A) He's not crippling the franchise because we're not stuck with him for contractual reasons, the team could've moved on several times and didn't. B) His contract is not nor was ever a financial albatross, it was bad but it didn't touch $100M in guaranteed money like those three do. Castle's contract has been terrible without a doubt but the only thing that let it be terrible was a combination of him being just mediocre enough to keep them out of contention to replace him in the draft and management not being willing to dump him and endure being terrible enough to replace him in the draft. Those other three guys when they're getting paid $20M+ a year and sucking their teams are only going to have two options pay them or trade them for someone else's terrible contract.

Not really.

The Kolb contract was backloaded and had an escape clause.

The Cardinals stupidly failed to exercise it, but the contract itself gave them far more wiggle room.

The Cassel contract, OTOH, being a frontloaded monstrosity that had its roster bonus in an awkward 'in-between' spot, is just an absolute abortion of a contract. It was a trainwreck from the second it was signed.

Very few of us could ever make a decision that costs our boss anywhere near the money that Scott Pioli made with that Cassel deal and still keep his job. Yet there he sits, still evidently beyond all reproach.

I know a lot of you like to crack on Pioli but the grounds have never looked better.

A lot of idiots screamed for the Royals to sign Adam Dunn.

Scott Gomez and Vernon Wells are worse deals for the teams though. Gomez is an average player being paid like a superstar. Wells is a well past his prime player being paid like he was in his prime.

Cassel is just a bad QB being paid like an average one because the team has no other options.

#1. The Kansas City Royals roster

and Pioli gets to be a GM.

$60 million is not an average QB contract. He had a one year resume with the Pats. Prior to that he had been a career backup in the pros and college. It was on a whim that he was drafted with a flyer 7th by Pioli. I think Pioli was trying to prove it was another genius pick.

Matt Flynn just got 3/$20 on ~120 career attempts. Nobody is arguing the deal was anything approaching good, just that its merely bad for an NFL contract which has nothing on bad NBA and MLB contracts.