Lex said:
Pete Kendall is a guard.
Our head coach, Dave Mac, thought it would be a good idea to let Pete play center, since he was constantly getting hurt at the guard position, and perhaps playing center would prolong Kendall's career.
When Mac got fired, Dennis Green came in, and in my opinion, Kendall wanted NO PART of a real head coach like Green. Kendall told his long time friends on the Jets, to figure out a way to get him in there, because Kendall thought "Denny didn't like him".
Pete Kendall manufactured a way to get back east, his home, and play for a "players coach" once again.
Dennis Green promptly drafteded arguably the top center in the draft, a National Champion from Ohio State.
Now we have a real center, not some guy trying to suck as much money out of us as he possibly can, while he plays out of position, "to prolong his career".
It is amazing how Lex takes one quote that Kendall told Mawae he was afraid Green didn't like him and was going to cut him, and Mawae said he lobbied the Jets to bring in Kendall, as some plot where Kendall intentionally pissed off Green so he'd be cut and could sign in NY and get a new bonus.
The Cards had no Center, Kendall was versatile enough that we decided to try and move him to C, and yes part of that thinking was it might prolong his career. It's not like the Cards were about to cut Kendall because he couldn't play guard.
Grove was pretty universally rated the top C in the draft, I guess if YOU conisdered Step the top C then you can defend the use of the word arguably, most had Step rated round 4 or later. He's doing OK for a 4th round pick thrown to the wolves as a rookie with an inexperienced LG, a bad RG, and now a bad inexperienced RG. But he's not nearly as good at C as Kendall was.
Kendall wasn't cut over performance or injury, Green didn't like him, didn't trust him, and tried to make a statement with the cut. Green did what he felt he had to do, it worked out great for Kendall, great for Step, and short term it hurt our OL.
We can run left, can't run right or really up the gut. We can't protect up the middle either, combination of the guards, Step, and line calls. Long term Step will be ok, but he wasn't ready to start this year.