T-Minus 20 Days Till Cards Report to Flagstaff
By Scott Allen
As the baseball season reaches its mid-point this week, we are now just three weeks until the Arizona Cardinals take the football field for their first practice of training camp in Flagstaff, Arizona. It’s been over six months since the Cardinals ended the 2011 season but it seems so much longer ago. There will be many questions to be answered once camp opens.
The five biggest questions in my mind:
Can Kevin Kolb secure the starting quarterback spot from John Skelton? I think this is the biggest question with most Cards fans. Fans are either in one camp or another, but in my opinion, Kolb needs to be given every chance to grab the spot and run with it. Forget the money, I feel this way even if Skelton were the higher paid guy. Kolb was brought in to do a job and his 2011 season was incomplete thanks to injury.
Will the offensive line be improved? On the surface, it doesn’t look like anything Earth-shattering happened to the line, however, they retained a shaky Levi Brown and grabbed a steal with Bobby Massie in the fourth round of the NFL Draft. We should learn a lot with this line very early.
Is Michael Floyd the real deal? As the presumed number two receiver behind Larry Fitzgerald, I believe he is. He had a good mini-camp and has the same type of leaping ability Fitz does. He is going to bring some more excitement to the passing game.
Will Patrick Peterson become a star not only on special teams like he did last season, but at cornerback as well? He still was a work in progress at corner at the end of last season but steadily improved as you would expect as the season wore on. Now is he no longer the rookie and must avoid taking any steps back.
Are the Cards doomed by the tougher schedule? I think not. Sure, they have road trips at the New England Patriots and New York Jets. The Pats game is early in week two, much removed from winter. The Jets game is in December, but should be less harsh than what the game in Foxboro was like in December in 2008. They have the Detroit Lions and Philadelphia Eagles games at home, so that helps. This team is still definitely capable of winning 10 games. Of course we all know where potential gets you. Potential only gets you as far as reality does. Reality is, it is a tougher schedule in 2012 and they will not be able to recover from a 1-6 start this season like they did in 2011.