First part of a pretty informative story as to why it looks like the hoodie got hoodwinked:
Peter King > MONDAY MORNING QB
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The Patriots never get snookered. So why does it look like everyone in Foxboro is wearing fleece?
The answer is they didn't get taken in the trade of Cassel and Mike Vrabel. Belichick did underplay his hand, but there were extenuating circumstances, some of which were intelligently reported over the weekend by Adam Schefter, Tom Curran, Chris Mortensen and Tim Graham.
Belichick probably did pull the trigger too soon on the deal of Cassel and Vrabel to Kansas City for the 34th pick in the draft. The reason he didn't take one of the three-way deals involving Denver and either the Lions or Bucs is very simple: He'd already agreed to a trade with his former right-hand man, Kansas City GM Scott Pioli, either late Friday or very early Saturday. And he had some pressure on him to make the deal early in free agency because the team was so snug up against the NFL's $127-million salary cap, and because he knew Cassel's value wasn't as high as it should have been because of his mega-salary and the fact he'd only played at a high level for one year.
As free agency dawned, the Pats were $1.7-million under the cap, and they saved $1 million by restructuring Randy Moss' contract. That allowed them to sign running back Fred Taylor Friday afternoon (two years, $8 million, approximately $2.3 in 2009 cap dollars). But to get a really big chunk, Belichick needed to do something really big, like dealing Vrabel (saving $3.36 million on the cap) and Cassel (saving $14.65 million). If he dealt Cassel and Vrabel, he'd be able to operate freely with $18 million in cap room ... and have more leverage in the 2009 draft than any other team in the league.
You're right to ask why Belichick didn't wait. I bet he's asking himself that same question this morning. But think back to midweek last week. I had two contenders for Cassel tell me essentially the same thing: They wouldn't deal a first-round pick or a second- and something else for Cassel, and then pay him a multi-year contract with a bonus of maybe $20 million and $35 million in guaranteed money. Too risky, they thought. (I disagree but I'm not running a franchise.) Many teams felt Cassel might be a lesser player than he was in 2008 (eighth in passing yards, 10th in quarterback rating) upon leaving the security blanket of a Belichick-coached team and Josh McDaniels-coordinated offense.
So Belichick knew he probably wasn't going to get a sweetheart deal. And last week, before the market opened, I'm told he never got offered a first-round pick by any team in trade. I'm also told he asked Pioli for the 34th pick in the draft -- nothing more -- and when Pioli told him he'd do it, they had a deal.
"Bill had to be nervous,'' said one club official briefed on the deal. "There was never any guarantee that any of those three-way trades was going to work, and they cropped up so late anyway. He could have been left with nothing if he lost the Chiefs.''
I'm sure Belichick doesn't mind doing something good for Cassel (giving him his own promising team to pilot) and Pioli (giving him something better than Tyler Thigpen), but I believe if Denver offered Belichick its first-round pick last Thursday instead of, apparently, on Saturday, that Cassel would be a Bronco today and current Denver QB Jay Cutler a Buc or Lion. Cutler, by the way, will make peace with McDaniels, who's now coaching Denver. He has no choice, and he's a reasonable kid. I don't blame him for being ticked off at the Broncos for trying to deal for Cassel, but he's going to have to get over it and realize he's got a heck of a chance to win with McDaniels running his offense.
I heard one other interesting thing Sunday: Cutler asked for a trade shortly after the Broncos lost offensive coordinator Jeremy Bates -- Cutler's confidant -- to USC after the season. So maybe both sides need to go into marriage counseling here.
Back to Belichick. I have no idea if these numbers influenced him Saturday, but they should have. New England now has four picks in the first two rounds -- the 23rd, 34th, 47th and 58th. The Patriots have blown their share of second-round picks in the Belichick Era (Bethel Johnson, Chad Jackson, the late Marquise Hill), but they also got Benjamin Watson with the last pick of the first round and Deion Branch and Matt Light with second-round picks. Belichick wants late ones and twos because the difference in talent between the top of the draft and pick 34 is not nearly as big as the difference in money. And the third pick in the draft this year would command a bigger contract than Tom Brady's. Thus, New England has no use for very high picks.
Let's examine the financial commitment those four picks (23, 34, 47, 58) required last year, and compare it to the top of the draft:
Pick Guaranteed Money Avg. per year
23 $7.12m $1.97m
34 $3.07m $1.17m
47 $2.20m $904,000
58 $1.72m $857,000
Total $14.11m $4.94m
The eighth pick in the draft last year, defensive end Derrick Harvey, got $17.47 million guaranteed in a contract averaging $4.6 million a year. In essence, in the way the NFL pays rookies, the eighth pick's compensation is equivalent to the combined pay of the 23rd, 34th, 47th and 58th picks. Insane. Imagine if someone tells you they'd trade the eighth pick in the draft for a lower first-round pick and three second-round picks. You'd do it in a second. The Patriots will draft at least a couple of keeper players on day one, and they'll have the kind of salary manageability with those players that great teams with big stars have to have.
Moral of the story for New England: We'll always think Belichick could have gotten a little more for Cassel (and Vrabel), and he probably should have waited and taken what was probably a relatively minor risk. But the team wanting Cassel, Denver, blew it by not being quicker off the draw and getting its ducks in a row before the weekend.
Now for the Kansas City angles. The Chiefs now should have their quarterback of the future, assuming new coach Todd Haley's as good a quarterback tutor as he appeared in Arizona the past couple of years. Haley, who worked with Belichick and Charlie Weis with the Jets a decade ago, told me over the weekend what has him thrilled is that the New England offense and the Kansas City offense have the same verbiage and playcalls. "So we won't have to take the time a new quarterback would normally have to take to get up to speed in a new system,'' Haley said. "He knows this system. And I've watched so much of him from last year. I see a player who's learned under a Hall of Fame quarterback in Tom Brady, and who's so mature for someone with only a year's experience.''
It makes sense for Kansas City to sign Cassel long-term, obviously, but I'm not sure the Chiefs will. Pioli, I'm sure, will remind Cassel (if he hasn't told him already) that Brady took less money to allow the team to build a great team around him. In other words, if Cassel doesn't want to be one of the two or three highest-paid quarterbacks in football, they could get a deal done. If he does want to be in that territory, I expect the Chiefs to make him play out this year at $14.65 million, then, if necessary, tag him next year at 110 percent of his pay this year. But it makes sense to make a deal for the future, so they don't have to be laying out $30 million over the next two years with no future certainty beyond that.
