Cassel
On paper, completing two-thirds of his passes for two touchdowns and a 128.5 QB rating, while leading his team to its first win on the season, seems like a good day for Matt Cassel. However, as his -3.7 grade suggests, he was far from perfect and, in fact, wasn’t terribly different than what we’ve seen from Christian Ponder – for instance, both players have an average depth of target of roughly 9.0 yards. Cassel did make a few really impressive throws, such as on his third quarter touchdown pass to Greg Jennings on a post. At other times, though, the Steelers let him get away with some poor decisions, including a pair of balls that could have (and perhaps should have) been picked by Ike Taylor. One of these came on the first drive of the game, when he missed long on a 9-route in the end zone, and was saved only by Cordarrelle Patterson’s last-second pass defense. On the other (0:39, Q1) he made a dangerous (and probably predetermined) throw that allowed Taylor to break on an in-route deep in Viking territory and could have resulted in a pick-six. Losing the ball late in the first half didn’t help either in a grading system that isn’t too kind to fumbles.
It will be interesting whether the Vikings stick with Cassel going forward; he didn’t make an overwhelming claim for the starting job based on his performance in London, though leading the team to its first win can’t be understated. He also avoided the costly turnovers (luckily) that have plagued Ponder early on. One striking difference between the two was how quickly Cassel got rid of the ball, with an average time to attempt of 2.18 seconds. This helped minimize pressure as the Steeler rush got to him on just three of 27 drop backs. Conversely, Ponder’s average time to attempt of 2.59 has led to him seeing pressure on 38.5% of drop backs.
https://www.profootballfocus.com/blog/2 ... gs-week-4/
