Cardinals Start Week One Preparations for Seahawks
By Scott Allen
It’s Monday. It’s Monday of the first NFL week of the season, the regular season that is. No more preseason stuff. Now, it all counts. The Arizona Cardinals now start to prepare for division rival Seattle Seahawks. They will have heir work cut out for them. The Seahawks defense has seemed to improve and they appear poised to score more points this season on offense behind rookie quarterback Russell Wilson. The Cards, as we all know, will counter with John Skelton at quarterback.
I’m still not sure if I’m a fan of big division rival games in the first week of the season. Of course they all count and you have to play them at some point however these are the games that make or break a division championship. There are six games involving division rivals in the NFL in week one. The Cards played the Seahawks in week 17 at home to finish off the 2011 season. Now that is when they should be playing each other. I won’t harp on it too much though, it won’t be the first and not the last time they will open with a division rival.
I do believe you will see a better defense on Sunday than you did from the Cards during the preseason. You have to remember in the preseason teams roll out vanilla defenses. They don’t show much. You could say the same thing about the offense. You also aren’t tied to trying to play everyone to get a look at them. Although there is a constant evaluation process as teams try to become the best they can be, it is a more solidified plan with just a 53-man roster, only 45 being active on any given Sunday.
Now it is time to find out if the Cards kept the right guys on the roster. time to find out if they made the right choice at quarterback. I will say this, the Cards won’t waste a lot of time on Skelton if he comes out and stinks up the joint. Although Kolb probably wouldn’t fare much better, I can see coach Ken Whisenhunt not having a lot of patience and changing quarterbacks quickly. I’m not saying it would happen in week one as I’m sure he’ll give Skelton a couple of chances to correct mistakes cause Kolb will make them too, I just can’t see Whiz letting Skelton put this team in a 0-3 or 0-4 hole to start the season without seeing Kolb make an appearance.