Posted by Darren Urban on April 28, 2012 – 2:11 pm

The Cardinals indeed decided to go with a developmental quarterback in the draft, taking San Diego State’s Ryan Lindley — a big (6-foot-3, 232-pound) and big-armed passer who struggled with accuracy. One analysis compared him to Derek Anderson. Lindley was a four-year starter and threw for 90 touchdowns. His TD-to-INT ratio as a senior was 23-8. But he never completed more than 57 percent of his passes and that dipped to 53 percent this past year.

“A lot of that has been my footwork, which I have been working on that a ton,” Lindley said. “I am at the point where I have enough individual training where I feel I have my feet underneath me and have a good platform to throw from. In the past … I have not had great feet, and I just needed to change that up.”

Lindley did lose his best two wideouts, current Card DeMarco Sampson and Vincent Brown, to the NFL before 2011. And he said the receiving group was beat up from injury and academic issues, but he took responsibility for his problems. “The stuff I could have controlled is really what I didn’t do well enough,” Lindley said. “The stuff with my feet I’m talking to you guys about.”

Lindley did work with quarterback coach Steve Calhoun and former USC and San Diego State coach Ted Tollner to fix his problems. I am sure Cards QB coach John McNulty will have something to say about it.

The Cards now have the four quarterbacks they will need for training camp. Usually, coach Ken Whisenhunt doesn’t want to have four total when the regular season arrives — there’s just not enough reps to go around — so the likelihood is that either Lindley or Rich Bartel will be fighting for a spot, assuming John Skelton and Kevin Kolb will be around. And I figure both will be around.

Tags: DeMarco Sampson Posted in Blog