Amidst another Arizona Cardinals offseason comes more questions on the team's situation at quarterback. Head coach Ken Whisenhunt and GM Rod Graves went on KTAR in Phoenix with Doug and Wolf to discuss the team's plan moving forward, and that they are really in much better shape than they were last season at this time when it comes to a QB.
What the coaching staff and front office is focusing on right now:
RG: "Right now we're focused on preparing for free agency and taking a good look at what we need to do to get our own players resigned...for instance today, we have been in meetings talking about potential free agents around the league and lining those guys up relative to our team and having good fruitful discussions on how we can possibly upgrade ourselves."
KW: "For us, for coaches, it's really kind of a three stage development. One of the most important things you do as a staff, and we did this with the scouts, GM's, with Rod, and our guys, is you evaluate your team....There is no real down time because you're always trying to improve, get better, and make your team better."
In regards to the quarterback, both Graves and Whisenhunt touched on ideas of flexibility, instead of rigidly staying with Kevin Kolb:
On the quarterback:
RG: "Let me answer it this way: That is at all positions we try to maintain flexibility and the ability to look at any free agent on the market that we feel has the ability to improve our football team. That can happen through the offseason, it can happen in training camp, the regular season, and any time there is an opportunity we will take a good, hard look at it."
KW: "Well the easiest thing to say right now is that we are in a heck of a lot better position at the quarterback position than we were a year ago today. We've got two guys that we feel like can play [Kolb and john Skelton]...both of these guys are going to get better with having an offseason and being able to work on some of the things we feel is going to make them better. So I'm excited about it."
Whisenhunt isn't about to just hand the keys to Kolb without any due diligence though:
If there will be a competition at quarterback:
KW: "I think there's always competition at any position. I don't think you can ever say that this guy is going to be the guy. We're always opening it up to let other guys compete for spots and the best players are going to play.
As for Kolb's contract option, Graves was far from concrete on whether they will pick it up:
Whether they plan to pick up the option on Kolb:
RG: "I think that obviously there's no reason to think at this particular point that we wouldn't proceed with seeing the contract through but again things change as we go down the road and we will evaluate things. Right now like coach said we're focused on getting these two guys ready to play."
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