THE REPUBLIC
Whisenhunt fired, search for replacement begins.
By the time the sun had risen on another valley morning, the news had already broke. Ken Whisenhunt was no longer the Head coach of the Arizona Cardinals.
After a meeting between GM Rod Graves, The Bidwill family and other top brass in the Cards' organisation late Wednesday night, the decision was reached that they were to go in a different direction, and Whisenhunt's services were no longer required.
After an 8 year playing career, Whisenhunt got his first coaching job at Vanderbilt as a special teams,halfbacks and tight ends coach. Stops at Baltimore,Cleveland, New York (Jets) and Pittsburgh followed, before Arizona gave him his first head coaching job, hiring him to replace Dennis Green. Whiz's high point came in the 2008 season, where he guided the team all the way to superbowl XLIII, where they would eventually lose 27-23 to the Pittsburgh steelers, where Whisenhunt had formerly served as an offensive co-ordinator.
But, naturally, there were low points too.
Whisenhunt never managed to find a replacement at QB for Kurt Warner, something that may unfortunately taint his legacy with the Cards, thanks to unsuccessful experiments with Matt Leinart, Max Hall, Derek Anderson, and more recently the duo of John Skelton and the costly Kevin Kolb. The QB issue coupled with a failure to improve the Offensive-line may have factored into a decision that, although was made quickly, seems to be supported by the media and fans alike.
GM Rod Graves said "We wish Ken all the best. He had a pretty good time here, but after talking through the night, and after looking at where we felt the organisation was headed, and how we wanted to move forward we decided to make the move. It's certainly not a decision we take lightly, but these things have to be done sometimes."
"The search for a replacement will begin immediately, but we don't want to rush it. We've got a week or so until camp starts and we'd like to have a guy in by then, obviously. But he has to be the right guy. For us, it's not about a big name, NFL experience, or past successes and failures. We're more interested in finding a guy who fits our philosophy, someone we can see eye to eye with."
Though he couldn't be drawn on actual names, one has to figure one of the candidates would be Ray Horton, who is currently the Defensive co-ordinator for the Cards, and has been linked with Head coaching jobs before.
Whisenhunt leaves the Cardinals with a 45-50 record, winning games at a .474% clip.