The Awful New World In Which You Live In

So in prepping for the NFL season, I keep coming back to the situation in Arizona, where the Perpetual Cardinals Could Surprise Story is being undermined by Anquan Boldin demanding a trade, and coach Ken Whisenhunt starting Kurt Warner in a preseason game ahead of the supposed future of the franchise, Matt Leinart.

In case you don't follow the more off-field sports blogs, Leinart was photographed at an underaged keg party in the off-season, helping some fine young things like a helpful freshman pledge, rather than like a guy making tens of millions of dollars to play in the NFL. He also found time for the absolutely necessary hot tub trip, which shows that his ideas of debauchery aren't exactly original.

This lead to many athletes (as well as a celebrated Buzz Bissinger meltdown on the HBO Costas show) to decry the sudden paparazzi-like influence of One Nation With A Cell Phone Camera, and the Evil, Evil Blogs That Publish Those Pictures.

You see, we in Blogfrica had crossed a line that should not have been crossed. Leinart was perpetuating no crime, said the glibertarians, and it didn't seem right to splash his face all over the Internets for some harmless fun. We're very, very bad people to show you images like this one, and to make money from the ad impressions that they generate. He's not a celebrity; he just plays football for a living.

Never mind the fact that underaged drinking isn't harmless, especially if you were the parents of one of the sweet young things. Or the fact that Leinart has fathered a kid out of wedlock before. (While one might suspects that it would have happened from an experience similar to the one photographed, let's give him the benefit of the doubt and say the relationship just went wrong. Oh, and that he was forced to engage in unsafe sex.)

Or that at the time of Beer Bong Gate, he was supposed to be in rehab from a season-ending collarbone injury, and hence, you know, working.

Um, people? It's not coming to come as any great surprise to you where I'm going with this, right? Yup... I Cry Bullshit. (Or, at the very least, Shenanigans.)

You see, it *does* matter what these guys do off the field, and here's why -- coaches have this thing about trusting guys with bad judgment. If Leinart had kept his nose clean and stayed under the radar, he'd have been showing good judgment -- the same good judgment that he's generally lacked in not leading the Cardinals to a winning record in his time there, despite a piss-poor division, a steadily improving talent base (especially at the skill positions), and the bump that the new home stadium should have given that team.

The same good judgment that would have his quarterback rating up above the Detmer level. He's not that much far above it now, other than some good moments in games against pretty weak defenses.

While we're talking about judgment, maybe it would have been better for him to declare early, especially since he was all of one class short for his last year in sunny California. So instead of going first overall, he went lower the next year, as scouts started to whisper about his commitment to the game and the fact that USC QBs tend to be system washouts in the pros (Rob Johnson, anyone?).

It might have also helped if he not had a lengthy holdout that opened the door for Warner, who for all of his fumbling and holding on to the ball flaws, does know the system and prepares for an opponent..

Is anyone else seeing a pattern here?

It matters because all of this has led Whisenhunt, correctly in my opinion, to dally with Warner as his quarterback instead of The Franchise. In your roto league, Warner, despite no assurance that he's going to get the majority of the snaps, is going ahead of Leinart. (Not that either is going very high, mind you... and if Arizona had a clear #1, he'd be a top 10 pick.) That's because roto guys remember numbers, and when Warner gets the snaps, he produces. Leinart, not so much.

In the world we used to live in, we as fans (and fantasy players, which, admittedly, is a big reason why anyone cares who about the quarterback situation in) would have much less information on what's leading Whisenhunt to mess around with The Future like this.

We'd be pillorying the coach for his stubborn refusal to live with the necessary growing pains are breaking in a young quarterback.

We'd be convinced that, just like always, the Cardinals were succumbing to their franchise DNA and squandering young talent.

We'd also be wrong. The problem with Matt Leinart is Matt Leinart. Blogfrica just exposed the truth, which is what journalism should do, and made everyone aware of the depths of Leinart's commitment to being a winning player.

And that, my friends, is not awful, though it may very well be new.