I listened to Pete Carrol interviews leading up to our game with the Seahawks because I wanted to hear what he would say about Cassel. He said something like, it was a toss-up between Cassel and Leinart to start for USC after Palmer left and he doesn’t really know why they went with Leinart. They were pretty even and they had to go with one of them. I would bet that Cassel could have won the Heisman if he would have played ahead of Leinart.

For a couple years, Cassel had the benifit of watching Tom Brady, who will go down in history as one of the best leaders in NFL history. You can see some of that “True Grit” leadership coming out of Cassel and it reminds you of Tom Brady.