One of the hot topics for the Arizona Cardinals' media and their fans this offseason is the expected upcoming quarterback battle between incumbent Kevin Kolb and the guy that possibly outplayed him in injury relief last year, John Skelton. Skelton joined Doug and Wolf on KTAR in Phoenix recently to discuss the situation, and acknowledged the fact he feels he's in a real competition with Kolb.
"I do. I do. ... It's like anything else. Whenever you're competing you always wanna put your best foot forward, you always wanna put your best work on film and stuff. And it's a grind. I know Kevin's pushing and I'm pushing, and really there's competition at every position right now. And if it wasn't Kevin and I competing, and Kevin was the starter, I'm sure I'd be competing with Rich [Bartel], or I'd be competing with Ryan [Lindley], who just came in. To be able to know that you're going into a competition for the starting job makes it that much more precise in the workouts and everything."
Oftentimes players in this situation will view each others as rivals and bad blood could develop. According to Skelton, that's absolutely not the case. On the strange dynamic that occurs in football when it comes to competition between teammates:
"Yeah, I think that's a dynamic that's so specific to sports and especially football, where you might be training your replacement in another job, but here you're competing back and forth off of each other, you're bouncing ideas off of each other. You take something from the meeting room that maybe you missed and the other guy got and he'll help you out on the field. The question I get all the time is, ‘You probably hate Kevin,' or ‘You probably can't get along with Kevin.' And I'm like, ‘No. It's the complete opposite.' Kevin and I, we go golfing on Tuesdays, we go out afterwards and have some wings and stuff. We just have a great dynamic in our quarterback room with all four guys that are there now, and it's a different dynamic just because it's not something that's common in our society. But here it is on the football field and you see it every day."
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