KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Duck, Kansas City: A nasty quarterback controversy may be headed your way.

It's just what the embattled, touchdown-starved Chiefs do not need. But if coach Romeo Crennel returns Brady Quinn to the bench and puts Matt Cassel back under center, a quarterback controversy seems assured.

Crennel made it clear Tuesday that Quinn and Cassel are now in head-to-head competition.

"What I told them is I'm rotating the quarterbacks. They will get equal reps," Crennel said. "Both of them will get work, and then we'll evaluate it, and then next week we'll get ready for game week, and then we'll make a decision and go from there."

Drawing from bitter experience during four stormy years as head coach in Cleveland, Crennel knows how destructive a QB controversy can be.

"It is distracting," Crennel said. "Everybody's wondering who the guy's going to be, and all those kind of things. Then what happens, some guys on the team kind of favor one guy over another guy. Even though everybody's got a job to do and they will do their job. But it is a distraction."

Cassel missed last week's game at Tampa Bay with a concussion he sustained the week before. That was fine with some fans; many have never warmed to the former New England backup who didn't help his case by throwing nine interceptions through the first five games.

But Cassel was back on the windswept practice field Tuesday and is cleared for non-contact drills. Crennel expects him to be OK by the time the Chiefs (1-5) come back from their bye week and play Oakland (1-4) on Oct. 28.

No matter who's under center, the offense will be looking for its first touchdown in eight quarters.

"They will give (Cassel) another test next week, on game week, to finalize, to make it official," Crennel said. "But I imagine, during these couple of days here, if he does good and there's nothing different on his baseline test, that he'll be cleared for contact."

Cassel was having no trouble moving around.

"I feel great, yeah," he said. "I've passed all the tests and done all that."

Quinn, in his first start in almost three seasons, did OK for the most part during last week's 38-10 loss to the Buccaneers, the Chiefs' fourth blowout defeat. He was 22-for-38 for 180 yards, sticking almost entirely to short- and intermediate-range passes.