So long, and thanks for all the fish...

I didn't initially intend to use a Douglas Adams reference as a double entendre in regards to the Pats record against the Dolphins during Mike Vrabel's tenure in a Pats uni, it just happened that way.

I will miss Vrabel, but I'm not going to bitch about the team moving him. At this point I trust that the team knows what it's doing from a personnel standpoint. I will say that, even though I agree with the coffin corner that this deal makes sense for the Patriots, I still think this is an absolute steal for the Chiefs. For the 34th pick in the draft the Chiefs got a quarterback that's got nothing but upside who just led the Patriots to a 11-5 record. I would like to have seen the Pats get a fourth rounder as well - even if it were in next year's draft.

Through the course of the season, Cassel actually put up better numbers than Brady did in Brady's first season as a starter back in 2001. There are those that will be quick to point out that Cassel did it throwing to Randy Moss and Wes Welker.

I'd like to point out that Brady did it behind a healthy offensive line and with healthy starters at the running back position - so that advantage is really a wash. And Brady did it with a healthier and better defense in place than Cassel had.

I'm not saying that Cassel is better than Brady, or will ever be better than Brady. All I'm saying is that at the same points in their careers, the two are very comparable - and what GM...what team's fans wouldn't want to take that?

They are getting set at signal-caller on the offensive side of the ball, which lets Scott Pioli build around a cornerstone. Now they can concentrate on building the offensive line through free-agency and the draft.

On the other side of the ball they get Mike Vrabel whom Bill Belichick has described as one of the smartest players he has ever coached.

I've noticed a lot of the stories about this point out that Vrabel is coming off an off year. None of those stories mention that the entire Patriots defensive front struggled. The vaunted defensive linemen seldom tied up the personnel that allowed Vrabel to run free in earlier seasons.

Even if Vrabel is at the tail end of his career, my bet is that he's still got two good years left, and this gives the Chiefs a much needed leader on what was a pitiful, leaderless defense.

More than anything else, these two players were brought in to change the culture and climate of the locker room. They were brought in to help teach the young players on this team how to win.

Will they this year? It's unlikely, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Chiefs make some noise in 2010.

For Chiefs fans that think this is a bad deal, or that Cassel is the second coming of Scott Mitchell, let's get something cleared up - unlike many of the back-ups that have come before that turned out to be busts, Cassel has a full season under his belt as a starter. Not three or four starts that got some personnel guys all hot and bothered, but a full season, and has been with your personnel guy since he came out of college four years ago. This isn't some guy that Pioli fell in love with over four games of tape - this is a guy that Pioli has seen on the practice field day in and day out for almost half a decade, and then watched pilot the Patriots to 11 wins (could have been 13 if the defensive line could get into the backfield last season). You're getting a player, and the only thing that could be a problem is the team's offensive line.

One last thought - I can't help but find a certain irony that Cassel will be starting for the team next season to which he owes a debt in regards to getting his chance to start.

Matt, Mike, good luck, so long, and thanks for all the fish. It was a fun run.

It's not the size, it's how you use it and other thoughts

Get yer minds out of the gutter. I'm talking about Wes Welker, the Slot Machine.

Yes, I know that's what the announcers were calling him, but it fits.

Welker, with all due respect to Randy Moss, has been the Patriots best receiver over the past two seasons. Sure, Welker's the slot receiver, and yes, Moss has been the go to guy in the red zone, but Welker is the team's number one guy.

Over two seasons Welker has already far exceeded any other receiver's two season total of receptions with the 208 he's had since joining the team. Last season he set a new team record with 112. Through 13 games Welker, who has become Cassel's safety blanket, has 96, and is averaging 7.4 receptions per game, which puts him on a pace of 118 for the season. Welker is also on pace to finish with 1233 yards for the season after logging 1175 last year.

He is the guy that makes the offense work right now and possibly the toughest guy on the field.

...

The news that Tedy Bruschi is heading to the IR is not reassuring given the number of injuries on that side of the ball. Yes, Seau looked rusty, but I expected that given only one day of practice. Hopefully he's up to speed for the Raiders game. The flip side on Seau - what if the Pats hadn't signed him?

Given the news regarding Bruschi, I'm guessing we're going to hear about some other roster move to bolster the defense.

If Vince Wilfork is lost for any significant amount of time, that's a problem.

The secondary has already been exposed due to a lackluster pass rush. The last thing the DB's need is a weakened D line.

