This week the Monday Night Football Game will feature the New England Patriots vs the Patriots West er I mean Kansas City Chiefs. For Patriot fans this game is viewed as an easy W in the left column. For KC fans this game is going to be painful to watch in my opinion. Tom Brady and his array of weapons are going to toy with us for four quarters and they will love it. And us? We will throw out our pedestrian offense guided by Tyler Palko. Now I’m not saying Palko is going to go out there and put up Brodie Croyle numbers but I predict it wont much better than that. With Palko at the helm we can almost guarantee a loss. So what am I looking forward to Monday night? The season debut of #13 Ricky Stanzi! I expect to see the former Iowa gunslinger playing by the fourth quarter. Tyler Palko has more NFL experience but we already know what we have in him, a career third string QB and practice squad body. Now Stanzi on the other hand is untested and should see more time than the make up duty he saw in the Preseason. I personally would like see the rookie start at least the last quarter of the season for evaluation purposes if nothing else.
This is not the same NFL it used to be. Cam Newton, Andy Dalton, and Christian Ponder have showed us that this is a different NFL where college greats can come in and play. Now Blaine Gabbert on the other hand has showed us that not everyone can play. I believe that Ricky Stanzi will be less of the latter. Draft experts even said that Stanzi was going to be one of the more NFL ready Quarterbacks in his class. He was coached by Kirk Ferentz who runs a Pro-Style Offense and has knack for sending his players to the NFL. If anything Stanzi’s college play has shown me enough to validate some NFL play time. He played in The Big Ten Conference which has top players year in and year out. Not only did he play in The Big Ten but he won. Week in and week out he played against some of best players in the country and carried himself well. You need another reason to give Ricky Stanzi a shot? How about the fans?
Ask anyone that’s played in the NFL (especially Phillip Rivers) about playing at Arrowhead. It gets pretty crazy to say the least. It is my second favorite reason for driving out there on Sundays (my first is getting wins of coarse). Now I don’t know about the rest of you, but I was out at Arrowhead Stadium when #13 made his Chiefs debut. The crowd roared for the fifth round pick like her was taken number one overall. I can only imagine his feelings. Now when wins are hard to come by our fans can also be pretty brutal. Kansas City like is a town where fans need something exciting to cheer about week in and week out and that can be Ricky Stanzi getting some play time. Last year we cheered for our first place team every week and that was a big reason why we won the division. We cheer that hard for Stanzi and who knows what happens. I have never played Quarterback in the NFL but hearing Arrowhead’s crowd would make anyone play great. But what if he doesn’t win you say? Well fans wont mind as much because we are at least letting the rook get his feet wet. I’m telling you we start our rookie signal caller and I know fans will come out just to see how the young man develops.
Again we know what we have in Tyler Palko, but Ricky Stanzi is unproven. If Stanzi goes out and loses any/all of his starts this year and I’d be fine with that because at least we know what we have in him. I myself think he can go out there and win a couple but he has to see the field to do it.
Louie Thompson aka The Rookie Blogster
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