According to Cardinals head coach Ken Whisenhunt, Ryan Lindley will start tonight's game against the Denver Broncos. In doing so, Kevin Kolb and John Skelton will not play in the game at all, which could mean a variety of things. Maybe Whisenhunt has already picked his starter and there is no need for them to play in another meaningless game.
Or maybe, just maybe, he is giving Ryan Lindley a shot at the starting job as well.
If you look at the stats, Lindley actually hasn't played too bad this preseason. But it's not the stats that matter. He is still a rookie and starting him to begin the season would essentially mean that the Cardinals are already waving the white flag.
He can make all the throws and he seems to read defenses pretty well, but thus far, he has played solely against second and third string defenses. Tonight will be Lindley's big test.
If he fares well against the some starting Broncos defenders, the "Lindley" chants will be out in full force. If Lindley does poorly, then we can go back to the original plan of either Skelton or Kolb being the starter for the regular season.
Honestly, I don't think we can look too far into Lindley's start no matter how well he does. If he does good, that's great, but it's just one preseason game and it just so happens to be the least important one. The Broncos likely won't even be putting their key starters on the field, so it becomes even more difficult to evaluate the Cardinals starters from that.
If he does poorly, so what? He is just a rookie, after all. The plan was never for him to get any regular season action, so he will have more time to develop as time goes on.
Now, if we see Lindley starting preseason games in 2013, that might be a different story... but talk to me then.
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