Kurt Warner stresses balance of tempo, patience with Cardinals’ offense

Kurt Warner sees offense as a balancing act that needs to produce results.

“I don’t really care how you play offense; you can play slow and methodical, you can fast, you can have a mix of both,” he told 98.7 FM Arizona’s Sports Station’s Bickley and Marotta on Wednesday. “To me, the bottom line is it’s success-driven, and it’s moving the chains, and its prolonging drives that way.”

The Arizona Cardinals, with Kyler Murray at quarterback and Kliff Kingsbury as head coach, are looking to play fast. Running a play every 15 seconds fast.

Warner thinks it comes with a caveat.

“Yeah I do,” he said on if it’s possible to play at that fast of a pace. “If you’re really good at it. But that really becomes the bottom line. It doesn’t matter how fast you run something if you can sustain that level and if you can sustain success with it. I think where you get into problems is if there’s a lack of efficiency within that offense and within that speed, it puts a lot of pressure on your defense.”

Getting used to that pace takes time and reps, which comes in training camp and the preseason. But using the preseason as a medium to test that pace, and Kingsbury’s plays, has its cons.

“I don’t think you ever want to show your complete hand in preseason, so as long as, you know you can show your base plays, because I think a lot of teams’ offenses go off of their base offense which is what you show in preseason,” he said.

Those base plays aren’t anything special.  It’s the team’s job to make them that way, though.

“You got to have nuances off of that [base plays],” Warner said. “You have to have complimentary plays off of everything. You have to have the ability to run your plays out of different formations and movements and that is where, if you’re a team that doesn’t have a huge playbook, that’s where you have your success once you get into the season.”

If the offense turns into the projection the Cardinals want though, then it may not matter.

“You have your bread and butter and you’re going to run that all the time, no matter what, and you can show teams that, and the bottom line is if they’re good plays they still have to stop it,” Warner said.

He had one piece of advice for Kingsbury and the Cardinals.

“I don’t think you show your whole hand, but if you’re a team thats limited in your playbook, get really really good at what you do,” Warner said.