Is it Leinart, or perhaps USC?

With the imminent release of Matt Leinart by the Arizona Cardinals on Saturday, the question of whether or not he will be the future of the Cardinals and the cornerstone of the franchise at quarterback are finally laid to rest.

Following his Heisman Trophy winning junior season at Southern California in 2004, Leinart made the decision to return to the school and give a national title one more run, and in the process turned down the chance to undoubtedly be the #1 overall draft pick in the 2005 NFL draft, instead leaving the 49ers to choose Alex Smith. After one more season at USC, Leinart was once again a Heisman finalist, and would eventually finally be chosen in the draft, only this time, he fell to the Cardinals at 10th instead of going in the top 3 overall (I do not say 1st overall as the Texans and Saints had their quarterbacks at that time), and second amongst quarterbacks.

He was practically handed the keys to the franchise as the only QB on the roster with any real experience was a supposedly washed up Kurt Warner, and it was only a quarter of the way through  the 2006 season that Leinart became the starter, and for a rookie, did ok with the job.  He began 2007 as the starter as well, but early on in the season, suffered a season ending injury, giving Kurt Warner much of a season to gel with the offense, eventually leading him to win the starting quarterback job in 2008 after Leinart was again called the starter early on.  We all know what happened with the Cardinals under Warner after that.

That leads us to 2010, Warner retired, one season standout Derek Anderson brought in to be the backup, and Leinart once again named the starter early on.  Once again, he could not hold onto the job, and today, finally was released by the team, ending the roller coaster ride.

It is with this that makes us wonder if this was because of Leinart, or perhaps it goes deeper back to his days at USC, and was he ever really the QB so many thought he would be, or does USC just have that good of a system and surrounding players to lead us all to believe so.

Nowhere will we begin to discuss defensive players from USC, as the vast majority of them are speaking for themselves at the pro level.  Same goes with offensive lineman.  But we must wonder about the skill players on offense, and were most of them really ever that good?

In the time that Pete Carroll was head coach at USC before moving on to the Seattle Seahawks this season, this seemed so easy for the Trojans out west in the PAC-10.  They easily dominated recruiting out west and even had a large footprint nationwide, bringing in numerous 4 and 5 star recruits and littering their roster with them.  For the majority of the decade under Carroll, USC was a fixture as a top 10 ranked team.  But the players he coached, Leinart included, was it because of some of their superior play, or was it because they were surrounded by teammates who were on the same level as them, far superior to much of their opposition, and padding their numbers?

The first big offensive draft pick under Carroll was that of Carson Palmer going first overall in 2003 to the Cincinnati Bengals, and while he has had a few years in his six year career that were pro bowl caliber, he has been far less than great to this point, especially when he gets compared to a fellow top pick in Peyton Manning, by whom all top draft QB's will always be compared.  Only twice has Palmer posted a season rating over 90, and some will point to the fact that he suffered a severe knee injury in the 2006 playoffs, but the second best season of his career was that ensuing 2006 season.

Since Palmer, there have been several highly drafted offensive skill players, or those drafted in the first few rounds with high hopes, and to this point, none have yet to live up the the hype they left school with.  Mike Williams was picked 10th overall in 2005 following a season out of football, and never even began to live up to that draft position.

Would the guy on the left
have been the better pick?

2006 brought about the selections of Leinart by Arizona, one spot ahead of Jay Cutler of Vanderbilt, who many analysts thought the Cardinals should have picked, and 2005 Heisman Trophy winning running back Reggie Bush by the Saints, second overall.  Bush has never been able to handle being an every down running back, and has been much of a disappointment in his 4 years in the league, being best used as a 3rd down back and punt returner.  Along with Leinart and Bush, The Tennessee Titans selected Bush's running mate LenDale White in the second round, who like Bush, was a standout with the Trojans, but as a pro, has battled weight problems and has been little more than a middle of the road running back, even since moving on to and being cut by Carroll as a Seahawk this off season.

Since the selections of Bush and Leinart, there has since only been one first round selection of an offensive skill player out of USC, that being Mark Sanchez at 6th overall in the 2009 draft, who gained increasing hype from the media after the end of the 2008 college season, even after Carroll publicly said he could use one more season of college ball.  In his one season as a pro, he was far less than stellar, posting a QB rating of a mere 63.0, nothing to write home about.

Perhaps NFL teams are learning from mistakes of recent draft selections of USC offense skill players, as receivers who shined in college have slipped in drafts, and done little as a pro to this point.  Dwayne Jarrett was a star following the departure of Williams, but slipped to the 2nd round in 2007, and has done very little to show he is even worth that.  Jarrett's teammate in those years, Steve Smith was taken shortly after him by the Giants, and it took him three years as a pro to do much of anything, and has since begun to show he is worthy, but he was the far overlooked receiver coming out of that draft.  Patrick Turner was a 3rd round selection of the Dolphins in 2009, and was just cut in the past two days, ending that tenure quickly.

It appears that perhaps it was not that Matt Leinart just got worse once he became a professional, it appears that he may never have had the ability to begin with that so many believed he had.  He dropped to 10th in the 2006 draft for a reason, because his footwork had issues, and he lacked arm strength, problems that never were a problem while at USC when he had the very best lineman blocking for him and some of the best skill players to hand the ball off to and throw to.

Yes, Leinart did nothing but regress from his first year with Arizona to the point of his release, and enough of that was on him.  He had a future hall of famer to learn from.  He had star wide receivers to throw to in Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin.  It was up to him to put the work in to take the job, and he never did.

Perhaps when Pete Carroll chose to pass up on his own college running back in Joe McKnight in his first draft with the Seahawks he knew something.  He knew that his players while at USC had talent, but knew they were over hyped because they were surrounded by some of the very best players in the college game, and were not quite the NFL star caliber that they were presumed to be.