Before anybody whines about Asante Samuel - he would be just as exposed in this defense. Samuel, for all his reputation, was not significantly better than Ellis Hobbs last season (he did have a career year in regards to interceptions, but that's the only place) according to STATS, Inc. Samuel, this year, in a defense that was not getting to the QB the way the Pats were last year, has only three interceptions. A good line makes a pro-bowl defensive back. It doesn't work the other way around.

Yes, the Pats secondary has struggled this season, but that's in large part because the team has had trouble applying pressure to the quarterback. And before anyone argues that with me, think back to all of Ty Law's INT's of Peyton Manning - every time Manning has been flushed out of the pocket and was facing hits from the likes of Jarvis Green and Richard Seymour or Mike Vrabel.

It is the area in most need of being addressed by the Patriots whose defense has often looked more like the 2002 edition than any of the other editions since the Super Bowl in 2001.

Take me, take me to the movies

Okay, here's the pitch...

A championship caliber team, riddled with injuries, is in danger of missing the playoffs for only the second time in eight seasons. What does the team do? No, they don't throw the waterboy out there. They don't do some hair-brained thing like rumble off the field with the league bullies to make them come together as a team.

No.

They bring back the grizzled veteran - the guy who everybody thought was done. Tough as nails, old school, the guy shows the young guys the right way to play, and is the impetus for the team's playoff run.

I'm sure that's what the Patriots are hoping for with the likelihood that 39-year old Junior Seau likely to be back in the fold today.

I do see this in movie terms, but I see this as one of the two following...

Bill Belichick and Dean Pees as John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd respectively, standing in Rosevelt Colvin's living room earlier this week wearing sunglasses and pork pie hats while telling Colvin, "we're puttin' the band back together."

or

Belchick with his head shaved, a-la Yul Brynner, and Pees looking like Steve McQueen...maybe Scott Pioli is McQueen and Pees is the ineffective, impotent Robert Vaughn in the magnificent seven as Brynner assembles the team. Offhand, I guess that makes Jerrod Mayo the young hot-head played by Horst Buchholz, Tedy Bruschi is somehow the Mexican/Irish gunslinger played by Charles Bronson, Rosy Colvin as the money happy Harry Luck, and Mike Vrabel in the roll of Britt, as played by James Coburn. Right now, the rest of the team is pretty much the villagers.

Yeah, it would be nice if it all played out like the Magnificent Seven. Sure, not many of them were left in the end (which also sounds like the Pats linebacking corps), but they won.

At this point, I make no assumptions regarding the team's final record, but I'm guessing if the team is signing Seau that the injury to Bruschi's knee is worse than initially reported. Signing Seau gives the team five healthy 'backers - along with Vrabel, Mayo, Gary Guyton, and Colvin. I think that Bruschi will see snaps against the Seahawks this weekend, but no more than Seau will.

Pat Patriot and Mr. Hyde

It was a hell of a game, and a good win for the Jets, but this is not the sort of game where Eric Mangini is going to go back and look at the game tape and get the warm fuzzies.

This is what Mangini will see that was good - Brett Favre was 9 of 12 on third down. Leon Washington was a the difference in the game as a monster on special teams. And he has a physical, punishing rookie tight end that refuses to go down on the first hit.

This is what he's going to see that he won't be happy about...

Favre was 9 of 12 because he was able to look off rookies Gary Guyton, Jonathan Wilhite, and other youngsters. Even with the success he had, a veteran like Favre should have been able to torch this young defense (yeah, you heard me - young. The only starters over 30 right now are Tedy Bruschi, Mike Vrabel, and Delta O'Neal). Yes, he had a solid game, but this was a defense ripe for the picking and the Jets just barely eked out a win. Over and above that, the Jets were aided and abetted by a horrible defensive holding call on their last drive to go up 31-24 (if the refs wanted to call illegal contact, I would have understood, but that wasn't anywhere close to holding).

The Jets defense only came up with two stops - both in the first half. Otherwise, they got off lightly due to Patriot mistakes throughout the game - a Gaffney drop on what would have been a first down reception, Ben Watson's fumble that I can only conclude was forced by Claude Rains, an inexplicable offensive miscue when Dan Koppen snapped the ball before Matt Cassel was ready. Even with these miscues abetting the New York defense, they still gave up 511 yards (468 to what is essentially a rookie quarterback), 31 points, and the Patriots effectively removed the Jets best defender, Kris Jenkins, from the game by going spread.

