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I've lost track. What was being argued here? Cassel vs. Thigpen, or Cassel being a franchise QB, or Cassel being half as good as Brady? (Which isn't exactly a news flash. But, then again, right NOW Cassel might be half as good. Who knows how it'll develop.)
The unknown seems to be how "for real" Cassel is and, to an extent, how "for real" Thigpen is. People can talk about how well Thigpen might've done in Cassel's place on New England last year, or how poorly Cassel would've done in Thigpen's place in KC, but unfortunately we don't have the gateway to the alternate universe to find those things out.
So, we have to go by what we know.
There are varying degrees of QB. On the bottom level you have the guys who are inconsistent, who throw a frozen rope on one play and an errant pass on another, or make a brilliant decision on one play and a boneheaded one on another. I'm looking at Byron Leftwich right now for Tampa, and he fits that bill.
The better a QB's decision-making and accuracy, the better the QB. Take Drew Bledsoe, for example. He could be very accurate and had a cannon, but his decision-making often wasn't the best, especially in later years. He'd lock on to his primary receiver and get tunnel vision, trying to force a pass into double-coverage instead of taking the more open pass to another guy. Or he'd take a bad sack from lack of pocket awareness, or heave the ball out of bounds too quickly.
The better a QB, the more they can make up for. A Tom Brady or a Peyton Manning on a bad team might elevate them; a Damon Huard might not. Conversely, an excellent team might make a decent QB look better than he would on a crap team. Same works in reverse (e.g. Brady making average receivers look good).
What it boils down to is this: what kind of consistency do you see from a QB? Are his passes more often than not accurate? Is his decision-making more often than not pretty good? Does he come through in clutch situations, or choke as the pressure mounts? By those criteria, from what I've seen of Cassel, he's definitely on the proper end of the spectrum. Thigpen? Maybe not so much, judging from his lack of accuracy and his declining QB rating at the end of games.
Thus, I think Cassel definitely has the potential to be a very solid starting QB. The kind of guy who can take a team places. (Hell, if guys like Brad Johnson and Trent Dilfer can get SB rings, I think Cassel's good enough.) Sort of like a Chad Pennington. Thigpen? He might succeed as a starter, but I get the feeling he'd need more help around him than Cassel, and might be better suited to the Billy Volek role of a backup who can win you some games for a stretch if your starter is out.
A franchise QB, to me, is a guy who can singlehandedly keep his team in the game, always make his team a threat, a QB who is the undisputed leader of his team and is going to be there for a long time. Those are very few and far-between. Brady and Manning in this era, Marino and Aikman and Favre and Montana and Jim Kelly in earlier years, etc.,.
Brady and Manning > Cassel > Thigpen and Croyle (at least in their current versions).
Franchise QBs > guy who's got the potential to be a solid starter > guys who are probably better suited as backups.
Guys who can win games singlehandedly > guys who can make some great plays to help win games and elevate some players > guys who probably can't win games on their own or overcome a lack of talent around them.
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