Until Tom has shown that the injury has caused otherwise, I think the team needs to assume he’ll capably lead the offense when he returns. Franchising Cassel is an expensive insurance policy, but also buys the front office some time in terms of seeing where Tom is with his recovery.

Matt did a great job this season, but the statistical comparison between his and Tom’s first year really won’t yield a lot of useful data. Many cite it as evidence that Tom is actually better, given the quality of receivers Matt had over Tom’s in his first year, but I think there’s a lot more factors than that to consider as well. The continued proliferation of west-coast offense formations, the de-emphasis on workhorse running backs throughout the league, more teams employing cover 2…all this makes comparing their first seasons as starters kind of pointless to me. The game is always changing, and good teams adapt and trail blaze as needed.