The best part about preseason football (or baseball, basketball or hockey) is the absurd amount of speculation we engage in based on meaningless games played completely differently than the regular season.
Here's what matters with preseason games:
1) Staying healthy. Fail.
2) Looking at individual players in isolation. Check.
3) Selling tickets and generating excitement for the season. Duh.
What preseason is not good for is evaluating team performance or making sweeping generalizations about key players.
Unless, however, the key player happens to be a certain left-handed QB who's under the super-micro-microscope and he comes out with shining colors. So good, in fact, that a Mr. Hall of Fame himself had better start worrying about his place in Cardinals history.
Warner, you better watch out and get your kids in line because Leinart is coming for you!
Check out these numbers put together by Mike Sando.
2009-2010 Arizona Cardinals Preseason QB Watch
QB | Preseason | Week | Comp. | Att. | Pct. | Yards | TD | INT | Rating |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Warner | 2009 | 1 | 6 | 10 | 60.0% | 53 | 0 | 0 | 74.2 |
Warner | 2009 | 2 | 6 | 13 | 46.2% | 80 | 0 | 1 | 34.1 |
Warner | 2009 | 3 | 2 | 16 | 62.5% | 139 | 0 | 1 | 64.3 |
Warner | 2009 | 4 | 2 | 7 | 28.6% | 48 | 0 | 1 | 16.1 |
Leinart | 2010 | 1 | 6 | 7 | 85.7% | 49 | 0 | 0 | 95.8 |