Oh, the embarrassment: Stanton still sittin'
The good news for the Drew Stanton crowd? He took 20 percent of the first-team reps Thursday in practice. The bad news? Well, there was plenty of it for anybody who had hopes of seeing Stanton replace Dan Orlovsky as the starter anytime soon. Just listen to what offensive coordinator Jim Colletto had to say today.
"It's hard - the fans want a lot of things," Colletto said, when asked about the fans clamoring for Stanton, the former Michigan State standout. "So do we, but I'm not going to put a youngster in and embarrass him in a live NFL game -- where the guys on the other side don't care who the quarterback is -- until he's real comfortable with what he's doing. And he's getting closer and closer to doing that. As I'm saying, we'll give him more and more turns and get him a little more comfortable at doing that. But the big point when we did this change, Dan (Orlovsky) was first and foremost. That was most important, and now we can work the other way a little bit."
So how far ahead of Stanton is Orlovsky in the competition for the No. 1 job?
"We'll the big difference is one has played a lot," Colletto said. "Drew is like a rookie. I mean, he didn't do anything last year and that's not his fault. I mean, he didn't do anything, and so during the wintertime Scott (Loeffler) spent a lot - he's throwing the ball way better than he's ever thrown it. Scott did a real nice job with him in the wintertime and he's a lot further along, but you're talking about a young guy who's never played in a game other than a couple of those preseason games. So that's where the gap is."
Added Colletto: "I mean, you need another preseason with him to really get a sense of that. At this point in time, the experiment to throw him in there right now wouldn't be fair to him at this point. He's not ready to do that yet. I'm not going to embarrass a kid just to prove a point to somebody else."
Will he play at all this season?
"Well, I don't know," Colletto said. "We'll see how that all plays out. I don't know."
