The Matt Cassel Era Begins With A Win

Last week when the Patriots made the somewhat surprising decision to name Matt Cassel, backup to the stars, their No. 2 quarterback, it was eye-opening, sort of, when you consider he was outplayed by Matt Gutierrez all preseason. Hey, no big deal, just so he never has to play. Right? Yeah. About that.

As we've already learned, Tom Brady left today's game with a knee injury of some sort -- I expect him to be listed as questionable for Sunday with a finger, or something -- turning the reigns of the Patriots offense over to Cassel for his first real, actual, meaningful NFL action. And statistically, he didn't play all that bad as he did just enough to help the Patriots hold on for a 17-10 win over the Kansas City Chiefs.
Cassel finished the day 13-of-18 for 152 yards and a 10-yard touchdown to Randy Moss.

The Chiefs also lost their starting quarterback today, Brodie Croyle, to what is apparently a separated shoulder, turning the game over to Damon Huard in what was surely the most obscure quarterbacking matchup in the history of the NFL.

Huard, coming off the bench, almost led a fourth quarterback comeback as he threw a touchdown to second-year receiver Dwayne Bowe early in the fourth quarter to narrow a 14-3 deficit to only four points. Following a Stephen Gostkowski field goal, Huard did his best to engineer a game-tying scoring drive, and things looked promising when he connected with Devard Darling on a 68-yard pass to set the Chiefs up first-and-goal on the 5-yard line with less than a minute to play. At that point, they ended up throwing three incomplete passes, with a Larry Johnson run for no gain thrown in just for kicks.

Of course, all of that is secondary for the Patriots -- as secondary as a win can be -- until the official word on Tom Brady's knee comes out. Early report are not good for the Patriots, as Michael David Smith mentioned earlier, Jets players were hearing whispers that it's an ACL injury, while Michael Silver of Yahoo! sports is reporting the same.