The Pats-Chiefs Trade: I'll Be Honest, I'm Not Too Pleased

Free agency has begun, and business is booming. Huge contracts have been thrown out to some of the league's very best players, and some pretty large trades have been made.

However, as a big fan of the Patriots, one of the biggest truly displeases me: the trade of Mike Vrabel and Matt Cassel to the Kansas City Chiefs for their second round draft pick.

It's not really so much what they got in exchange for those players, although for two players who have gained so much appreciation among New England fans it does seem like we got the short end of the deal.

Really, it's not as much the loss of Vrabel either, although he was easily my favorite player on their defense and probably their best as well. The true head-scratcher in this deal is the trade of Matt Cassel.

He did such a good job for the Patriots this past season in place of Tom Brady. They might not have made the playoffs in spite of their 11-5 record, but over the course of the season we saw him develop into a quarterback who was ready to take a struggling team to better places.

Now that he is with the Chiefs, I wish him all the best, even if he is on the same team as Bernard Pollard, the player who many foolishly deemed a hero, as if he intentionally blew out Tom Brady's knee.

Heck, if anything, he might as well thank him for giving him a brighter future with the NFL.

But the reason I find his shipment to the Chiefs so baffling is because now, in the event that Tom Brady's surgery actually turns out to be behind schedule or he gets hurt again, who do the Patriots have for insurance?

The current quarterback depth chart for the Pats includes Brady, Kevin O'Connell, and Matt Gutierrez; the latter two have played somewhere around five minutes in their entire NFL career combined, if that.

Don't get me wrong, I am highly optimistic about Tom Brady making a strong return. I know that he was ready for his ultimate revenge for the brief time his season lasted, considering how well he performed in that half-quarter (7-11, 63.6 completion percentage, and 76 yards).

I know that whomever the Patriots open the season against, and wherever it is, he will be ready to torch the opposing defense through the air and connect with a longball or two to Randy Moss just like in 2007.

But now that 2008 has come and gone and his supposed "invincibility" has been disproven, I worry a bit more about him.

So once more, best of luck to Cassel in Kansas City, but I still am a bit displeased that we got rid of such a good insurance policy in the event that Brady (God forbid) gets injured again.