Luke Lipinski

I'm good.

How are you doing?

You know, it started to gain momentum actually a little bit around spring training around here.

I remember doing a show out at Salt River Field, Diamondbacks, Rockies, and we were talking about it.

But then, you know, the Cardinals re-signed James Conner and they went out and got Tyler Algier.

So it kind of died down until about a week before the actual draft.

Then it picked up again.

But I think, you know, even going into the draft, everybody was kind of like, are they just going offensive linemen?

Are they going to try and trade down?

Are they going to take the guy that...

A lot of people say he's the best player in the draft, and, you know, Cardinals don't have a lot of those elite-level players, so they finally just said, let's do it.

I think he will get used a lot, but I would expect it to basically be in the Tyler Algier role from Atlanta last year where they're going to have a dominant lead back, and then they're going to have Tyler Algier who kind of offsets things a little bit.

They do have James Conner as well, but he's coming back from a pretty rough injury, and I think he may assume more of just kind of like a leadership role.

He might get some carries too, but they also have Trey Benson.

I don't think anybody knows what they're going to do with him.

i i we're all going back and forth with this one you know like on the one hand it makes sense to kind of take a flyer in the third round maybe the fourth round would have been better but the third round i guess uh maybe michael flora really likes him for his offense the biggest thing to me is you have to figure it out this year because chances are you're going to be in a pretty good spot to take one of those uh quarterbacks near the top of the first round next year so

The biggest thing to me is you just have to play Carson Beck, you know, at least 10, 12 games this year and figure out if he's either your guy definitively or he's not.

Because the worst thing to do would be wait around an extra year, miss out on Arch Manning and Dante Moore and all those guys, and then find out Carson Beck's not your guy.

I think the confidence is, I don't want to say sky high, but I think it's in a decent spot just because if you look at their schedule, the first 33 games, 30 of them are against really good teams.

There was three against the White Sox, and they actually lost that series.