Watch an Arizona Cardinals practice over the past month and you might have come up with a question: Where is Carson Beck?
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Watch some more, and the same question might have resurfaced. As the Cardinals went through drills, it was Gardner Minshew working with the starters and — more often than not — Kedon Slovis working with the backups. Even with Jacoby Brissett holding out, Beck, the third-round rookie, remained mired on the depth chart, seeming to receive only sporadic opportunities to prove himself.
But in Beck’s mind, this is not a concern. You see, he entered spring camp with three goals.
One: “Leaning the playbook.”
Two: “Building connections with my teammates.”
Three: “Trying to become the best quarterback that I possibly can.”
And, as Beck views it, he accomplished all three.
When he last met with reporters on May 8, Beck was in the early stages of learning the playbook. He knew the foundations, but not the specifics.
Now, the plays themselves are committed to memory — the product of 13-hour work days filled with more meetings than practice time. So Beck has graduated to 400-level lessons. He’s familiarizing himself with hearing Mike LaFleur’s voice through his headset and with commanding a new group of teammates in the huddle. He’s learning the nuances of how he wants to run each play and what he needs to be looking at.
Beck may have arrived in the NFL with six years of college experience, but all of this work is necessary, he says, because “the NFL game is 100% different than the college game.”
Even at Georgia — which nominally operates a pro-style system and requires the quarterback to occasionally go under center — there are key differences, from the individual routes to the overall concepts.
“So where do my eyes need to be?” Beck said. “Where are the defenders? What coverages are they running? Everything is disguised. Especially in today's NFL.”
Beck, though, enjoys some of those differences. With the static coverage schemes that proliferate throughout college football, the quarterback is often required to know where he’s throwing before the ball is even snapped. In the NFL, that’s no longer possible. Defenses are too complex, too creative. Tunnel vision is a one-way route toward unsightly interception totals.
“It allows you to go out there and just react,” Beck said. “Obviously you have a plan pre-snap, of what you want to do. But at the end of the day, you just go out there, be an athlete and react. Which, I think, makes it a little bit easier, at times.”
And from the sidelines, Beck’s coaches have seen this comfort level growing with each passing day.
At the beginning of rookie minicamp, coach Mike LaFleur said, Beck’s questions may have been simple: “What’s my read?” Now, he’s proving more advanced in his approach. That stood out to LaFleur last week, when Beck asked a question about the ideal trajectory on a specific pass. It was a sign that he’s thinking about the game more deeply, even within the context of a new offense.
In an ideal world, these might be lessons that Beck could learn from the sideline.
“There's just so many different things that you want them to be able to learn and grow as much as they can before you put them out there,” offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett said earlier this month.
But the NFL doesn’t wait — a favorite adage of LaFleur’s. For Beck to be a significant part of the Cardinals’ long-term plans, he’ll likely have to show his abilities on game days, not just on the practice field.
Under the beating June sun, though, the Cardinals didn’t mind slow-playing Beck’s development. They were fine with fewer reps, as long as their young quarterback was finding comfort in the system and adapting to the NFL level — building the foundations for what’s to come.
And if you ask Beck, that’s what he accomplished this spring.
"The expectations that I have for myself, I feel like I've been pushing those and pushing those and pushing those," Beck said. "And each day, they only get greater and greater."
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Why the Cardinals are pleased with Carson Beck's development