BigRedMO
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http://www.foxsports.com/midwest/st...-is-and-always-will-be-a-hall-of-famer-012615
Once is cute, but twice is legend: Why Kurt Warner is, and always will be, a Hall of Famer
Sean Keeler
FOX Sports Midwest
JAN 26, 2015 4:40p ET
Kurt Warner was able to take both the St. Louis Rams and Arizona Cardinals to the Super Bowl during his 12 years as an NFL QB.
Once is a cereal box. Twice is the stuff of legend. Kurt Warner got Flounder into Omega House. For an encore, he got Sidney a sniff, too.
Without Warner, the St. Louis Rams are the expansion Browns, the NFL's Twinkie, all filler and no hope, sugar rush and sugar crash, a mutilated Tim Couch jersey and tape, a sideshow grasping for substance.
Without Warner, the Arizona Cardinals are the Lions, a line of nothing drawn in the sand, stretching past a golden horizon for as far as the eye can see, decades of irrelevance woven into the local psyche like a tattoo.
He toiled and struggled for years before taking an unfashionable, non-power franchise to the NFL penthouse before notching a seat at the sport's biggest table.
Then he did it again.
Once is a TV movie.
Twice is a bronze bust.
Warner, the Iowa stock boy turned world champ, is one of 18 finalists up for consideration later this Super Bowl week for admission to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And yet, by all accounts, he's far from a lock, the man's candidacy as complicated and unusual as the playing career that preceded it.
The former Northern Iowa star didn't throw his first NFL pass in a regular-season game until the age of 27 and wasn't a No. 1 option until the age of 28, a cockpit opened -- and this is the movie part -- only because of a series of fluke injuries and providence. He started fewer than 10 games in a season six times over a dozen years as an NFL signal-caller.
Warner's road began late, then bobbed and weaved; a meteoric rise from the Arena Football League and NFL Europe to an MVP, three seasons of at least 3,400 passing yards and 21 passing touchdowns, and then the bottom falls out (five years of no more than 11 touchdown passes or 2,700 yards) ... followed by another meteoric rise and three more seasons of at least 3,400 yards and 21 touchdowns.
Most quarterbacks' statistics tend to follow along a bell curve; Warner's look more like a drunken, wobbly capital "N": from nothing to a peak and high plateau to a valley to another peak and another plateau.
Marc Bulger and a broken finger in his throwing hand suffered in 2002 turned his St. Louis story back into a pumpkin. A one-season stay in New York with the Giants in '04 was significant for its insignificance.
From 2002-05, teams in games Warner started posted a record of 7-19, the lack of mobility and fumblitis went from footnotes to the headline, and No. 13 was deemed a quarterback out past his fairy godmother's curfew, a Trivial Pursuit card destined to be shuffled out of football's fickle deck.
And yet, even in that down cycle, Warner still completed 63.8 percent of his throws, never stopped being the master of the three-step drop. And when The Matt Leinart Experiment imploded in Phoenix, No. 13 got that memorable second act.
Once is fortune.
Twice is affirmation.
Warner is the last player in NFL history, still, to win the MVP award and a Super Bowl in the same campaign (1999). And the brighter the spotlight, the hotter the arm: No. 13 still owns the three biggest passing yardage games in Super Bowl history, including 414 yards in a win over Tennessee in Big Game XXXIV and 377 against the Steelers nine years later with the Cardinals in Big Game XLIII.
He's produced fourth-quarter postseason comebacks -- the largest of all badges of quarterback honor -- with both St. Louis and Arizona. His record in NFC title games: 3-0, with six touchdowns thrown against three picks.
Warner is one of a dozen quarterbacks to ever start at least three Super Bowls. The eight no longer active are all enshrined in Canton.
Once is cute.
Twice is epic.
Detractors will sniff at the relative lack of volume -- Warner's 208 passing touchdowns and 32,344 yards rank 33rd and 34th, respectively, among the all-time NFL career charts -- and accentuate the valleys at the expense of the peaks.
But context is key here, to say nothing of precedent: Of the top 12 NFL career leaders in terms of all-time yards per pass attempt, eight are inactive. Of those eight, six are in the Hall, the seventh is Ed Brown (7.9) and the eighth is Warner (7.9).
In 13 seasons, Brown played in one postseason contest, with the '56 Bears, and lost. Over a dozen campaigns, Warner played in 13, and won nine of them.
No. 13 brought a baseball town to the football pinnacle, then went to the desert and made it rain.
It takes a good quarterback to rise to the occasion. It takes a great one to raise those around him, too. With Warner as the primary starter from 1999-2002, the Rams won an average of 11 contests per season and appeared in the postseason three out of four years. The eight seasons before Warner showed up, they averaged just five wins with no postseason appearances. The eight years after he was gone, they averaged 5.9 victories with two playoff berths -- and none after 2004.
With Warner as the primary starter from 2007-09, the Cardinals won an average of nine contests per season and reached the postseason in two of those three campaigns. The five years before that, they averaged five victories with no playoff berths. The five years after: 7.8 wins and one postseason trip in 2014.
