Shortly after becoming the new Arizona Cardinals manager, Steve Wilks said the Cardinals' offensive front will be one of the team's advantages in the new season.
But now Wilkes' assessment is marked with a question mark. On Monday he announced that the team's starting center A.Q. Shipley had torn his knee front cruciate ligament during training and would miss the 2018 season as a result.
Selected in the seventh round of 2009, Shepley has been wandering between teams until he became the Cardinals' starting center two years ago and started 32 games for the team.
Luckily, the Cardinals picked Mason Cole from the University of Michigan as the team's future center in the third round of this year's draft. However, Kerr still needs to grow up in the inner offensive front, with 3 years of his four years in college as a left-winger.
Wilkes rightly believes the team's offensive front has the potential to become an advantage in the new season. But that optimism now needs to be marked with a question mark.