E: Leinart hanging by a string

Take a minute and reflect back to your childhood all you twenty and thirty-something year olds reading this.

Think back to the cool birthday party with pizza, Jolt soda, your closest friends, and the ugly papier mache animal which hung from a sturdy branch in the corner of the backyard.

As the caffeine wore off and the pizza slowly digested, my dad would grab the stick my mom used to secure the sliding glass door, a handkerchief which would double as a blindfold, and each of us would anxiously line up and await our turn to blindly take our Mark Reynolds' cuts at the helpless swaying candy-filled creature.

Matt Leinart knows the feeling, but these kids aren't blind-folded.

Here was ESPN's Darren Woodson: "If you can't be the quarterback for the Arizona Cardinals, who are really thin right now there, I don't know if you have a future in the NFL."

Mark Schlereth also chimed in: "If you look behind you and no one is following you, you probably aren't a leader and I think that is what is happening here (with Leinart)."

Monday Night Football analyst Jon Gruden: "He hasn't taken advantage of his opportunities. He's clearly been average. He hasn't been a guy who's really taken control and choked the opportunity that's been given to him, and obviously there's something missing there."

One after another, the so-called experts have been treating the "Golden Boy from Troy" like that youth party favorite.

On a day when Darnell Dockett's piņata was filled with Rolex watches just like in "Billy Madison," Leinart looks like the debris before mom and dad cleaned up after the party.

The Leinart-Whisenhunt timeline resembles a guility serial-killer at a lie detector test.

Skittish, and for the most part, uncomfortable for everyone.

Just when you thought two dedicated summers of grueling MMA training, countless hours at the Cards facilities lifting weights and watching tape, and an all-expense paid bonding trip to Hawaii for his offensive line may sway Ken Whisenhunt's opinion of his quarterback, Camp Cards in Flagstaff turned into Camp Chaos.

Leinart certainly said all the right things off the field, but never helped his cause of cementing the starting spot under center with inconsistent practices and a mopey disposition in the Red Birds first two exhibition games.

So on the eve of the Cards final, and for the most part, meaningless preseason game Denny Green's first-round pick of 2006 appears headed for the NFL quarterback landfill.

A hefty salary ($7.5 million next year), coupled with Leinart's incomplete on-field resume have many believing the Cards will get a late-round pick or veteran quarterback, at best, in return via trade.

So the two-time defending NFC West champs and their fans are, for now, placing faith in a guy who completed just 44% of his passes last season and who quarterback guru Mike Holmgren had no trouble kicking to the curb in Cleveland.

The verbal salvos have been fired.

The damage is done.

Like Tiger and Elin, this much-needed divorce will soon become final.

The only question now is where and when.

The Giants have been rumored, but is the New York microscope (even as Eli Manning's backup) what he needs right now?

I doubt it, but I do know one thing.

Whisenhunt doesn't speak softly, but he certainly carries a big stick.