The million dollar question facing the Arizona Cardinals might be answered sooner than orginally thought. Reports are surfacing that Kurt Warner will hold a press conference on Friday at the team's facilities and the rumor is that he's expected to announce his retirement at that time. Now before anyone jumps to conclusions here, none of this has been officially confirmed. In fact Darren Urban, the team's website guru, hasn't even been able to confirm that they are holding a press conference. Right now all of this is being driven by the dreaded "source with knowledge of the situation."
That hasn't stopped both NFL.com and ESPN from running with the story and it certainly wouldn't be shocking if it all turned out to be true, but for now nothing is confirmed. One of the reasons that ESPN believes he'll announce his retirement is that he's supposedly started gathering his family for the press conference and they also cite that he has several promotional appearances next week at the Super Bowl and he'd rather not have the focus of every conversation on his undecided future. Either way we should find out in a couple of days.
Update #1: Kent Somers is reporting that Warner's agent has confirmed that a press conference will "probably" be held, whatever that means.
Update #2: Clark Judge quoted a league source saying, "My understanding," he said, "is that he could go in either direction." I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Update #3: Kurt Warner confirmed the press conference via twitter,
"The Arizona Cardinals and I will be holding a press conference on Friday, January 29, 2010. I have made a final decision on my retirement."
Update #4: Rotoworld is making it sound like a done deal already,
Warner is fully expected to announce his retirement from football on Friday. The Cardinals will turn the offense over to Matt Leinart, whose salary increases from $2.5M in 2010 to $7.4M in 2011 with a $5.5M roster bonus. Leinart will have one year to prove he can handle the job for the leading NFC West contender.
Update #5: Darren Urban has more details below. The decision comes Friday.
The Cardinals (and Kurt Warner) have finally made it official - the press conference will be at 1 p.m. Arizona time Friday here at the team's Tempe facility.