Steve Keim understands the quarterback tax

One of the biggest questions every year is… how good is the incoming quarterback class.

In his time with the media on Wednesday, General Manager Steve Keim was asked this question and answered it with something you should all be familiar with…

The Quarterback tax:

It’s so early when people talk about projections. At the end of the day that position gets pushed higher because of the supply and demand, but a lot of times you’ll be evaluating a guy in the fall and you think he’s a good third-round pick and one goes, and the value of the position players are, I don’t want to say overdrafted, but a team that has needs is certainly going to pull the trigger and take the player a little higher than anticipated.

This speaks volumes to a number of things.

1. Keim hasn’t gotten around to putting numbers on prospects, so the “seven quarterbacks” thing is really a non-starter.
2. Keim has thought highly of previous quarterbacks, just not highly enough.
3. Keim understands the quarterback tax… He’s just trying to avoid it as much as possible.

It’s not surprising, it is something we have known and suspected for a while.

Keim doesn’t over value the quarterback when you put all the players in a vacuum. Is that smart? Well, it has him in this position and one playoff win in five seasons.

However, he also lead the Cardinals to their most successful regular season stretch in their time in Arizona.

He did without paying too much of a tax, although Palmer’s contract was clearly the tax he paid.

Let’s see if he can do it again.