Scott Pioli, the Pats vice president of player personnel, talks to coach Bill Belichick at the end of practice last summer.

The Providence Journal / Bob Breidenbach

SAN JOSE, Calif. — This week, as the New England Patriots remained in the California Bay Area preparing for today’s game against San Diego, vice president of player personnel Scott Pioli was bouncing up and down the West Coast doing some prep work of his own.

Pioli is getting ready for the draft — yes, the 2009 NFL Draft, more than six months from now. But as he explained to a small group of reporters on Friday morning, while many are focused on the week-to-week results of the Patriots this season, the work he and the team’s scouts are doing now is vital to the team’s success going forward.

Case in point: Matt Cassel.

Few in the pro ranks knew anything about the University of Southern California backup. He had played behind Carson Palmer and then Matt Leinart, both of whom went on to win the Heisman Trophy and then become high first-round draft picks.

But some thorough work by then-Patriots area scout Matt Russell and a little bit of draft-day strategy led to the unknown commodity landing in New England. Now, of course, Cassel is taking New England into San Diego with a 3-1 record after being thrust into the starting role early in the season opener.

Explains Pioli: “Something that we ask all of our area scouts to do at the major colleges is they have to have a write-up and information on every senior prospect, whether they play or not. Even if they don’t play, they need to give us some information. This is a great reason — USC is loaded. They’ve got backup players that have been drafted before, even before Matt Cassel, and will be drafted in the future.

“Russell was out there, and I was getting ready to go to USC during our West Coast trip, and whenever I go to schools I always call the area scout and the regional scout and get an idea of what I need to look at and he went through the roster and he said there’s a backup quarterback, he was a hotshot coming out of high school, he’s been behind Carson, he’s been behind Leinart, you know, he’s a really interesting guy. He has great tools, strong arm, really good athlete, you should take a look at him.”

When Pioli gets on the USC campus, he sees firsthand what Russell was talking about.

“I watched practice, and I mean [Cassel had a] strong arm, accurate, really good athlete, moves well, he’s covering kicks in practice, he’s doing all the stuff on special teams in practice. This guy’s an interesting prospect.”

New England likes to have four quarterbacks at training camp, Pioli said, so at the very least Cassel can come in as that fourth guy to take some of the throws. But after the Trojans’ Pro Day in the spring, Cassel has a workout that Russell sticks around for. He impresses the scout even more.

“So [Russell] calls me after the Pro Day and is like, ‘You know, this guy really threw the ball well. He lit it up; he was on.’ And we ended up getting more tape — we get practice tape, we’ve got the 36 passes he threw in his four years,” Pioli says with a chuckle.

While the Patriots had done their diligence and liked what they saw, there were at least two other influential men in the NFL who knew about Cassel: former USC offensive coordinator Norm Chow, who was then in the same position with the Tennessee Titans, and Cassel’s former teammate, Palmer.

“We see him as a draftable guy, but then you’re thinking: the guy’s never played, so maybe we can wait ’til free agency and get him after the draft as a rookie free agent. But during this process, we start to gather information about different players. Now, Norm Chow’s at Tennessee, and he and Matt are like this” — Pioli raises two crossed fingers — “Carson and Matt are like this” — he crosses his fingers again — “and they have the same agent.”

As the second day of the draft that year starts to wind down, Pioli starts to think that New England won’t be able to get Cassel as a rookie free agent, not with two teams that know him so well already trying to recruit him. So the Pats’ final draft pick that weekend was for Cassel.

Pioli heard later that Chow was “blown away” that someone had drafted Cassel. Not because he wasn’t good, but because he figured he had the inside scoop.

“But that’s part of the process,” Pioli emphasized. “Where I had seen the player at this time of year, and one of our area scouts had done his job really well and done it the way he was supposed to do it, he wrote him up and gave me a heads up to take a look at him.

“Now, we don’t know what Matt’s going to be, but that’s a really good example of how the process works.”

And Russell, the scout that turned Pioli on to Cassel, is now a national scout with the Eagles.

“He thinks he’s a rock star now,” Pioli jokes. “He’s got it all figured out.”

smanza@projo.com