[Kansas City.com] The Chiefs said Matt Cassel had nothing more than the wind knocked out of him when he left their final preseason game against Green Bay midway through the second quarter after being sacked.
It turns out Cassel has more than that. Cassel has a rib injury that could prevent him from playing in Sunday’s regular season opener against Buffalo at Arrowhead Stadium.
If Cassel can’t play against the Bills, Tyler Palko is the likely starting quarterback. Palko has bounced around to several NFL teams but has never started a regular-season game.
A source close to the situation said Chiefs coach Todd Haley told Palko after the game, “You’d better be ready to play Sunday.’’
Cassel was injured when Green Bay’s 340-pound defensive lineman, Howard Green, landed on top of Cassel after the sack. Cassel got up in obvious pain after the play and immediately left the game in favor of Palko.
Cassel later did some throwing on the sideline as if he was going back in the game. He never did.
Because this is a home game and against the Bills I have the utmost confidence in the Chiefs being able to pull out a win without Cassel. The extra time Palko had during the preseason served as a precursor for “in case s#$% happens to Cassel” circumstances such as these. Run with him, allow Cassel to heal and move forward. Besides, the Chiefs will need more than one week to figure out the TE situation so they might as well run the ball 35-40 times this week and employ more two TE sets with Pope and Becht.
Comment by Shockjay — September 4, 2011 @ 9:58 pm
I think Stanzi is our future. We can win right now maybe with Palko but if we get Stanzi some playing time it could be very valueable for us.
Comment by Chief tom — September 4, 2011 @ 10:05 pm