In hindsight, we were all out of our minds to think this quarterback thing would be resolved by now, weren't we?
To believe that was to take a wild leap of imagination, and an even wilder leap of faith - in Kyle Boller and Troy Smith, in Cam Cameron and in John Harbaugh. There might be a best man for the Ravens' starting job, but it's obvious now that knowing who it is after two preseason games was a stretch, at best, and delusional at worst.
The Ravens get points for trying. They also get points for never really saying, out loud or for the record, that they were following the usual NFL habit of having such matters settled by the next-to-last preseason game, the last lengthy work by the starters before they're put in bubble wrap for the final.
That was for all of us to speculate. However, reality tends to follow its own calendar. Same for Harbaugh, who is starting Smith on Saturday in St. Louis but is not committing to him for the season opener. As for this week's game - a full dress rehearsal? Sorry. That has been postponed. Maybe canceled.
"That would be, in my mind, an artificial timetable," Harbaugh said yesterday about the idea that the quarterbacks needed to have everything down by now. "You can say it's going to click on this date, [but] it's going to click when it's going to click."
That could be well into the regular season, for all we know, and if it clicks for the quarterback holding the clipboard at the time, that might mean he then gets the promotion and the starter the demotion.
In other words, the starter of the season opener might not necessarily be the starter later in the year.
A lot of people have been envisioning a lot of scenarios since Harbaugh took over. This one, though - that two weeks before the games begin to count, no true starter has emerged - wasn't on very many minds.
Likely not Harbaugh's, but he appears to have been prepared for all contingencies. "I don't think I really had any expectation about it," he said. "I hate to say, 'It is what it is,' because that's an old cliche, but it kind of is."
That drew a chuckle from the onlookers, who have that phrase embedded in their skulls from a previous regime. It was funnier than Harbaugh seemed to realize. In fact, he unwittingly might have unveiled a deeper truth that could be hard to face.
