This morning on Mike and Mike, the guys covered the Arizona Cardinals as part of their Two a day's segment which involves them answering "5 big questions" about each team. Below is my analysis of what they had to say.
Question 1 : Are you confident Kevin Kolb can be successful in Arizona?
Mike Golic's answer will be a common one for the majority of the five questions. He basically said he is confident that he can be more successful then what we had all throughout last year. Golic went onto say that he was not sure about Kolb when he came out of college, but that a lot of people seem to love him and throwing to a receiver like Larry Fitzgerald can only help and that Todd Heap will be a nice addition. Greenberg basically said the same thing as Golic stating that they were so poor last year, the only place they can go is up.
My Take
Can't argue too much here as despite what everyone has said about Kolb, he is relatively unknown. That doesn't mean I think he will fail here, but predicting anything about Kolb is just pure speculation and not based on any concrete evidence. Kevin Kolb is certainly an upgrade over what we had last year and has shown flashes of both excellent and poor play. There are just too many questions to answer about him to be sure of anything.
Question 2 : With Beanie as the expected starter, will the Cardinals improve on a run game that came in last in the NFL in 2010?
Mike Golic was actually pretty honest here when he gave the answer of , "I don't know." He continued on by saying that when Ken Whisenhunt first came to Arizona, everyone thought he would be bringing the smash mouth type of football that they ran in Pittsburgh and that he hasn't done anything close to that so far. Greenberg countered with the argument that if people don''t respect your QB, that it's harder to run but Golic automatically shot that down by saying that our run game was also poor when Kurt Warner was here.
My Take
If you look at position by position, the only way I can describe how I feel about is, "I just don't know." We have so many changes from personnel to coaching that I just can't answer with any certainty at almost every position. I will say that it seems like the Cardinals will attempt to run more with drafting both a running back and a fullback in this years draft but I have felt that way before. I think this is one of those things that just has to wait until the regular season to actually see what happens. I'm one of the people last year that felt Whiz abandoned the run too early in games but as was stated before, it's difficult to run when your QB has around a 50% completion rate.
Question 3 : How will rookie corner back Patrick Peterson impact a pass defense that ranked near the bottom of the league?
As when talking about the QB play, Golic said that Peterson has to help because we were just so poor last year. He said that while being a rookie, he thinks that Peterson's size and athletic ability will help this defense improve despite the loss of DRC.
My Take
Agree here, although maybe they're not as well versed with Whiz as we are and his dislike for starting rookies early on in their career. Now I am all for sitting rookies who aren't ready to play the position, but it is also my belief that there are some guys who are just so supremely gifted and talented that you must throw aside the "mental" aspect of learning the game, and just run them out there and I believe Peterson is one of those guys.
Question 4 : In 2010, Whisenhunt suffered his first losing season with the Cardinals, is it a blip on the radar or the start of a trend?
Mike Golic said that he thinks it's a blip but mainly because the NFC West is so terrible. He also says that he believes we have a way to go defensively and both guys agree that in the end it comes down to what Kevin Kolb can do.
My Take
I too think it's a blip on the radar but not solely because of our division. While it is bad, there is a difference between having a winning record and actually being a competitive football team both inside and outside your division(which is something I crave). I think we are taking the right steps as far as our organization goes. We finally went out and spent a lot this off-season, hopefully that will continue on throughout the years. We seemed to have had a solid strategy going into this draft, which I believe was focused around getting dedicated, high work ethic guys, while maybe losing a little bit of overall talent. Lastly, we got what our team thinks is a franchise QB which is a lot more than a good chunk of teams in the NFL can say.
Question 5 : This year the Arizona Cardinals will finish.......
Mike Golic predicts us going 7-9 while Greenberg gave us a record of 8-8
My Take
It's always tough to not be a homer when doing a prediction for your team and it's even more difficult when your team has so many question marks up and down the roster. Both of the extremes work in that we have no idea how good or bad this team actually is but usually it's safe to err on the side of caution and low ball a team with this many moving parts. This team was just so bad last year, and the majority of their 5 wins came through things that are hard to duplicate such as kick returns, interception returns and missed field goals by the opposing team. I feel safe in saying that this team should have only won 2 or 3 games last year. That being said, I am a homer so I'm going to say 8-8 with a chance to go 10-6 if Kolb is as legitimate as we all hope, Horton can scheme even 10% than Bill Davis did and our ground game is somewhat effective.
You can find the original audio to their segment here
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