As Gantt pointed out earlier this week, Cardinals coach Bruce Arians had a not-so-glowing assessment of this year’s crop of rookie quarterbacks at the league meetings.
“The guys that were in the Combine last year, all of them when they left the room, you went, ‘Wow,’” Bruce Arians said. “No one in this draft made me go, ‘Wow.’”
It’s an odd comment in light of the rampant stream of reports from four weeks ago, when the Cardinals supposedly had been blown away by USC quarterback Matt Barkley at the Scouting Combine. Plenty of reporters gleefully swallowed the hook on that one, without even contemplating the possibility that the Cards were trying to make other teams think that they want Barkley when in reality they want another rookie quarterback -- or perhaps none of them.
We won’t know how the Cardinals really feel about the likes of Barkley, Geno Smith, or anyone else unless and until those players are on the board when the Cardinals are on the clock. Until then, the Cardinals will be trying to blow enough smoke to obscure their intentions.
No amount of smoke, however, can hide the team’s current depth chart at the position. Which could mean that the Cardinals want Smith, and that they want everyone else to believe that they want Barkley or no one.
Or maybe the Cardinals want to continue to struggle at the position.