Victory cupcakes for everyone!

(Photo from Boston.com)

Matt Cassel, I am delighted to tell you, is maturing in front of our very eyes. Or so today's announcers told us, um, approximately four-thousand, eight-hundred and twenty-four times. I have no choice but to take them at their word.

Of course, one presumes it is easier to mature in this manner when you have Randy Moss available to haul in 60-yard bombs for TDs. That'll help. Reports out of Foxboro this week told us all that Moss and Cassel were striving to develop a rapport and work together on watching tapes of upcoming opponents. Which, you know, is necessary, clearly. But is also kind of adorable if you just picture Cassel on the phone with his mom expressing his doubt about being cool enough to talk to Randy. And then sort of sheepishly approaching him and asking if he's, you know, not busy or anything, if maybe he wants to watch some 49ers film together. But, you know, he's probably busy and just forget about it. It was stupid to ask. And then Cassel starts to shuffle away and Randy calls his name and throws his arm around Cassel's shoulders and tells him that he thinks that's a great idea and, in fact, they should do that every week. And Cassel beams.

You guys? I might be just a little too invested in Matt Cassel's mental state. But, as Chrissy pointed out, his performance this week surely means that he won't protest when his mother gives him frosted cupcakes in a care package. Not like two weeks ago when he claimed that he didn't deserve frosting. And his family is out in California this week and you just know he scuffed his foot all "Thanks, mom" and she was all "Matty, the linoleum" and then she made him take his shoes off.

(I realize that Matt Cassel is a grown man with a wife and all that but my brain refuses to wrap itself around the notion that he's a grown up who doesn't need care packages of baked goods and "Hang in there, baby" kitty posters from his mom and that he doesn't sleep in footie pajamas in a bunk bed. This is the world I need to live in, people. Let's just go with it.)

Things were touch and go there for a while with the teams trading interceptions and what have you. But eventually, the Pats figured it out and got into a rhythm and we didn't have one of those "Houston at the end of today's game against Indy" situations because DAMN. Ball control, gentlemen. Jeez.

ANYWAY, our boys will be spending the week on the West Coast as they've got San Diego next week and it wouldn't make a terrible lot of sense for them to be jetting back and forth across the country. So any of y'all out there who happen to run into our football playing gentlemen, please give them a fist bump for me. Except for Matt Cassel. Him you can hug. And maybe offer him a handkerchief until he gets that postgame press conference sweating thing under control.

Now, onto the matter at hand. Josh Beckett, what are you doing? To be continued...