Clearly, the NFL season looks different to me than it did a week ago. Nobody knows how Matt Cassel will perform, and we only have coaches opinions to guide. us. Thus I am guardedly optimistic.
When Brady went down, tha Pats hastily summoned Chris Simms and Tim Rattay for tryouts. The team paid for airfare, etc. to get them to Foxborough 1st thing Monday morning. When they arrived, they waited for quite a bit of time outside Pioli's office, only to eventually be told "Sorry, our bad, we don't need to see you guys, thanks for coming."
Thus it is clear that Bill belichick and Josh McDaniel think that Matt Cassel is better than Chris Simms or Tim Rattay.
Second point. When the Pats drafted Cassel, folks at WEEI interviewed Pete Carrol about his old backup. Carrol stressed that each year Cassel was at USC, he almost won the starting job. In fact, he made a point of saying that in his opinion, Carson Palmer was only marginally better than Cassel.
Now, opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one and they often stink, but I'm still looking at a Patriots team with a top 3 D-line, a top 5 O-line, excellent LBs, very good RBs, Randy Moss, Wes Welker and a decent kicking game.
Today is a revenge game - for BOTH teams. Gang Green and the NY fans want revenge on the Pats and Boston sports in general (good for them, rivalries are goot), and no revenge would be sweeter than the Brady-less Pats hammering that rat Mangini into irrelevance.
Let the games begin.
