Is Carson Palmer the 23rd best QB in the NFL?

Carson Palmer: Was His Ranking (23rd) on Jaws’ QB Countdown Fair?

Ron Jaworski, known on ESPN as “Jaws”, performs yearly quarterback ratings based on teams. This year he ranked the Cardinals own Carson Palmer at number 23. So far, Jaws has players like Sam Bradford, Josh Freeman, and Alex Smith in front of him. This may have some hopeful Cardinals fans either up in arms or worried for the season to come.

Upon reading Jaws’ assessment of Palmer, it became pretty clear that Palmer is still seen in high regard for the quarterback assessor. So why was he ranked so low out of 32 teams? If you are a Cardinals fan, you can probably guess why…the offensive line. Jaws goes to point out how good Palmer still is with his arm strength and decent accuracy (due to 14 interceptions last year). The problem is that Jaws believes that Carson Palmer is quarterback that not only prefers, but needs a spaced out pocket in which he has enough time to make a throw.

Jaws believes that this could be a problem in the desert since the last few years for Cardinals quarterbacks have been throwing in “3 seconds or less.” If you have gone to a Cardinals game in recent past, you have heard fans counting “1..2..3..THROW!” because the offensive just couldn’t do much more than that. Fortunately, this year seems like it just might be different.

If Jaws did not take offensive line performance into consideration when doing his yearly rankings, I believe that Palmer could have been as high as top 15. For Bruce Arians team, quarterback play is not the only position that the Cardinals are looking to dispel the negative history of this year.