ESPN analyst Jaworski: Arizona Cardinals are not a Super Bowl team without Carson Palmer

With Carson Palmer under center, ESPN NFL analyst Ron Jaworski believed the Arizona Cardinals were a Super Bowl contender.

But what about with backup Drew Stanton leading the way?

“No, I do not,” he told Burns and Gambo on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM Thursday. “And I can understand the euphoria in Arizona over this football team right now and what Bruce Arians and his staff have done; it’s been remarkable what they have accomplished.

“But I would say the same thing in Green Bay if Aaron Rodgers went down and Matt Flynn became the starter. There’s a significant fall-off around the entire NFL from your starter to your backup quarterback. There’s a reason Carson Palmer is your number one quarterback — he is clearly the best, so there’s going to be fall off.”

Palmer has started 143 games in his career, throwing 4,906 passes for 35,365 yards with 224 touchdowns in his career. He went to the Pro Bowl in 2005 and 2006, and has guided teams to the postseason. The Cardinals believed in him so much they signed him to a three-year contract extension less than a week ago.

Stanton, on the other hand, has started 14 games in his career, throwing 280 passes for 1,772 yards eight touchdowns.

Of course, three of those starts came earlier this season when he was filling in for an injured Palmer, and in those games he threw a pair of touchdown passes while guiding Arizona to two wins.

“I think Drew Stanton has filled in admirably when he’s had to jump in and play, but if you look at his long-term and think you can win the Super Bowl with a backup quarterback, I think you’re only kidding yourselves,” Jaworski said.

Parade, meet rain. Rain, parade.

While it would seem unlikely that a backup QB could guide a team to the Super Bowl, it has happened before.

Some, like Kurt Warner and Tom Brady, went on to become some of the best QBs the NFL has ever seen. Others, like Jeff Hostetler and Trent Dilfer, did not. However their careers ended up going after that, the important thing is each one was holding the Lombardi Trophy after the last game of the season.

But while Jaworski said he’s not saying it can’t happen with Stanton in Arizona, he is saying the Cardinals’ best chance to win the big game was with a healthy Palmer on the field leading the way.

However, the analyst said he believes the Cardinals can still go on to win the NFC West as well as maybe even a playoff game with Stanton.

But through the lens of the Cardinals and championship aspirations, he just doesn’t see it happening, not with Stanton.

“I looked at all the throws, trying to look at it objectively, what other teams are looking at from a strength and weakness standpoint,” Jaworski said of what he’s seen from Stanton on film. “And the good thing is you could tell he’s been well-coached. There’s no doubt about it when you watch him in his drops — there’s tremendous discipline. When that back foot plants he knows where he wants to go with the football. The reading progression is there.”

Jaworski went on to say you could tell Stanton has been in the league for a while, adding he can throw the ball accurately as well as handle the pass rush. But, he said, teams are likely to sit on routes with Stanton at quarterback.

“That will be the big difference from Carson Palmer,” he said. “Carson could just attack down the field, that’s exactly what he wanted to do. His deep ball was tremendous, he could stick balls in the tight windows 20 and 30 yards down the field,

“That’s not what Drew Stanton is going to do.”

It maybe worth noting that Stanton’s three touchdown passes this season, which all went to rookie John Brown, were for 24, 21 and 48 yards, and head coach Bruce Arians has said there are no plans to change the offense, at least in terms of throwing the ball down the field.

“We’re not really going to lose that part of it,” he said. “Carson was, and is, amazing at it, at dropping it in the bucket, but we can still go downtown and we still have that threat in our offense.”

That could just be an optimistic coach, or maybe he knows something that others don’t. Or, perhaps, it’s something in between.

Either way, the Cardinals are set to move on with Stanton, and even though he does not think they are destined to win the Super Bowl, Jaworski does not view the change as some sort of death knell for the 2014 Cardinals.

With their defense playing well and special teams not costing them, they’ll be in most games even without a great offense.

But…

“You can’t win consistently in the NFL unless you have all three phases of your football team working,” he said. “The days of a dominant defense guaranteeing a Super Bowl victory, they’re gone. The dominant offense, ‘yeah, we’re going to score 30 a game and win it,’ that just doesn’t happen anymore.

“The teams that eventually advance deep in the playoffs and the Super Bowl are good at every level, and this Arizona team has shown promise at every level at sometime during the season.”

Follow @theAdamGreen