Archive for Sunday, November 8, 2009

Chiefs’ Cassel figures to get more time

The Associated Press

November 8, 2009

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Jacksonville, Fla. — This could be the week Matt Cassel keeps his jersey clean.

Cassel has been sacked 24 times in six starts, including 19 the last four games, and has been hurried and knocked down even more often.

The Jacksonville Jaguars (3-4) could offer him some relief when they play host to Kansas City (1-6) today.

The Jaguars have a league-low five sacks in seven games, struggling to get any consistent pressure on opposing quarterbacks. Peyton Manning, Kurt Warner, Matt Schaub and Matt Hasselbeck all torched Jacksonville’s secondary. Even Vince Young looked comfortable in the pocket last week against the Jags.

Could Cassel be next?

“I don’t really know what the Jags’ stats are, but teams have had some success throwing the ball,” Cassel said. “Any time you’re a quarterback you hope that you can get out there and have the ability to throw the ball. That’s an area where we’ve struggled a bit and hopefully looking to get better in this week.”

The Chiefs are coming off a bye week, which provided first-year coach Todd Haley and his staff extra time to retool an offense that hasn’t found a rhythm since Haley fired Chan Gailey as offensive coordinator. Haley took over play-calling duties at that time, two weeks before the season opener.

“The bye week was great for us because we never had a real training camp with the terminology and the system, so we needed that time to really kind of just fine-tune some of those finer points that in a normal week you don’t get to,” Haley said. “It was like a mini-training camp for us these last two weeks.”

Haley said his top priority last week was to eliminate negative plays, including sacks. Facing Jacksonville should help.

Defensive end Reggie Hayward, on injured reserve since the opener because of a broken left leg, limped through the locker room the other day and jokingly lifted his arms above his head and said, “Still in the lead.”

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