance after the season. There was some uneasiness about Brady and the recovery going on with his knee. So, all of a sudden, they franchise me. I was like, ‘What does that mean, exactly?'” Cassel recounted on the latest episode of The Insiders.
However, the “uneasiness” around Brady’s injury eventually went away, so New England decided to cut their ties with Cassel and trade him to KC. Since Cassel was franchise-tagged, this also came as a surprise to him, with the news being broken to him by his then-head coach, Bill Belichick, via a phone call. Even more surprisingly, Belichick didn’t inform Cassel during their conversation that Vrabel was going with him.
“All of a sudden, out of the blue, I’m sitting in the parking lot of a grocery store in California; I get a phone call from coach Belichick. I’m wondering what this is about. Well, I got traded to Kansas City. At first, he didn’t say anything about Vrabel. He was like, ‘Look, you’re going to Kansas City. We’ve made the trade. We wanna thank you for everything you did,'” he added.
It was Vrabel, who called Cassel and informed him that he, too, was coming to Kansas City. This was something Cassel didn’t expect, but was quite happy to hear. Notably, the duo was traded for the 34th overall pick of the 2009 NFL Draft.
A decade and a half later, Vrabel is plying his trade as a coach, while Cassel is discussing football as an analyst. In another intriguing update, Vrabel has recently been interviewed for the head coach position with the New England Patriots.
Cassel: Mike Vrabel is the “perfect fit” for the Patriots
Vrabel could very likely become the head coach of the New England Patriots this year. He knows the franchise well and is also in the Patriots Hall of Fame. But Cassel asserted on the show that Vrabel is more than that. He is not merely a coach from the Belichick tree, but also from several other great coaches from other organizations.
“It would be the perfect fit. You think about Vrabel as a player and what he was to that organization… A lot of people, though, associate him with the Belichick tree, but really, he has branched off. He has been under Urben Meyer at Ohio State, he was under Bill O’Brien at Houston, and when you talk to other players that have been around him, he’s just an exceptional coach, a player’s coach. He’s been there. he understands what it takes to win.”
Vrabel’s stint in Tennessee didn’t quite end well, which Cassel finds “unfortunate.” However, he still wholeheartedly believes that Vrabel would do well as a coach in New England with Drake Maye at quarterback. He also believes that the Kraft family would love to have him back.
