Kevin Kolb And John Skelton On Even Ground In Battle For Starting Job

The most intriguing positional battle that the Arizona Cardinals will have is the one at quarterback. Kevin Kolb and John Skelton will battle for the starting job. And apparently, they are on even ground to start things off. Yes, the team paid Kolb a lot of money last season and a $7 million bonus this offseason, but the coaching staff is supposedly looking only at performance.

Head coach Ken Whisenhunt was a guest on Jim Rome's show Rome and said as much.

"That's the question that's going to be answered through the workouts this spring and in training camp this summer. They've both been working hard at it. It's been good to get out on the field and actually work on techniques and fundamentals with these guys. At times last year they both showed they can do good things. But consistency at that position is something we've got to improve on. So hopefully the competition between both of them will sharpen up one of them enough that he'll be a good starter for us."

Whiz even went as far to say that the job is not necessarily Kolb's to lose, as many would think, especially considering the financial commitment.

"I think the knee-jerk reaction would be to say that it is Kevin's job to lose. But then you have to look at what John Skelton did last year in winning those games when he was in there. So I think you have to give John a lot of credit for winning those games. I certainly have a lot of respect for Kevin and what he's done in this league and we made the commitment to bring him in to our football team. So it's going to start out as even as it possibly can, and we're going to let the best player take it from there. We did that many years ago when we had Kurt Warner and Matt Leinart, and it worked out pretty good for us. So hopefully we'll have that same kind of magic."

It is hard to believe that the coaching staff is not going to give Kolb every opportunity to win the job. And it would seem absurd with the money they paid him that anything less than a clear outperformance by Skelton would unseat Kolb.

However, Whisenhunt has not been afraid to let a backup take over. It happened with Kurt Warner and Matt Leinart.

Hopefully one is markedly better than the other, because it would be bad for the team have things divided.

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