Bruce Arians says A.Q. Shipley the starting center 'for now,' suggests Lyle Sendlein will retire

Arizona Cardinals head coach Bruce Arians spoke to the media on Wednesday at breakfast at the owners meetings in Boca Raton, Florida. He talked about a bunch of things, but one thing that came up was the center position on the offensive line. Lyle Sendlein, who was the team's starter last season (and for many seasons before that), is a free agent. Arians suggests (via ESPN) he might be ready to retire.

Arians said Sendlein is likely to retire. "as far as I know," but just that he hasn't announce it yet.

The team, after cutting him early in the offseason for business reasons, re-signed him in training camp. With Sendlein perhaps out of the picture, the job appears to be Shipley's.

Arians left the door open.

"He will right now (be the starter)," Arians said. "We'll start adding pieces and everybody's competing. Nobody on our team has a job."

While that sounds suspect, he did give a vote of comfidence, saying Sendlein beat out Shipley for the starting job only barely, saying it went down to the last day before the season.

"That thing went right to the last minute with A.Q. last year," Arians said. "A.Q. played the whole Philadelphia game and we rushed for 240.

"There isn't that much of a drop off. They went back and forth. Lyle was the vet but I have all the confidence in A.Q. Shipley."

Translation: We're good with A.Q., but we'll try to do better. There's nothing wrong with that, really. He has always seemed to be solid as a starter, but he also has always been a guy teams want to upgrade. It is good, though, that he is paid like a backup. With a salary of $760,000 in 2016, there is no problem keeping him on the bench if a better option comes along.

And if he is on the bench, he makes a pretty decent fullback.