Injuries Force QB Shuffle in Arizona

It didn't take long for the Arizona Cardinals to go from a quarterback rotation to a state of quarterback desperation.

After first-year coach Ken Whisenhunt used the unique approach of splitting his team's quarterbacking duties between Matt Leinart and Kurt Warner for some of the season's early games, the Cardinals lost both players to injuries in consecutive games and are making preparations to play the Washington Redskins on Sunday at FedEx Field with Tim Rattay as their starter. Rattay signed with the club only last week and threw three interceptions when pressed into immediate service in Sunday's loss to the Carolina Panthers.

Warner was scheduled to undergo an MRI exam yesterday after suffering apparent ligament damage in his left elbow during the Carolina game. The Cardinals reportedly planned to sign former Redskins quarterback Tim Hasselbeck to back up Rattay, and Whisenhunt and his assistant coaches were ready to craft a pared-down game plan that might help Rattay be effective even with limited knowledge of the team's offensive system.

"I've never been around a team where that's happened," Whisenhunt said during a news conference yesterday when asked about losing starting quarterbacks in back-to-back weeks, "so it's the first time I've experienced that. It's obviously unusual. It's hard enough when you lose one quarterback. When you lose two, it's doubly difficult obviously. But it's not gonna change. I mean, I'm sure there's not a lot of teams out there that are feeling sorry for us right now. We've got to move forward. I feel good that we have [Rattay] in here, and we have some quality receivers out there that can help us with that. So we'll go forward."

Warner had been playing effectively in a part-time role, running the Cardinals' no-huddle offense, until Leinart's season was ended by a broken collarbone on Oct. 7. Warner got hurt in the first quarter last Sunday as he tried to recover a loose ball after fumbling on a sack by Panthers defensive end Julius Peppers.

"I had no strength in there," Warner said during his postgame news conference Sunday. "I couldn't really move it. There would have been no way to hold the football with my left hand. I maybe could have thrown a little bit, but there's a lot more to the game than running back there with one hand and throwing it."

The Cardinals signed Rattay, a former starter for the San Francisco 49ers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, last Tuesday after he worked out for team officials. The Cardinals also had invited Vinny Testaverde to that workout. But Testaverde declined to attend and instead signed with the Panthers on Wednesday, then became Carolina's starter because of David Carr's ailing back and beat Rattay and the Cardinals on Sunday.

"It's not ideal, obviously," Rattay said after the game. "You like to be in minicamps and training camp and all that kind of stuff. But like I said, it's the situation that I was presented with, so you've just got to roll with it."

Whisenhunt said yesterday that he expects Rattay to be better equipped to play effectively against the Redskins than he was when thrust into Sunday's game.

"I think that we can give him certainly more than what he had in this past game because the game plan will be geared more towards what his strengths are, some of the passes that he's comfortable with," Whisenhunt said. "When we did the plan last week, we had in mind things that Kurt liked and things that he was good at, and Tim necessarily, because they were more complicated reads, was not as comfortable with them. We'll simplify things, but we're still going to be able to do some things in the pass game this week more so than we did last week just because he's here another week."

Whisenhunt, a Redskins tight end in 1989 and '90, who was the Pittsburgh Steelers' offensive coordinator before being hired in January to succeed Dennis Green in Arizona, already has faced some early-season ups and downs in his first head coaching job. Sunday's loss dropped the Cardinals to 3-3 after consecutive wins over the Steelers and St. Louis Rams had raised some expectations. They've retained a share of first place thanks to the forgiving nature of the NFC West race.

"What we have to do is really focus back on what we've had success with," Whisenhunt said yesterday, "and that's some of the little things. . . . You won two games in a row and we were feeling good about ourselves. We had a little bit of success. I think as much as anything, we let a few of the small details slide. Good teams can't do that."