With the retirement of Kurt Warner, this was supposed to be the time when Matt Leinart stepped in and tried to show that the Arizona Cardinals hadn’t wasted the 10th overall pick in the 2006 draft on him.  But after two lackluster preseason performances, the Cardinals are already looking at other options, announcing that Derek Anderson would start Saturday in the team’s third preseason game.

Head coach Ken Whisenhunt is downplaying the move. “I think it’s not anything against Matt or the quarterback position,” said the man who’s led the Cardinals since 2007. “It’s we’re looking at different people and trying to find out what’s the best combination for our team right now.”

Still, the third preseason game is normally the most important, the exhibition where teams get their longest looks at their first team.  So while Whisenhunt hasn’t officially named Anderson his regular season starter, he’s at the very least giving him a serious shot at the job.

In Arizona’s second preseason game, the Cardinals failed to make a first down in the three series Leinart was at quarterback.

Anderson is a little over a month older than Leinart, and was a 6th round pick in the 2005 draft.  While Leinart was a star in college at USC, Anderson has had more success in the NFL.  In 2007, Anderson was 10-5 as a starter and made the Pro Bowl.  The next two years, he was in and out as the Browns starter, going only 6-10 as a starter. Leinart was 4-7 as a starter in his rookie year in 2006, and has only started one game the last two seasons as Warner’s understudy. Over their short careers, neither has very impressive stats — Anderson’s career quarterback rating is 69.7, while Leinart’s 70.8 is just a touch better.

So how low is the bar for Anderson when the Cardinals play the Bears on Saturday?  Will one first down win him the job?  Right now, I’d bet the Cardinals begin the regular season with Anderson at quarterback, but that he won’t keep the starting job through the whole season.