Cardinals QB Ryan Lindley relishes second NFL chance
The last time he had a chance like this, Ryan Lindley admits that he blew it.
"I kind of screwed the first one up," Lindley told USA TODAY Sports this week. "That's just putting it bluntly."
It was 2012, his rookie season as quarterback for the Arizona Cardinals. He played in six games, including four starts. But he was sacked 12 times, lost two fumbles, threw seven interceptions and did not throw a touchdown pass in 171 attempts. His passer rating that year (46.7) still ranks as the worst single-season passer rating since 2009 among NFL quarterbacks with at least 150 pass attempts, according to Stats LLC.
Yet here he is again, almost like it never happened. Lindley is again a starting quarterback again in the NFL.
He's got the second chance of a lifetime. And believe him, he knows it.
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He's starting for a team – the Cardinals – that can clinch home-field advantage throughout the playoffs with a win in his first game back as a starter.
Not only that, but the game will be televised in prime time, Sunday night on NBC, at home against the defending Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks.
"It's an amazing blessing," he said in an exclusive interview with USA TODAY Sports this week.
Just don't tell that to fans of the Cardinals (11-3). They seem more nervous about it than Lindley. Some of them even sent him nasty messages on Twitter two years ago, when the team finished 5-11 and fired head coach Ken Whisenhunt. Lindley was benched for the entire season in 2013, then got cut from the team in August.
At that point, it looked like his pro career might fade away.
Then came the spread of that annual NFL contagion – fallen quarterbacks who seem to drop off the depth chart one by one. First it was Cardinals starting QB Carson Palmer with a knee injury last month, followed his backup, Drew Stanton, with another knee injury in the team's last game, a 12-6 win at St. Louis on Dec. 11.
Now it's Lindley's turn to lead the Cardinals after re-signing with them as a backup in November.
"He's a meticulous preparation guy, and the dynamics between us – I bounce things off of him." Cardinals head coach Bruce Arians told reporters this week. "I trust him as far as his mental makeup to the game."
It's a major reason Lindley, 25, is back with the team that drafted him in the sixth round in 2012. He not only knows Arians and his system, he also has a special place in the heart of almost every coach he's ever worked with, even when times aren't good. He's got that prototype build (6-foot-4, 230 pounds), a strong arm and is exceedingly coachable – almost nice and receptive to a fault.
"Where does he concern me?" Arians said. "He doesn't."
Beyond that, Lindley believes he has something else that might be just as valuable this time around. It's not just that he got married last year. It's that he believes that his first chance can help him master the second. He likens it to learning to drive a car. As a rookie driver, he tried to go too fast and crashed.
"At first I think I was just really excited to be handed the keys, so to speak," said Lindley, who completed four of 10 passes for 30 yards after coming off the bench to replace Stanton in St. Louis. "I saw at it as an awesome opportunity to be able to play. At the time, it was kind of an ignorance-is-bliss thing. I kind of didn't know what I didn't know at the time."
He seems calmer, too, which sometimes seems to have been his biggest challenge. Going back to his college days at San Diego State, Lindley had been known to get rattled at times in big games. But then he'd reflect on it and bounce back up, almost like his slump didn't happen.
In 2011, he struggled in back-to-back losses against Michigan and Texas Christian, including three interceptions in the latter.
He answered that by closing the regular season with a 5-2 record, followed by possibly the gutsiest performance of his career in his final college game – in a 32-30 loss in the New Orleans Bowl against Louisiana-Lafayette. He threw three second-half touchdowns in that game at the Superdome to bring his team to the brink of a comeback win before losing on a last-second field goal.
It was the last time he threw a touchdown pass in a game that counted. A year later, he said his rookie NFL season got inside his head.
"It shook my confidence," he said. "By the end of it, I kind of just figured you can never lose confidence in yourself. That's one of the main things I learned… You always know you're the one person that always has to be in your corner, and when you're not, that's when you know things are really going wrong. And that's when you really need to step back and reevaluate what you're doing."
Lindley did, and now he's back where he was two years ago, except under much different circumstances. Instead of quarterbacking a team that finished 5-11, the Cardinals hope to make a run at the Super Bowl. As crazy as that reversal might seem, "nothing surprises you" in the NFL, he says.
Consider the case of Alex Smith, who also played prep football in the San Diego area. After throwing 11 interceptions and one touchdown during his rookie season with the San Francisco 49ers in 2005, Smith compiled a passer rating (40.8) that still ranks as the worst single-season mark since 2000 – even worse than Lindley's, which ranks third, according to Stats LLC. Smith overcame it and is now a veteran NFL starter with the Kansas City Chiefs.
"One of things I keep going back to is that I know guys who never even got one opportunity in the NFL," Lindley said. "You're second-string or third-string QB for a couple years and fade out. So for me it's really amazing to see now… I didn't take advantage of the first opportunity I had, and now here I am again. I plan on taking advantage of it fully."
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