Bill Simmons on Tom Brady/Matt Cassel

[milkman]

Originally Posted by chiefzilla1501

I wouldn't put it that way on the first point, but the line is no excuse. That I agree with. He had good enough protection in the second half of the season and a hell of a lot better than Aaron Rodgers gets.

On the second point, that's something I also agree with. As I watched the Colts play last night, I realized that Peyton Manning actually throws to the back of his receivers quite a bit. He's not always perfect at leading his receivers. And as I watched the Saints, Brees throws a ton of passes to the receivers' back shoulder. The Saints' receivers are actually really remarkable about making in-pass adjustments to the ball. i remember a TD pass where I think it was Devery Henderson pretty much did a full 180 to make the proper adjustment to the ball on a fleaflicker. And if you watch Philip Rivers today, what you will see is probably the deadest, worst thrown ball I've ever seen in the NFL. But his receivers catch them. Of course I'm not implying that Cassel is even close to being in any of those guys' league. But I have seen the excuse thrown around that he cripples his receivers, but the more I watch playoff football, the more I realize that receivers just don't have any excuse for not catching a ball that isn't within reasonable reaching distance of their hands. Good receivers make adjustments. Chambers has done that a lot. My opinion of Bowe has taken a complete nosedive throughout this season.

I think there's a difference between a poorly placed ball and a poorly thrown ball (though I would also argue that a couple of the passes you allude to here, like the Henderson catch, were actually perfectly placed throws given the coverage, but that's another debate).

Some of the drops by the Chiefs were both poorly placed and poorly thrown.

A drop by Bowe was a ball so wobbly it damn near looked like an end over end punted ball.