Last weekend Raiders defensive tackle Tommy Kelly called Cardinals quarterback Kevin Kolb “scared” and “skittish.”
Kolb fired back, but after a few days for things to settle, the reviews aren’t getting any better for the free agent flop, with the latest bruise to his ego coming from his own side.
Former Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner said he was concerned about the lack of progress from Kolb, and wonders if he has the confidence in himself to succeed.
“I see the same thing I saw last year,” Warner told Dan Bickley of the Arizona Republic. “I see a guy who hasn’t been able to grasp the system enough to slow the game down, or he doesn’t have confidence in what he’s seeing.
“Maybe he understands what the offense is asking him to do, but the game is going too fast, and he’s not pulling the trigger.”
That may actually sting more than Kelly questioning his courage, because Warner has no reason to disparage Kolb at a personal level.
Bickley does suggest that Warner was getting texts asking him to come out of retirement after the latest game, but Warner said it was tough understanding Kolb’s lack of success.
“I’ve been in games when it’s hard to get the game to slow down, and it’s not a fun place to be,” Warner said. “Everything looks like a jumbled mess. Sometimes you’re nervous, sometimes you’re anxious.
“When I watch him on film, it looks like he’s looking in the right spots. But that doesn’t mean he’s seeing it, or that he’s seeing what I’m seeing. But he’s looking at it and not letting the ball go. What’s causing that?”
The momentum seems to be building for John Skelton to start, and no offense to the former fifth-rounder from Fordham, but his promotion has as much to do with him being not Kolb as anything he’s done.
That makes Kolb nothing short of an embarrassing and expensive blunder, one that’s going to take the Cardinals years to recover from.
