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A week or so after stripping Matt Leinart of his starting quarterback job, the Arizona Cardinals are openly shopping the former first round pick. Three teams have been mentioned as possible trading partners — the Oakland Raiders, Buffalo Bills, and New York Giants — but all three have publicly said they’re not interested. The Cardinals are also considering simply cutting Leinart before Saturday’s roster deadline.

There’s a few reasons nobody’s thrilled about picking up Leinart, who’s entering his fifth season in the pros.  He not only seems to be an underachieving malcontent who doesn’t think he should be anybody’s backup, he’s also slated to make over $7 million next year. Plus, why give up anything to the Cardinals in a trade when they may cut him?

Jay Glazer tweeted that the Giants don’t want Leinart because the team’s “looking for a veteran backup who’s perfectly content w[ith] being [Eli Manning]’s backup.” The Giants currently have two rookies backing up Manning, who was knocked out of the first preseason game.  Besides Leinart and new starter Derek Anderson, the Cardinals just have rookie quarterbacks on their roster, so they’d have to sign someone else if they cut Leinart or trade with the Giants.

The Raiders seem set with two good options at quarterback with newcomer Jason Campbell and Bruce Gradkowski.  If a trade gets done the Bills might be the best bet, with Ryan Fitzpatrick currently backing up Trent Edwards. But still, Leinart would have to play awfully well somewhere for anyone to want to spend $7 million on him next year, and hasn’t shown he’s the type of guy who’ll be happy renegotiating.

What went wrong with Leinart? He probably assumed that after a few years watching Kurt Warner do his thing the starting job was definitely his and there was no competition. How fast he can come back to reality will probably determine how fast he gets a chance to show he’s anywhere near as good as he seems to think he is.