Cardinals coach Steve Wilks said earlier this month that he isn’t going to hold rookie quarterback Josh Rosen back “at all” and that the starting job will go to “whoever ends up winning the position.”
Wilks covered similar ground on Wednesday, saying that Sam Bradford is the starter but that competition will go on through the summer and that he wouldn’t characterize Rosen as a long shot to end up passing Bradford on the depth chart. If that does happen, Wilks suggested it will be because his play on the field catches up to where he is mentally.
“This guy is extremely smart,” Wilks said, via the team’s website. “I mean, his ability to see certain things from the defense, and pick it up quickly, and execute … I don’t want to say this, but he has the mindset of a vet. The way he sees the game. He’s not playing like a vet. Make sure you guys understand that. He’s still a rookie, OK? But he sees things, like I said before, through a different lens. And he picks it up quickly.”
In some quarterback competitions, Rosen might not get enough practice reps to close up the ground between how he sees the game and how he plays it. Bradford’s injury history has the Cardinals keeping his workload light, however, and that may speed up Rosen’s trip to the lineup.