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The quarterback position, I am convinced, is the most horribly coached position in all of sports.
It just doesn’t seem possible that there can be so few competent people in the world at one thing. I understand that every NFL quarterback can’t be Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers. Not everyone is a genius. But the fact that so many NFL teams can’t get competent play out of their quarterbacks makes me think that a lot of coaches aren’t setting their QBs up to succeed. They make offenses too complicated, or ask too much of their arms, or something. This many QBs can’t all be bad at something.
All of this is a long way of saying that I don’t think it’s Ryan Lindley’s fault that he’s so bad at being an NFL quarterback. I think with competent coaching and, more importantly, time to prepare, Lindley could succeed in the league.
The Arizona Cardinals are not the team to make that happen. Not in 2014, not when Lindley is the their third or fourth option and they’ve had no time to build an offense that makes any sense for him.
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Kent Somers of the Arizona Republic reported that Lindley will return to the starting spot for Arizona this weekend, after rookie Logan Thomas had a poor week in practice. The mind positively reels at how bad Thomas must have looked in practice this week for the Cardinals to think Lindley is a better option.
The stats for Lindley speak for themselves. He has 225 pass attempts in the NFL without scoring a touchdown, the most in NFL history. He’s thrown eight interceptions in that time. On Sunday, NFL Network’s Chris Wesseling made the wonderful joke that Lindley’s passes weren’t accurate enough to be intercepted.
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If this were another situation, whatever. The team could take its lumps through the end of the season and vow to get better next year. The problem is that the Cardinals are 11-4. They’re playing a reeling 49ers team and could still win the NFC West. This isn’t the time to pack it in, or to bring in a young rookie in Thomas and hope he can get some reps in. The Cardinals need to win now.
We kid around about bringing Kurt Warner back, or coaxing Favre out of retirement, but it’s hard for me to believe that somewhere out there in the world there isn’t a better option than Ryan Lindley. He’s shown that he can’t get it done in Arizona, whether because of coaching or situation or, maybe, he’s just not good enough at this position to be in the NFL.
The world is a big place. There has to be a better option somewhere.
