I keep hearing he’s a second round prospect or a third round prospect. None of that actually matters. If he’s who you think is a franchise quarterback, you take him at 3. Logically speaking - if your team is actually run by competent football people (debatable), and you believe wholesale this is a franchise quarterback, the most valuable position on the field, you take him immediately. If you don’t, and your projection was correct that he’s a franchise quarterback, other teams are not going to let you take him. He will simply be drafted before you can get to him.
If we draft him at 3 and no other team would have touched him until round 2, then it was probably a reach. If another team was going to take him in the first round, then it was probably a good pick. If he turns into a franchise QB in 5 years, no one is going to say “well we shouldn’t have taken him at 3 because it was a reach.”
If the Cardinals truly believe he’s a franchise QB, they either take him at #3 or trade down in the top 5-10 and take him there. If they believe he’s a franchise QB, and they’re competent, meaning other competent clubs see the same thing, he doesn’t make it to #34. He won’t even make it to 12 or 15.
That doesn’t mean I’d take him, but it does lay out the logical reason why the team would spend their first on him. Having said all that, the draft is a crapshoot and these are prospects after all. If you really think your franchise QB is on the board, it would be silly to draft anyone else. I’d love to draft Bailey in the first and Simpson in the second or something like that, but that sounds much more draftnik talk than reality.