I'm not writing any of this to make myself feel better about the Pats loss. It sucked, and I'm not happy about it. There was plenty I was not thrilled about there - their inability to get off the field on third down, blown coverages on defense, their attempts at ritual football suicide. It was, essentially, a Jekyll and Hyde performance.

These are all going to bring the Belichick beat-down on the players in the film room.

There were, of course bright spots - Cassel's play, the fact they roared back in the second half with 24 points, the play of Jerrod Mayo, the fact that the team is beginning to show they can overcome errors. All of that is good. But it wasn't good enough last night.

In spite of all the mistakes on offense, 31 points should be enough to win a game. This loss lies on the shoulders of the special teams and defense. Too often the Pats D was in position to get off the field, and too often they failed to do so. I won't even get started on special teams.

All in all, this means a division title is more difficult, but not impossible, but to do so, they will have to have a better record than the Jets at the end of the season.

Champions and looking forward...

"Dustin Pedroia and Jon Lester are doing something Alex has never done - play in a World Series game," said Peter Gammons last night about newly minted free-agent Alex Rodriguez. "It might be a little bit of a 'buyer beware'. Because, again, he has never played in a World Series game - maybe there's a reason."

Think about that statement from Gammons - the so-called best player in baseball has never helped a team get to the World Series. Never.

On a night when the Sox clinched the World Series in a sweep for the second time in four seasons, A-Rod's agent Scott Boras announced that the Yankees third baseman was opting out of his contract. Never mind that there was no reason this announcement couldn't wait until this morning. In a clear effort by Boras to, in some way, keep the focus on his client rather than the World Series, A-Rod and/or his agent engaged in a classless move there, making the announcement during game four. Gammons himself referred to the incident as a complete lack of respect for the game of baseball.

Let's face it, the best thing to happen to the Red Sox in the last five years was the MLB Player's Association nixing the contract renegotiation between the Red Sox and the would-be Red Sox short stop. The Sox would have sent Manny Ramirez - the Manny of the almost .500 post season batting average - for A-Rod, who has been brutally bad during baseball's second season. Where would the Sox be with A-Rod's anemic post-season bat in the middle of the line-up instead of ManRam's?

I'm guessing, as Red Sox fans, the Nation would still be waiting for the first World Series title since 1918.

Once each of his previous teams, the Mariners and the Rangers, rid themselves of A-Rod, those teams averaged somewhere around eight more wins per season for the first three seasons after Rodriguez's departure. The Yankees averaged 96.75 wins per season with A-Rod. The three seasons prior to his arrival? 99.67. Sure, a drop-off of three games per year isn't huge, but it's still a drop off and when combined with the following fact, it's a serious indictment of what his impact on a team really is - for the three seasons he played for the Rangers, Texas won 73, 72, and 71 games respectively (the Yankees won 101 his first season with the team, a total down to 94 this season), but for the first three seasons after A-Rod left the confines of Arlington, the Rangers 89, 79, and 80 games respectively - an average improvement of eight games per year.

Theo - stay the hell away from A-Rod! Let the Giants go get him. Resign Mike Lowell...hell, move Lugo to third. Whatever you do, don't sign A-Rod.

As for Lowell - congratulations to the World Series MVP. I'm glad you won, man, considering you probably won't win AL MVP in a season where you picked up the slack for an ailing pair of sluggers in Big Papi and ManRam. You might have been the most important piece at the plate for the BoSox this season. I hope to see you back again next year. If not, then thanks for one incredible run from a guy that the Marlins thought was done and was a throw-in in the Beckett deal.

I said it before and I'll say it again - hey Curt, thanks again, big guy. It's been almost a century since we had two titles in baseball and you were integral to bringing us two this decade. Good luck wherever you end up next year - you're never going to have to pay for another drink anywhere in Red Sox Nation again.

It was tough to see Okajima run out of gas those last two games, but what a way to crank through the Rockies in game two, when the Sox were hanging onto a one-run lead. It didn't feel like anyone on the roster failed to contribute. Hell, Bobby Kielty, the late-season addition on the bench for the stretch run, hit a pinch-hit game winning homer. The Red Sox rookies, Jacoby Ellsbury and Dustin Pedroia sparked the top of the line-up.

They were clicking on all cylinders for four games, and now it's time for the amphibious vehicles to drive the Sox through the Back Bay.

The Monster of the Mid-Way...

