By: Michael Niziolek
After Friday’s practice Jim Schwartz said that Daunte Culpepper would start the Lions first preseason game, but that all three quarterbacks would get close to equal playing time.
Fans are looking for hints at who will be Detroit’s starter for the first week of the regular season, but Schwartz cautioned that the rotation isn’t something that anybody should spend too much time analyzing.
“It’s just rotation, don’t read anything into it,” Schwartz explained. “It’s not like somebody is ahead of someone on the depth chart, we haven’t even played a preseason game yet. We’re just going to give them reps. We’ll probably flip it the next week, see a lot of different things, and like I said from the very beginning, we’re going to try and put guys in a lot of different positions”
He said Culpepper will play into the second quarter, with Matthew Stafford taking over and then Drew Stanton getting the call in the second half. The coaching staff isn’t going to have a set number of snaps each quarterback has to take and will let the game dictate when they make changes.
Players around each quarterback will be constantly shifting as well. Wide receivers, tight ends and lineman will get snaps with each of the different quarterbacks throughout the game.
“You know we’ll have our receivers rolling through just about every single group,” Schwartz said. “Our tight ends are going to roll through every single group. You’ll see the offensive line for probably the whole first half, so it’s not going to be a situation where you’re trying to put them in with certain players or read something into it because it’s not there yet.”
