Wait, you mean Chris Mortensen was wrong? Pretty boy/soon-to-be baby daddy Matt Leinart won’t be starting at quarterback for the Arizona Cardinals this week in a pivotal road test against the Atlanta Falcons?

Ok, got it.

Errors happen. Surely, ESPN regrets the error. (If you’re curious about our NBA shootaround article last month, we’ll be tackling that one tomorrow.) After Dennis Green announced the Cards were sticking with Warner Tuesday, ESPN went with this curious and annoying headline: “Cards Change Mind, to Stick with Warner at QB.”

It’s virtually unconscionable that ESPN can get away with something as blatantly wrong as this. Such is life at the Worldwide Leader. The guys at Pro Football Talk, the ultimate morning NFL must-read, took it a step further and spoke to some league execs about the colossal error:

“These guys have no accountability and when they are wrong (and if you add it up, it may be more often than not) they just let it slide,” said the source.

Our initial guess was that Arizona coach Dennis Green spoonfed the item to ESPN … but if that were the case, wouldn’t Denny have shared the info with the local beat writers, too? Since he didn’t, our guess is that perhaps Mort talked to angry owner (or some such executive) in Arizona who felt the QB change was necessary. After the harrowing loss to the Rams, any NFL fan could have made the leap that Leinart should get a shot as the starter. But for Mort to run it as gospel seems pretty irresponsible.

We tapped an NFL beat writer, who offered up this guess:

I don’t think for a second that Dennis Green was the leak on the Leinart story. I don’t know who is, but I think these days the ESPN guys just throw enough shit at the wall to see what sticks…The guy is a joke. The motto among [writers] is that if we see it on ESPN, we don’t believe it unless it comes from [John] Clayton.

Cards Change Mind, to stick with Warner at QB (ESPN)