Somewhere along the line the Patriots signed a career back-up line-backer away from the Pittsburgh Steelers and he became the best 'backer on one of the top defenses in the NFL.

For all the talk about Adalius Thomas coming to the team (and don't get me wrong, it was an important signing), Vrabel has been a beast. In yesterday's 52-7 thrashing of the Secondstrings, I'm sorry, I mean Redskins, Vrabel caught a pass for a touchdown, accounted for 11 tackles, three sacks for 20 yards in losses, and forced three fumbles - one on each sack.

Vrabel currently leads the team with 7.5 sacks (a pace to get 15 for the season), and is second on the team with 42 total tackles (Tedy Bruschi leads with 49).

Marketing faux-pas...

One last note before I get some sleep because my two-month old is finally napping...

The autumn after the NFL cancelled NFL Europe, the league played their first ever regular season game on European soil in order to expand the game's fan base. After watching yesterday's exercise in tedium at London's Wembley Stadium, a place where NFL Europe abandoned for lack of interest, the NFL did itself no favors and likely garnered no new fans.

From a marketing stand-point, why would the NFL even pick a Dolphins team that has been moribund for about half-a-decade in an effort to bring new fans to the table? And why London?

Originally the World League of American Football, and eventually NFL Europa, the league slowly, but surely migrated from London, to Scotland, to Germany. Why didn't this happen in Germany? There's already a fan base there, there are NFL ready stadiums there, and this would have been a great bone to throw to a German fan base that set an attendance record for NFLE this past spring.

Yes, I get that the idea that it's about growing the sport - but start with where there's already a foothold. Grow that fan-base a little more, ensure its loyalty, then move onto the more fringe areas.

And, fergodsakes, send them two quality teams.

Converted

It's a great word.

Religious connotations aside - it has great meaning in sports - convert a save, two-point conversion, first-down conversion - there are any number of reasons why the term gets used. My favorite, however, has to do with players.

I bring this up because of Rick Ankiel - the one-time phenom pitcher for the Cardinals transformed from potential ace to Rick "The Wild Thing" Vaughn pre-glasses. In an effort to keep doing what he loved, Ankiel converted from pitcher to outfielder. Last night, in his big league premier at a position anywhere other than on the mound, Ankiel went deep. Not bad.

While there are always the unsuccessful experiments (Tebucky Jones at cornerback, for one), there have been a number of athletes who have seen the light, so to speak, and gone on to have greater success at a new position than the one at which they were originally drafted. Most notably Babe Ruth - a top notch left handed pitcher who went on to be one of the greatest hitters the game has ever seen. There's no way the man could ever match the myth of what he went on to become.

On a lesser note, there have been a number of others.

Tim Wakefield was originally drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates as a corner infielder. When told by a scout that it was unlikely that he would get above AA ball with his tools, he began experimenting until he found his niche as a knuckleballer. That change has translated into 15 seasons (including this season) in the bigs during which time he has averaged around 11 wins per season.

Former Red Sox replacement outfielder Ron Mahay has had a nice career as a left-handed specialist. After five games in the outfield for the Sox, Mahay returned to the minors and remade himself as a relief pitcher. He has spent at least part of every season since 1997 in the bigs in stints with Oakland, Florida, Chicago (NL), Texas, and Atlanta while compiling an 18-10 record with a 3.96 ERA and 3 saves over the course of 331 games and 395 innings. Overall a solid career.

Antwaan Randle-El of course played quarterback in college, as did Matt Jones - but it's still too early to determine whether or not they will be totally successful conversions, or busts. Yes, Randle-El is certainly further along than Jones, but Randle-El has also regressed the last three seasons, catching fewer passes for fewer yards each year.

The Bears are experimenting with corner Devin Hester at wide-out.

On a game to game basis, the Patriots have been using offensive linemen as fullbacks, linebackers as tight-ends, and wide receivers as corners for several years under Bill Belichick - with the most impact coming from Troy Brown who tied the team for second in interceptions with three during limited time as the nickel corner while still playing special teams and offense. Then there is Mike "Touchdown" Vrabel. Any team that doesn't make sure he's covered on the goal line at this point...well they're just idiots.

I enjoy the stories of players like this. I'm no fan of A-Rod, but what unfolded in New York when they consummated the trade for him was fascinating (keeping in mind that switching from playing the field to designated hitter just isn't compelling). I for one, will keep on the lookout for more of these stories.