INDIANAPOLIS — Two weeks after new Arizona Cardinals coach Kliff Kingsbury said quarterback Josh Rosen was “our guy,” general manager Steve Keim added a caveat to that statement.
Keim was asked Wednesday at the NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis whether Rosen, Arizona’s 2018 first-round pick, was the team’s quarterback moving forward.
“Yeah, he is, right now, for sure,” Keim said.
Keim’s lack of a clear-cut endorsement of Rosen fueled speculation that the Cardinals may consider trading Rosen and drafting Oklahoma quarterback Kyler Murray with the first overall pick in April’s draft.
Keim supported Kingsbury’s October comments while Kingsbury was still the coach at Texas Tech about drafting Murray if he had the top overall pick.
“I think what Kliff said was trying to avoid bulletin-board material,” Keim said. “I think if you’re Texas Tech, I would’ve said the same thing about an Oklahoma quarterback. Again, it’s still early in the process. We haven’t even gone through a full evaluation at all the positions, so really, again, it’s too early to say.”
It’s also too early for Keim to determine if the Cardinals would feel comfortable trading back. That will come when he and his personnel department set the team’s draft board with the top 120 prospects. Then, Keim said, he’ll see where the threshold of top prospects ends, which could influence the Cardinals’ decision to move back.
Keim doesn’t think it will be hard, if he chooses, to trade out of the top pick even though there isn’t a clear-cut franchise quarterback in this year’s class.
“Yeah, I think every year it’s different, but to me, there’s a number of players that I’ve seen that really warrant the No. 1 overall pick,” Keim said. “I’ve seen enough guys that I think there is a lot of value in this pick.”