Desmond Ridder, the Arizona Cardinals quarterback, has had an unusual NFL career thus far, having been traded from the Atlanta Falcons on March 14. In an interview with ESPN’s Josh Weinfuss, Ridder is frank about his experience with the Falcons, his new chance with the Cardinals, and what he wants to work on coming into the fall.
Ridder was picked in the third round of the 2022 draft and saw early game action when he replaced starting quarterback Marcus Mariota after the first four games of his rookie season. This last year was filled with more inconsistent play as he split time with Taylor Heinicke as the starter until he was traded away, as he stated that the most important component of growth “is just going out there playing free.”
“One thing I wanna improve is just going out there playing free,” he remarked. “A lot of the time, I felt like I was trying not to make a mistake. So, just to be allowed to go out there and play freely, loosely, and within the system. There were many good things I did on film, as well as some bad. It just occurred that the negative exceeded the positive. There were a number of games where it was 90 percent good and 10 percent horrible, and that 10 percent simply happened to be the deciding factor.”
If there is one statement that has lingered with Ridder throughout his young career, it is from an interview with former quarterback Teddy Bridgewater, who discussed coming in for an ailing Drew Brees with the New Orleans Saints. The current Cardinals quarterback would say that saying resonated with him long before he entered the NFL.
“He got injured, and I wasn’t prepared, and it humbled me,” Bridgewater told The Times-Picayune. “It taught me an important lesson. We often talk about staying prepared, but I wasn’t ready in that time.”
“That kind of stuck with me, you know, even before I was in the league,” Ridder said of Bridgewater’s prospects. “And that’s just one thing that stuck with me, and I’ll always prepare as if I’m the starter.”
Ridder is facing criticism from current Falcons coach.
While Ridder gets a fresh start with the Cardinals as he competes for Kyler Murray’s backup role, he is reminded of his time in Atlanta, as new head coach Raheem Morris was open about the quarterback’s performance the previous season. He would declare, “If we had better quarterback play, I’m probably not standing here at this podium,” which Ridder described as “tough”.
“Obviously, that’s tough,” Ridder told ESPN. “But as a quarterback, as with any team sport, it’s not entirely on one individual. So, the outside world and whoever it is can blame everything on one person, but it’s a team sport. I didn’t do well in ten percent of those games, but I wasn’t alone.
“For me to be able to go out there and just learn from it,” Ridder explained. “Being able to go out there and improve from it, I believe, will assist me in the long term with my career and longevity. So, while you can’t control what other people say, you can control how you react and what you do.”
The concept “staying ready” has resonated with Ridder and should serve as a strong motivator to secure the backup role and be a dependable player for Arizona. One of the things he learned was that “all it takes is one play,” and that anything may happen in the short time it takes to launch a play, so “you have to be ready.”
“What you gotta learn is that all it takes is one play,” he remarked. “The average time of a play is four to six seconds, which is how quickly you may reclaim your starting position. So you have to be prepared.”
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