"Matt Cassel is in a pinstriped suit, the pants oversized the way he likes them, and the bead of sweat on his forehead has nothing to do with the fib he's about to tell.

"I felt 100 percent," he says, and he has to realize that nobody believes this.

Shoot, 100 percent? He had an organ removed fewer than two weeks ago, an emergency appendectomy that sometimes comes with a four-week recovery time, and that's for bankers and accountants — not NFL quarterbacks.

"Yes," he says when pushed about being 100 percent. "Otherwise I wouldn't have been out there."

That's another fib, two in one answer, because nobody believes he could have felt 100 percent healthy before the Chiefs' 27-13 victory over the Rams just 11 days after surgery.

The fibs are forgiven, even embraced as an endearing part of Cassel's most impressive game of a breakout season that has Kansas City wondering which is more remarkable: the Chiefs going from 4-12 to the verge of an AFC West title or Cassel going from easy punch line to something more like John Wayne in shoulder pads.

"He was going to be throwing up blood or he was going to be playing football," offensive lineman Brian Waters says. "That's the kind of guy he is.""