Mort’s reporting has been well documented on this site as extremely suspect and now you can officially add another to his resume. On Sunday, Chris Mortensen had the breaking news that the Arizona Cardinals were choosing veteran Kurt Warner as their starting quarterback. Well that had every beat writer in the Grand Canyon State perplexed and scrambling for a statement from Cards’ Coach Ken Whisenhunt. The coach refuted the item early yesterday morning and by the end of the day the AZ Central had the news that Mort’s report was completely off-base.
ESPN’s Chris Mortensen, however, citing a team source, said Warner would be named the starter ahead of Leinart, who threw three interceptions against the Raiders.
“I haven’t read the paper today or seen the Internet,” Whisenhunt said. “Do we have a quarterback? … It seems like Chris Mortensen is making the decision on our quarterback for our football team. … But nothing has changed.”
Update: Leinart remains Cardinals starting QB
Matt Leinart remains the Cardinals starting quarterback, despite a news report on Sunday that coach Ken Whisenhunt had decided to replace him with Kurt Warner.
Whisenhunt denied that was his plan and said today that the evaluation process at quarterback is continuing. He met with Leinart this morning to talk about the reports, assuring the young quarterback that the information didn’t come from the Cardinals.Leinart took snaps with the first team in Monday’s short practice but so did Warner. That has been the norm this off-season.
In the past two years alone Mort has been responsible for a laundry list of false reports. First, it was that Michael Vick unlikely to get indicted, we all know how that turned out. After that came the guarantee that Ron Rivera was the next Cowboys Coach, and when that didn’t pan out he was chided by colleague Greg Easterbrook online. Next, it was Mortensen saying that Eli Manning would “officially” miss a month to start last season, Eli played every game. THEN it was Jon Gruden put him on blast. If you add to that this Cardinals story, the Parcells to Atlanta guarantee, and the lock that Brett Favre WAS NOT going to come back this season, you have grand total of eight….EIGHT!….breaking news items that Mortensen was dead wrong about.
Look, I’m not denying that Mort has sources or that he works his tail off, but good lord! How many times is ESPN going to go all-in with one of his guesses just to have it blow up in their face? It’s not the fact that he gets reports wrong, that happens to everyone (obviously not that many times), but every damn show on ESPN then talks about them like they are gospel. Yesterday alone PTI, ATH, NFL Live, First Take and Sports Center all spent a good two to five minutes on the item when Whisenhunt had already refuted the claim. Hell, he said that wasn’t the case at around 9am Monday morning! Anybody can make guesses like this, but if he was a reporter for a local newspaper, he would long been fired for so many errors.
The guy is obviously there to say, but can we please just tone down all the “Breaking News” reports the next time he happens upon some news, ESPN? I’m just looking out for you.
Whisenhunt says no decision yet (AZ Central)
Still No Named QB in Arizona … Mort Guessed Wrong Again (Fanhouse)
Chris Mortensen is back in the game, baby (PaxArcana)
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