For now, at least, quarterback Clayton Tune is the backup to Kyler Murray on the Arizona Cardinals’ 53-man roster.
However, head coach Jonathan Gannon made it clear Wednesday that even though Tune won a “close” competition, the battle continues with Desmond Ridder signed to the practice squad after being waived Tuesday.
“It’s an all-encompassing role playing the backup quarterback,” Gannon said. “I thought he (Tune) did a really good job. Thought he improved his game from last year to this year. Command, playing fast, taking care of the ball. It was really close. They both did a really good job.”
Gannon also addressed what looked to be a bad interception by Tune near the end of Sunday’s preseason game against the Broncos and without being specific relieved some of the blame from the quarterback.
He said, “That interception goes to show you, to the naked eye, looks like it’s on him. (But) all 11 guys gotta do their job to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
When asked his specific thoughts on Ridder, Gannon said, “I want Des back. I think he can help us. Just because he’s on the practice squad and Clayton is the two, Clayton knows there’s competition every day for that spot.”
That prompted a question wondering how the backups can be developed during the regular season and compete when there are so few snaps available in practice.
Gannon relished that question, by saying, “I would love to talk about this.”
He then did, expansively, explaining, “We do some different things to make sure that we are playing football throughout the week and not just carding everything. I learned that from (Eagles head coach) Nick Sirianni. (He) was the first guy to do it like that, talking about it with different staff members, things like that. He had his reasons why he did that.”
Gannon brought it with him to Arizona and said, “We run cards. We don’t run a ton of cards and there’s reasons behind that. One of them being we need to see guys that are backups or on the practice squad play football and develop. In the practice squad, I’ll tell those guys on Monday, and they know this: It’s not a landing spot, it’s really a trampoline. If you’re not improving your game, and you’re gonna get times to show that you are improving your game, and if you’re not, we’re gonna replace you. That’s the nature of that spot.”
He believes the practice approach was helpful during the 2023 season.
“I feel really good that’s one of the reasons, and we’ll see this year, but last year we did improve as the season kept going,” he said. “I think how we set up practice; that was one of the reasons. I didn’t come up with it. I’d never done it like that through my whole time in the NFL and Coach Sirianni did.
“And I saw the value of that. It’s a little bit different, but we structure it like that.”
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