Rapid Reactions Heading into Week Four

By: Matt Harmon

Tampa Bay Buccaneers Bench Josh Freeman for Mike Glennon

• You could tell this move was coming for a long time; it was just a matter of when. Even though Josh Freeman has been playing quite poorly I still did not expect it to happen this soon. This coaching staff never believed in Freeman, and head coach Greg Schiano in particular never jived will with Freeman. In support of the coaching staff, Freeman is not a guy I would want on my team. He has massive consistency issues and there are too many reports that he has poor work ethic for me to ignore. The way he has already handled this benching is very telling. Instead of being the good soldier, like Alex Smith was last season, he did an interview with ESPN behind the teams back publicly opting for a trade. Freeman just does not seem to get it, and I cannot see any team bringing him in as a starter next season, and even less trading for him during this season. With all that being said for anyone who thinks the Bucs are better off with Glennon because “it cannot get any worse than Freeman”, well you may be in for a rude awakening. Glennon is a third round rookie who is probably not ready to start in this league, and had a laundry list of issues coming out of the draft. His arm strength is his biggest attribute, and even that quality is overrated by the national media as he has not shown the ability to make stick throws in tight windows. Glennon also is poor at reading defenses and makes very puzzling decisions. In the end, he is a lankier, less experience, less athletic, version of the quarterback he is replacing. I doubt this move makes Tampa Bay better in the short term, but it gets a poor player who the coaches seemed to have it out for off the field. 
  

Matt Cassel to Start for the Vikings on Sunday in Place of Christian Ponder

• Here is another piece of not surprising news about a quarterback being replaced. The only difference here being that Ponder is being benched because of a “rib injury”. Now, normally I won’t get into too much injury updates in this section of the website, but if you could not tell by the quotes, this is not a normal situation. To open the eyes of the naïve amongst you, sometimes teams in the NFL milk a players injury situation just to get him off the field. I am sure Ponder is actually hurt, but I do not doubt the team is encouraging him to be held back so that they can get a look at Matt Cassel to see if he can better manage this team. A similar situation is going on with the Browns, Brandon Weeden, and Brian Hoyer, so there is precedence for this. As for how this plays out on the field, I sincerely doubt that Matt Cassel makes this team any better than Christian Ponder did.