Cardinals Vs. 49ers: Five Negatives From The 23-7 Loss

against a caliber of defense Kolb hasn’t even faced yet, and everyone is ready to write Skelton off? He’s still won twice as many games as Kolb has this season, face it Kolb was a win now type of deal, so since we aren’t winning now, it’s time to move on from the Kolb expirement, he will never be better than inconsistent.

This is my first post….i think it’s hard to judge any qb with this receiving corp we have.

Ignoring the fact that Skelton played horribly against the 49er’s, I personally don’t think Skelton shouldn’t be thought of as a bad quarterback. Like Whisenhunt said, young quarterbacks have ups and downs.
 I (and I think many people)believe that Kolb should get the chance to come back from his injuries fully healed and be able to prove what he’s worth with more experience under his belt. I believe that it’s only fair that Skelton be treated the same way, and not be judged by only this game, but rather more consecutive games. Too few games = variables that occurs, i.e. pass protection, weather, receivers, body condition, home/away,defense, etc. play too much of a factor to rightfully evaluate a quarterback. For Example, this particular game against the 49’ers, we were away, we had light rain and played against one of the best defenses in the league(statistically). I believe that it’s not reasonable to judge Skelton’s play on this game alone, because he hasn’t played enough games to compare his performance with other games in a similar condition. The exact same thing can be said for Kolb.
     I read an earlier post by someone explaining in detail that statistically wise, Kolb and Skelton were actually pretty similar. So, Kolb could have played fully healthy and he could’ve had the same statistics as Skelton did today. Or he could have had 300 yards and 3 TD’s. Or if we could rewind the clock and play the game over, Skelton could show up and be the guy that rallied the Cardinals against the Eagles in the 4th quarter. We’ll never know. Especially with both quarterbacks having less than a season’s worth of playing time. There’s not much and not enough information(personally, 7games for Kolb and 2 games for Skelton isn’t enough) to guess which Quarterback would have done better using past games as an example.
I personally think it’s best to just watch and see, whoever the quarterback is going to be. That means that whoever starts next week doesn’t get to be treated like god for winning, nor doesn’t get thrown under a tank for losing. Could be a lucky win, could be an unlucky loss. Just take it all in as a good experience for the quarterback, because the Win/Loss doesn’t matter as much now since we’re out of the playoff race.
If I was the head coach, I would start Skelton for the remainder of the season since we’re not going to be playing in the playoffs. NOT BECAUSE Skelton is playing better, But because: Kolb can be comfortable with the playbook during the time. By the end of the season, it’ll be a total of 8 games of experience under Skelton’s belt. That’s 8 games worth of infromation that can be used to evaluate him, even under different circumstances for each game. Next Season, start Kolb, who will be better prepared with an offseason program. If Kolb still plays badly after 8 games, we will have 8 games worth of information for Kolb as well, and we can probably tell better which quarterback should be starting, based on the statistics and factors. But that’s just me.

Personally though, I don’t know if this is true or not, but I thought Kolb came here to be a franchise quarterback. The Cardinals gave away a 2nd Round draft pick and a ProBowl player to get him, which I think most people would agree is a really big sacrafice to any team. The 60 million dollar contract makes it even a bigger dedicated deal for the Cardinals. I thought the Cardinals took Kolb so he could make an immediate impact? I think Kolb should be on a slightly shorter leash than Skelton because Kolb does have 4years? of experience in the NFL, starter or not. I’m also unsure about the things said about Kolb not doing well becasue of no off-season and the need to adjust for a new team. 4 years of looking at tape and holding clipboards and starting a few games gives him more experience than Skelton, so comparing the amount of experience in both quarterbacks in unreasonable, in my opinion. but, I’ve never played competitive football so I will never know all the stuff that goes on in the meeting rooms and locker rooms, so Kolb may really just be struggling to mold in with the team, and it may be really hard to adjust to a new playbook. But and the cardinals sacrificed a lot to get him. Obviously, people aren’t like money, but Kolb should on paper be worth the sacrafice that the Cards made and the way he has been playing (regardless of the win/loss record) he still hasn’t been worth that much, and I think that’s also one of the issues that lingers between the Kolb vs. Skelton debate, the price that each player brings. Skelton failing is at worst a waste of a 5th round pick. But if Kolb doesn’t succeed with in a few years(which I doubt), then it’d be the equivalent of the Cardinals giving away the Eagles at least a 2nd round draft pick, depending on weather DRC succeeds in Philadelphia as well. And I think that’s why many people are so eager to blame Kolb or praise Skelton and be generally be impatient, which is why it’s important to just sit back and watch.

Just my 2 cents.

On an completely unrelated personal note, I’m not saying he DOES, but I FEEL that Skelton does have ‘it’, the same stuff that Tebow has been showing, and Kolb doesn’t. Or if he does, he hasn’t shown it yet. and it was a disappointment that Skelton didn’t play in the 4th quarter, to show if he could pull of a 4th quarter drive like he did the past 2 games with his ‘it’. It could have been a great opportunity to bring back (or complete lose, if he threw another pick) trust and the heart of the fans should he have staged a comeback.

Is more of a continuing negative that popped up again in this game. I’m tired of hearing Whiz say “the plays were there, we just didn’t make them” after every single game. You know, after a while, you have to realize that the players aren’t making the plays for a reason, and start figuring out and calling the plays the players can make instead. Stop expecting young QBs like Kolb and Skelton to make the same plays that Warner was able to make and tailor the offense to their skills like Fox is doing in Denver.

Calling so many passes and so few runs in a close game like this was at halftime is a perfect example of Whiz’s refusal to modify his offense to fit the players, and that might eventually be what costs him his job.