The main thing is Warner replaced Leinart who wasn't running the same offense under Whiz that Warner did. If you watched A Football Life on Warner they made that abundantly clear. Whiz outright said you could see in practice that Kurt was "getting it back, he was Kurt Warner again" and that's why he was looking for ways to take advantage of it. First by using him running the no huddle replacing Matt, then ultimately as the starter. he said it was apparent he was really good the question was for how long, and the only way to find out was to make the transition to playing him more and see.
Once he decided Kurt wasn't going to start looking punchdrunk again, he decided lets ride the hot hand and the offense really changed. We ran more no huddle more 4 Wr's etc everything geared to what Kurt did well.
Matt's last "real" start in 07 he threw for nearly 300 yards 37 attempts, but he left a lot of plays out there. matt started the next 3 games but he was only the part time QB Kurt had moved in and was running the no huddle and had as many or more pass attempts in all 3 games. It was clear that Whiz was transitioning the team from Matt to Kurt, he just wanted to make sure that Kurt could physically hold up and so he played both for 3 games and might have continued to if Matt hadn't got hurt in that 3rd game ending his season.
Since Kurt retired, Whiz has attempted to run the same system(with less no huddle for sure) with Anderson, Hall, Skelton, Kolb, and again Skelton. We're still trying to be that empty backfield 4WR offense that worked so well with Warner under center.
that's why Palmer would have been a better fit if he'd have been available, he'd started 97 games in the NFL, he was far more experienced and would have been able to adapt to Whiz' system much quicker. I don't know if he would have excelled or not he's a guy you have to give time to throw, but he has always been very good downfield and wouldn't be having the issues with reading defenses that Kolb and Skelton have had.
but the Bengals weren't trading him at the time unfortunately and Kolb was the next best guy available in the long term. Hasselbeck is clearly better but much older. The Cards for whatever reason didn't want to draft a QB so Kolb was the obvious choice.
I think knowing the situation like I do that what's going on is something similar to what a gambler might go through.
It's akin to an addiction, he liked what Warner did so much he's dying to replicate it again.
The problem is that's almost impossible to do without Warner.
It could be done but he's going to need a guy like Warner or in that mold, that guy is Chase Daniel, I keep harping on this but he's trained in a spread offense which is the closest to what we were doing with Warner and he's a gunslinger type that Warner was. The problem even with that is it takes a year or two to develop the type of cohesion that would make that work well, we simply don't have time for that idea or any other idea in terms of saving Whis's job.
The single most important factor in that offense is reading the defense quickly and knowing where to go with the ball in all situations, Kolb was asked to change offenses with no offseason.
I wouldn't of picked Kolb myself to be our guy but he's had no time to transition.
Whis is flailing now, his only chance to keep his job is Skelton IMO.
He's not going to have time to get Kolb operating anywhere near where he needs him to before he's fired.
What we should do IMO is go to a more traditional pro style offense with Skelton running it, simply take the playbook pick out the more suitable plays for Skelton and then start desiging new plays a few at a time to play to what he does well that's if he wants to keep his job but it's a bad situation as a coach to be in, I'd call it Karma myself.
We are not going to get anywhere trying to fit a round peg into a square hole, we have no one on the roster who can run the offense Warner did, we're not going to get one soon, so we have to change the offense it's the only viable option IMO.
. I guess we shouldn't compare any RB's on the Cards roster since Emmit Smith to his days as a Cards because he went to SB's with Dallas.
