SportsBender

Donovan McNabb to second-string. Then to third-string. Then no guarantee that he'll be back next season.

The ever-dramatic Washington Redskins upset the NFL apple cart once again Friday when coach Mike Shanahan announced Rex Grossman as his starter for the rest of the season, beginning with Sunday's game at Dallas.

McNabb will be the No. 2 quarterback against the Cowboys, then drop to No. 3 behind Grossman and John Beck for the final two games of the season.

Redskins players are "extremely pissed" about the move. Multiple Redskins players tell La Canfora that offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan -- son of head coach Mike Shanahan -- is using McNabb as a scapegoat for some of the Redskins trouble this year. Anytime a team struggles, someone will get blamed. It appears, according to La Canfora's account, that the blame will be placed on McNabb. He hasn't played the best of seasons but it's hard to place this squarely on him.

"I also told him," Shanahan said, "that I cannot guarantee him that he will be back next year."

That's how far the 34-year-old, six-time Pro Bowl quarterback has fallen. The player acquired with such fanfare in an April trade -- the quarterback who would do for Shanahan in Washington what Elway did for him in Denver -- is benched in a season in which he has been woefully inconsistent, throwing a career-high 15 interceptions and ranking 25th in the NFL with a 77.1 rating.

McNabb's agent, Fletcher Smith, told ESPN that the Redskins' decision is "disrespectful to Donovan. He has not been more disrespected his whole career than he has this season. It's absolutely ridiculous."

Asked if getting McNabb was a mistake, Shanahan said: "I think there's a lot of mistakes that you make. You really don't know if you made a mistake, but if you do make one, you make it and you go on. What I want to do is evaluate where we're at at the end of the season, then I will tell you if we erred or not."