Once is them. Twice?
Twice is him.
Once is cute, but twice is legend: Why Kurt Warner is, and always will be, a Hall of Famer
Sean Keeler
FOX Sports Midwest
JAN 26, 2015 4:40p ET
Kurt Warner was able to take both the St. Louis Rams and Arizona Cardinals to the Super Bowl during his 12 years as an NFL QB.
Once is a cereal box. Twice is the stuff of legend. Kurt Warner got Flounder into Omega House. For an encore, he got Sidney a sniff, too.
Without Warner, the St. Louis Rams are the expansion Browns, the NFL's Twinkie, all filler and no hope, sugar rush and sugar crash, a mutilated Tim Couch jersey and tape, a sideshow grasping for substance.
Without Warner, the Arizona Cardinals are the Lions, a line of nothing drawn in the sand, stretching past a golden horizon for as far as the eye can see, decades of irrelevance woven into the local psyche like a tattoo.
He toiled and struggled for years before taking an unfashionable, non-power franchise to the NFL penthouse before notching a seat at the sport's biggest table.
Then he did it again.
Once is a TV movie.
Twice is a bronze bust.
Warner, the Iowa stock boy turned world champ, is one of 18 finalists up for consideration later this Super Bowl week for admission to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And yet, by all accounts, he's far from a lock, the man's candidacy as complicated and unusual as the playing career that preceded it.
The former Northern Iowa star didn't throw his first NFL pass in a regular-season game until the age of 27 and wasn't a No. 1 option until the age of 28, a cockpit opened -- and this is the movie part -- only because of a series of fluke injuries and providence. He started fewer than 10 games in a season six times over a dozen years as an NFL signal-caller.
Warner's road began late, then bobbed and weaved; a meteoric rise from the Arena Football League and NFL Europe to an MVP, three seasons of at least 3,400 passing yards and 21 passing touchdowns, and then the bottom falls out (five years of no more than 11 touchdown passes or 2,700 yards) ... followed by another meteoric rise and three more seasons of at least 3,400 yards and 21 touchdowns.
Most quarterbacks' statistics tend to follow along a bell curve; Warner's look more like a drunken, wobbly capital "N": from nothing to a peak and high plateau to a valley to another peak and another plateau.
Marc Bulger and a broken finger in his throwing hand suffered in 2002 turned his St. Louis story back into a pumpkin. A one-season stay in New York with the Giants in '04 was significant for its insignificance.
From 2002-05, teams in games Warner started posted a record of 7-19, the lack of mobility and fumblitis went from footnotes to the headline, and No. 13 was deemed a quarterback out past his fairy godmother's curfew, a Trivial Pursuit card destined to be shuffled out of football's fickle deck.
And yet, even in that down cycle, Warner still completed 63.8 percent of his throws, never stopped being the master of the three-step drop. And when The Matt Leinart Experiment imploded in Phoenix, No. 13 got that memorable second act.
Once is fortune.
Twice is affirmation.
Warner is the last player in NFL history, still, to win the MVP award and a Super Bowl in the same campaign (1999). And the brighter the spotlight, the hotter the arm: No. 13 still owns the three biggest passing yardage games in Super Bowl history, including 414 yards in a win over Tennessee in Big Game XXXIV and 377 against the Steelers nine years later with the Cardinals in Big Game XLIII.
He's produced fourth-quarter postseason comebacks -- the largest of all badges of quarterback honor -- with both St. Louis and Arizona. His record in NFC title games: 3-0, with six touchdowns thrown against three picks.
Warner is one of a dozen quarterbacks to ever start at least three Super Bowls. The eight no longer active are all enshrined in Canton.
Once is cute.
Twice is epic.
Detractors will sniff at the relative lack of volume -- Warner's 208 passing touchdowns and 32,344 yards rank 33rd and 34th, respectively, among the all-time NFL career charts -- and accentuate the valleys at the expense of the peaks.
But context is key here, to say nothing of precedent: Of the top 12 NFL career leaders in terms of all-time yards per pass attempt, eight are inactive. Of those eight, six are in the Hall, the seventh is Ed Brown (7.9) and the eighth is Warner (7.9).
In 13 seasons, Brown played in one postseason contest, with the '56 Bears, and lost. Over a dozen campaigns, Warner played in 13, and won nine of them.
No. 13 brought a baseball town to the football pinnacle, then went to the desert and made it rain.
It takes a good quarterback to rise to the occasion. It takes a great one to raise those around him, too. With Warner as the primary starter from 1999-2002, the Rams won an average of 11 contests per season and appeared in the postseason three out of four years. The eight seasons before Warner showed up, they averaged just five wins with no postseason appearances. The eight years after he was gone, they averaged 5.9 victories with two playoff berths -- and none after 2004.
With Warner as the primary starter from 2007-09, the Cardinals won an average of nine contests per season and reached the postseason in two of those three campaigns. The five years before that, they averaged five victories with no playoff berths. The five years after: 7.8 wins and one postseason trip in 2014.
Once is them. Twice?
Twice is him.
