Frankly, as quarterback controversies go, this is a fairly lame one.
But Chiefs quarterback Matt Cassel was cleared to resume non-contact practice after his concussion, and coach Romeo Crennel said he’d use the bye week to evaluate both Cassel and Brady Quinn.
“What I told them is I’m rotating the quarterbacks,” Crennel said, via Bob Dutton of the Kansas City Star. “They will get equal reps. [Ricky] Stanzi will be one who won’t get as many reps.”
Cassel suffered a concussion on Oct. 7 against the Ravens, and Quinn started last week’s loss to the Buccaneers.
While Cassel hasn’t been cleared for contact, the door seems open for him to play in their next game on Oct. 28 against the Raiders, such that they want him to.
“They will give him another test next week, game week, to finalize it, to make it official,” Crennel said. “But I imagine that during these couple of days, if he does [well] and there’s nothing different on his baseline test, that he’ll be cleared for contact.”
Crennel said he was hesitant to leave things up in the air, as the Chiefs try to salvage something from a 1-5 start.
“I’ve been involved in one before,” he said. “It is distracting because everyone is wondering who the guy is going to be. What happens is some guys on the team favor one guy over the other guy — even though everybody has a job to do, . . . it’s a distraction.”
Asked if he knew who the players might prefer, Crennel dropped a little “buck stops here.”
“They’re going to favor the guy who gives us the best chance to win,” he said. “No, no, I’m sorry about that. They’re going to favor the guy who I say is the quarterback. That’s who they’re going to favor.”
If Chiefs players are honest with themselves, they might vote “none-of-the-above.”