C-A-S-S-E-L, one L

Breaking news: Pats trade Mike Vrabel AND Matt Cassel to the Chiefs for a second round pick.

Second round pick?! One single second round pick. Plus they have to throw in Vrabel to sweeten the pot. Not mentioned in the transaction log is the copies of the DVD's from the Belichick video library or the part of Matt Cassel's new contract requiring Pioli to pay for all the dinners that Cassel plans to buy for Bernard Pollard.

I know the people who refers to Pat's transactions as "We should get.." or "they will trade us" will spin this as "Well, it's the 34th pick - that's almost like a first round pick", or "Vrabel is on the downside of his career, and at least we get something out of this and cleared some cap space".

Look, anytime you get more than a bag of used jockstraps for a career bench warmer is a good deal, but it's pretty far away from the two first round picks for Cassel wet dream.

In my opinion, here are the factors at play here:

• The Patriots are the most hated team in the NFL. Try justifying to your fan base if you are perceived to have overpaid for Cassel and he doesn't deliver. Hence no one bit, and the only taker was Pioli.
  
• The track record for career backups going to another team after succeeding in relief duty is not good. Remember A.J. Feeley? Yeah, neither do I.
• Cassel took over a 18-1 team, played the easiest 2008 schedule in the NFL, and MISSED THE PLAYOFFS. Now Matt is not completely to blame for the Pats sitting home for the 2008 playoffs, but he didn't help himself enough to warrant a bidding war.

Overall, this isn't a bad deal for the Patriots. They gave up a career backup and a possible salary cap casualty for a second round pick, but it will still be funny to see the reaction of the people around here justify their gross overvaluation of Cassel's market price.

How gross you ask? About the same as this woman thinking that she would make the Pats cheerleader squad at the tryouts today.

Or this woman in her assessment of her ability to pull off the Captive Leia