At this point, it would be a surprise if the Cardinals even had the choice whether to select Cam Newton or Blaine Gabbert.
If they do have that choice, a couple of close Cardinals watchers believe they will take Gabbert.
“I’m still not sure that A) the Cards would go QB with their first pick or B) that Gabbert will even be there to be picked,” Darren Urban of the Cardinals’ official website writes. “I do think that if the Cards took a quarterback in the first round, they’d be much more likely to go with Gabbert than Newton.”
Urban believes the Cardinals think Gabbert is the “safer” pick. ESPN.com’s NFC West blogger Mike Sando agrees.
“That is my sense as well, based in part on comments the team has made about needing to make sure a quarterback drafted that early has no question marks,” Sando writes.
There was a school thought that coach Ken Whisenhunt may see Newton as a similar quarterback to his former charge Ben Roethlisberger. But Whisenhunt and Big Ben often butted heads, in part because Roethlisberger freelances so much. Whisenhunt’s greatest success as a coach came with a polar opposite quarterback in Kurt Warner.
In that sense, Gabbert really does look like the safer pick for what the Cardinals want.