I forgot Carson Palmer was now the Cards' QB. Is it widely agreed that he sucks or is anyone still bullish on his future?

he looked middling for the raiders last year. raiders o-line is better than zona's tho.

Carson Palmer is basically Brett Farve when compared to the last 3 seasons of Stoney Case, Derek Anderson, Kevin "bath mat" Kolb, John Skelton, and Ryan Lindley. Losing Whizenhunt will be a big help w/ our QBs too.

Ya, the Palmer thing is interesting. The qb situation couldn't have been worse last yr so it's a massive improvement. Thought it was also interesting that peterson has been practicing on offense. We might be sleeping on the cards a bit.

Palmer looked unbelievable at the red-white scrimmage yesterday.

Dude has a quick release and a cannon. No wonder his sack% was 1/3 of Kolbs last year.

Problem is even if the Cards improve a ton, they are still at or near the bottom of the division when it comes to talent. Same thing basically goes for the Rams. The 9ers, Hawks rosters, coaching, staff, etc. are so much better than the Cards, Rams that both teams should still be rather irrelevant when it comes to a division title.

While we could have 3 playoff teams from the division, I highly doubt it. The Bears/Packers loser, NO/ATL loser, Giants/Skins loser as a wildcard seems a ton more likely. Carson is a huge upgrade for the Cards, but that's b/c the QBs last year were such turds. Odds are Carson isn't going to be better or much better than Bradford. At the same time, the Cards lost their best coach (DC) which was pretty damn stupid.

palmer got too much hate. never got why. his receievers were terrible, the o-line was laughable and they were always playing from 20 down. the raiders were an unmitigated disaster and to expect him to be half of what he was in cincinnati was unrealistic

i think he'll be fine with arizona. won't be what he was in cincy but he'll definitely be better than he was in oakland and he'll be an ENORMOUS improvement over the wheel of turds the cards were spinning out since warner

Palmer is definitely still decent. He had a pretty good year considering some surrounding injuries. Playing with Fitz and a very good defense should be interesting. He's not going to light up the stat sheet with that team, but he's going to win games, or maybe more correctly, not lose games


Also I'm not really following the conversation, but Crabtree is 100% a top 10 receiver, I don't think thats really disputable. fwiw I leaned this way before Kaep ever played a snap, then felt confirmed after

Alright well I got Palmer as sucking this year, so feel free to bump this if he surprises to the upside and has a middling season

not many easy games--just the jags and titans really. thats a pretty tough schedule.

@ 49ers followed by Seahawks 4 days later should be fun

Entire NFL BEST lineup is hard.

I would expect Arizona to be much better this year than last. Carson is such an insane upgrade for them at QB. Kolb has probably been their best QB over the past couple seasons and he was such a lol fit for a team with no OL. He was so easily flustered and basically bailed out of the pocket whenever he felt the slightest bit of pressure. They'll almost certainly get better play from their running backs. The Cards OL was only woatish last year when they had massie and batiste getting beat like a drum every play. Batiste isn't there anymore and Winston is prob gonna start over Massie. Cooper will almost certainly be an upgrade at guard. Palmer still has an elite release and has never taken many sacks, even when he was wasting away on lol teams. Floyd and Housler figure to make leaps, and Fitz should age extremely well. On defense, Abraham is a pretty nice get and was basically the only guy in Atlanta around the QB. He fills a big need and they don't really have any holes anywhere else. If they run well on the injury front, the Cards could def be a respectable team. Looks like they'll have trouble sneaking in the playoffs due to their schedule, but if one of Seattle/SF gets crushed by a key injury, they could make some noise methinks. O/u is 5.5 wins which seems low to me. I think they're better than the Rams.

cards better than rams is severely underestimating the rams

only so many wins for a division. zona was god awful last year especially after their luckbox 4-0 start. even if carson is good, they were a -100 pd team last year. do you really think the changes this offseason could get them being a + PD team. I guess arians has great experience luckboxing an 11 win team from a 6 win team in Indy.

Crabtree top ten?????

Calvin
Aj green
Marshall
Fitz
Dez
Julio
D. Thomas
Harvin
Andre j.
Cruz
Roddy

I like Crabtree but I'd comfortably take those guys ahead of him and probably a few others.

"Top ten" isn't s synonym for very good. Top Ten means that he's one of the ten best wrs.

And he said Davis Top 10 as well

Yah SRM out of his mind on this one.

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Dude is gonna tear it up this year. All you fantasy heads should snap him up if you can.

42nd in EPA/P, 51st in WPA/G, 77th in success rate, 47th in DVOA, and, to borrow from John Morgan, 47th in AHOY MATEY, err, DYAR. That's to go with a 42/698/3 stat line on the year. He only really looks good in Y/R, but that's because he was used as a situational deep threat. He'll have more opportunity this year, but I can't see taking him more than about 5ish WR slots above his current ADP relative to other WRs (44th).

Youtube account RamsONDEMAND has every target Givens got last season:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9l_SNjtUHs

Also has the other Rams WRs apparently. Pretty sweet account for Rams fans.

Crabtree is undoubtedly more valuable than Cruz, I'd definitely take him over injury prone/head case Harvin, and hes quite a bit younger than AJ and Roddy. He is absolutely in the conversation for top 10

ur right tho about top 10 being a poor description. Crabtree is already one of the best route runners in the league, and has better hands than at least a few of the guys on your list

Oh he has to make a huge step up. No doubt about that but Im pretty excited about watching him this year after having that 1 years experience behind him. Upgraded our O-Line which can hopefully stay healthy and give Sam time to pick his moments. Givens will also have guys like Austin, Pettis & Quick to share the load. In general Im just excited about the direction the team is headed in. Obv QB still a problem and this is a massive year for Bradford. Gonna have to deliver.

Nice!

I find it quite lol that people aren't factoring in the Cards WOAT level QB play last season. Pulling numbers off of ANFLS makes it pretty simple:

Kolb + Skelton + Lindley: -3.06 wins
Palmer w/ Raiders: +0.9 wins

So without even looking at anything else at all, the Cardinals added somewhere around 4 wins just by getting a middling level QB. Now throw in that the above bolded additions on the OL, and Levi Brown back from injury at LT. The Cards OL is going to be leaps and bounds better than last year, its really not close.

Fitzgerald was barely used last year. It's almost impossible to know what Michael Floyd is thanks to lolskelton/lollindley. Rashard Mendenhall is now backing up Beanie Wells. The entire Cards offense projects to better at pretty much every single position

So unless you think Palmer is going to regress right now, this year (and I'm not sure why anyone would be confident about that) it should be pretty easy to see that they should at worst compete with the Rams for 3rd best in that division

Thought you meant Crabtree was top ten right now. If you're arguing going forward I guess he has a closer case, but lol at him being more valuable than Cruz. Cruz was hurt for most of last year and still had a better year than Crabtree.

Value going forward is still dubious for Crabtree, as most players don't ever return to form after an Achilles tear.