Cardinals position battles outside of QB
Jul 25, 2012, 8:16 PM | Updated: 9:53 pm
July 25, 2012: Lunchtime with Whiz
FLAGSTAFF — Cardinals head coach Ken Whisenhunt meets the
media daily at lunchtime:
He said everyone passed the conditioning test this
morning.
The team will hold its first training camp practice
shortly with the players in shells. The first practice in
pads will be Thursday afternoon.
on position battles that don’t involve the
quarterback
“We’ve got a number of cornerbacks that we’re looking at,
that we’re excited to see—feel like we have got pretty
good depth there. We’ve got a good mix of young guys and
veterans and how that sorts itself out.
“We’ve got some outside linebackers, some young guys
behind O’Brien (Schofield) and Sam (Acho) that we want to
look at and see where they are.
“Obviously, I think that the offensive line—not so much
from our first unit, but from some of the young guys that
we’ve drafted and seeing how they can develop at that
position.
“Wide receiver is going to be good. Not so much from the
standpoint of who’s going to be there but what roles
they’re going to fill because I think we have some good
players at those positions.
“Almost at every position you have young guys or competing
players that you want to see get better and help the team
get better. That’s a really good position to be in.”
on finishing last season winning seven of nine thanks
to an improved defense
“Our challenge, obviously, this season is to pick up from
there, get back to playing that same style of defense
where we don’t make mistakes and then maybe we can build
off of that a little bit. That’s what we tried to do in
the OTAs and in the mini-camp but when you don’t have pads
on sometimes it’s a little bit difficult to assess that.
I think that our team is very excited about where we are
defensively and we’re expecting to be successful.”
on having a 90-man training camp roster
“If you need them during the season, if you need them in
Week 10, you know a little bit more about what you’re
getting. It’s a great opportunity for us to do that.”
on the CBA requiring that on days a team has two
training camp practices, one of them must be a walk-
through
“There is still value to it. We can work on blitz
protections or we can work on blitzs and see how they look
and how we pick them up even though you’re not actually
going full speed. And we can do some special teams work,
which is good.”
