Something that I think has flown way under the radar this season with regards to the importance of up a good offensive situation and how it relates to when (or it) Ridder takes over at QB this season:

Coach Smith is on record a few months ago saying that you never want to throw a rookie QB out into a situation where he’s getting wrecked because that can permanently fuck with his confidence going forward and basically ruin the player.

It was just a passing comment that he included as part of his answer to an unrelated question, but I think it basically shows his whole hand as far as what he’s thinking with Ridder.

I don’t think the question at the moment is really whether or not Ridder can outplay Mariota. I think Mariota is essentially a test dummy right now that can stand in while Smith evaluates and fine-tunes the rest of the offense — so he can make sure the offensive line isn’t just giving up instasacks, and run everybody else through enough reps that they can more or less get settled and get all the easy unforced beginner’s mistakes out of the way.

Basically just making 100% sure that everything is set for Ridder to the extent possible before sending him in there.

How long that’s going to take, I honestly have no clue. But I’m pretty sure that’s what Arthur is actually considering in terms of what to make his decision based on, as opposed to just looking at whether or not Ridder can be an immediate improvement over Mariota right away.

I really find it hard to believe Ridder could be significantly worse than him at the moment, but I can definitely see why Arthur would be hesitant to send him out there to get hit 10 times in his first game as a rookie like Mariota did last week. He’s playing the long game here.