AP

On Sunday, Chiefs coach Romeo Crennel said that Matt Cassel is still the team’s starting quarterback. On Monday, Crennel reiterated that position — with a caveat.

Crennel said the Chiefs may give Brady Quinn some of the first-team reps in practice this week, as the team prepares to host the 3-1 Ravens.

“At some point, as a coach, you go through and you see what’s happening in the game and how a guy is reacting and how he’s responding to what’s happening in the game,” Crennel said, via Adam Teicher of the Kansas City Star. “If you feel he’s inept, constantly making poor decisions, bad choices, then that’s when you move on from him and give someone else a chance.”

If you feel he’s inept. The fact that the Chiefs could be getting Quinn ready to play means that the powers-that-be are at least thinking Cassel may be inept.

There’s also a chance Quinn would be used to merely snap Cassel out of his funk. “You pull him out, put somebody else in, let him settle down and maybe he goes back in,” Crennel said. “As a coach, you get a feeling about whether he’s making good decisions, poor decisions . . . those kind of things all kind of play into it.”

At No. 2 on the depth chart, Quinn has to at least be having flashbacks to 2011, when he was leapfrogged by the No. 3 man in Denver — Tim Tebow — after the Broncos opted to bench Kyle Orton. But Ricky Stanzi’s star has faded in Kansas City; he went from competing with Quinn in the offseason to being a distant No. 3 in the regular season.

Besides, with no one buying “Stand Up for Stanzi” billboard in Kansas City, Quinn won’t have to worry about the mob making personnel decisions.

Again.

For now, Cassel is the one who should be worrying. And part of the plan surely is to see if the threat of being labeled “inept” will get him to be more, um, ept.