In what has become a tale of the Two Headed monster, Arizona Cardinal’s coach Ken Whisenhunt has proclaimed that quarterback Matt Leinart will continue to be the teams starter, with Kurt Warner remaining as the back-up and No huddle offense’s play caller.
After a season opening road loss to the San Francisco 49’ers, Leinart helped engineer an improbable victory over the Seattle Seahawks with a 23-of-37 for 299 yards, one touchdown performance In the Cardinals home opener. This unexpected victory left the NFC West teams knotted at 1-1 records. Of course the victory was helped in large part by the Seahawks Matt Hassle back’s muffed handoff to Shawn Alexander with less than two minutes to go.
Then in Baltimore, with Leinart falling behind 20-3 at halftime and 23-6 in the third quarter, Whisenhunt elected to insert Warner, the ex Super Bowl winner and two-time league MVP to run the Cardinal’s No huddle offense in an attempt to pull off an unexpected road win.
And Warner delivered a pair of fourth quarter touchdowns to Anquan Boldin, followed by a game tying field goal with 1:50 left on the clock. Then the Ravens marched the length of the field to kick a winning 46 yard field goal after a questionable unsportsmanlike conduct penalty was called against the Cardinals.
Billed as the showdown of the Steelers vs. their ex-coaching personnel in the Valley of the Sun. would first year coach Whisenhunt and his top assistant Russ Grimm who were passed over for the Steelers’ job in favor of Mike Tomlin be able to beat the ex-Super Bowl champions?
And although Whisenhunt claimed no animosity towards the Pittsburg organization, the Cardinals offense saw a new wrinkle in their playbook enroute to victory. This time the quarterback rotations ended in Leinart’s favor. After Warner led the Cardinals No huddle offense to score a third quarter tying touchdown. Leinart returned in the fourth quarter to direct a 13-play, 82-yard touchdown drive with Edgerrin James’ scoring on a two yard run.
UPDATE: 10/12/07 : Funny how things work out. I guess Matt will have to wait now that he has suffered a season ending injury and the Cardinals have signed Tim Rattay as backup to Kurt Warner.
0 responses so far ↓
There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.
You must log in to post a comment.