Forget about whether Terrell Owens is released, where T.J. Houshmandzadeh signs or if Brett Favre is finally retired for good, the biggest offseason story is what will happen to Matt Cassel.

Not only did Mel Kiper recently call him better than Matthew Stafford or Mark Sanchez, he also said Cassel was the superior quarterback to Aaron Rodgers and Jay Cutler. Now, I fully admit I'm a card-carrying member of the Cutler fan club (OK, I actually started the club), but he did throw the second most picks in the NFL last season and hasn't quite progressed like I expected. Still, he remains a budding superstar, so this assumption seems pretty far out there. Cassel did impress with a 14:4 TD:INT ratio and a 7.5 YPA mark over the second half of last year, but he also took 47 sacks and played in a system highly conducive to posting nice looking stats.

Cassel no doubt improved as a player as the season wore on, and there's still plenty of room for further growth as well. However, having Randy Moss, Wes Welker and most importantly, Bill Belichick at his disposal should not be overlooked. Greg Cosell recently wrote an intriguing article highlighting the fact New England went almost exclusively to the shotgun formation after realizing Cassel's weaknesses. In fact, over the season's final six games, he operated out of the shotgun spread an amazing 88 percent of the time, so any team willing to trade for him better be the right fit schematically.

NFL insider Mike Lombardi thinks it will take more than just a first round pick to acquire him, which seems about right. Of course, the Patriots will hold onto Cassel if they are truly worried about Tom Brady's recovery from multiple knee surgeries, but after Cassel accepted the franchise tag ($14.65 million), he would actually count more against the cap than Brady ($14.62 million) for 2009. In all, that's almost 25 percent of the team's cap tied to just one position. Expect a trade to eventually happen, and while I do like Cassel's future better than Stafford's, buyer beware.