TYLER THIGPEN EVERYBODY!
Thigpen had a bunch of interesting games for Kansas City. He’s mobile and has a serviceable arm. Chan Gailey put the Pistol offense in for him during the half-season he started after Huard and Croyle got busted, and had remarkably good results. He spread the ball around, kept Kansas City in games, and had about as many successes as he did failures.
Plus he caught a BEAUTIFUL touchdown pass on a trick play. Something like forty yards downfield, full extension, laid out for it. Love that play.
Was he GOOD? Well… he built half a season of decent play with a unique NFL formation and brought a spark to Kansas City after a boring, boring, boring eight games of running Larry Johnson straight ahead and giving up. He also faded very fast. The Football Outsiders noted in their charting that Thigpen started out every game on fire, but that fire went out more in every quarter. He ended games mistake-prone and bad.
Thigpen wouldn’t be a star in the NFL; he’s not gifted enough. But he could have been a decent enough starter for a team with talent at the other positions to bail him out. KC’s QB of the future? I really don’t think so. But I don’t see a whole lot from Matt Cassel that Thigpen couldn’t have done.
And now, I will defend that statement.
Matt Cassel is having, by almost any account, an awesome year. He’s thrown for 23 TDs and only 4 INTs. He’s completing almost 61% of his passes. He’s lost one fumble. He has been on fire lately, lighting up defenses with Dwayne Bowe catching something like 13 TDs in a four-game stretch. People look at KC’s record and Cassel’s stats and go, “He’s become a top-flight quarterback.”
He really hasn’t. If you look at just his numbers, even the advanced ones, it looks like he is. According to Football Outsiders, Matt Cassel’s Value over Average, comparing his stats to an average QB today, is 31.1%, which would be fifth in the NFL, behind Tom Brady, Philip Rivers, Aaron Rodgers, and Ben Roethlisberger. That’s incredible.
Matt Cassel’s DVOA, Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average, is 20.9%, 12th in the league. That puts him behind those four up there plus Drew Brees, Matt Ryan, Kyle Orton, Matt Schaub, Michael Vick, Tony Romo, and Vince Young.
Matt Cassel has played the most remarkable stretch of truly awful defenses this season. I can’t find the FO article now, but they specifically called out Cassel as a guy to grab in fantasy football for the middle of the season because of how bad the defenses he would be facing were.
Denver, Houston, Arizona, Seattle, Jacksonville, and Buffalo are all 24th or worse in defense by the FO stats. Oakland is better, 15th overall, but 18th against the pass. In 8 games against defenses that bad, Cassel has thrown for 19 touchdowns and 1 interception. His DVOA is 10 full points lower than his VOA, meaning that those big games have come against teams that have given up those games against everyone.
Is Matt Cassel performing better than Tyler Thigpen? Absolutely. Is he a better quarterback than Tyler Thigpen? Yes, he is, I won’t argue that. Is he SIGNIFICANTLY better than Tyler Thigpen? I doubt it. I think Thigpen could have performed this well with another two years in KC, especially when you figure he’d be throwing to the same receivers plus one much better – Tony Gonzalez said then that he would stay in Kansas City if Tyler Thigpen remained their quarterback.
Tyler Thigpen would not have been KC’s quarterback for the long haul; they would have drafted a QB at some point, either by now or in a year or two. I don’t think Cassel is worth anywhere near what Kansas City has paid for him, and I’m worried that next year against a slate of defenses not historically bad, Cassel will appear to decline dramatically, when in reality he’ll be playing at roughly the same level, just against much better defenses. Cassel had sixteen picks and fourteen fumbles last year; this year, he has four picks and two fumbles. That’s not going to happen again.
TL:DR – Tyler Thigpen is probably 75-80% of Matt Cassel, and this year that would have been good enough for him to get Kansas City into the playoffs too. We also wouldn’t be paying him $36M over 6 years.
