Playoffs bring out the best in Cardinals' Kurt Warner

By Randy Covitz

McClatchy Newspapers

(MCT)

Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner isn't sure where the retirement talk began.

"No idea," Warner says of reports circulating that he plans to hang it up after the playoffs.

Warner may be 38, but if he continues to perform at the level of last week's wild 51-45 overtime win against Green Bay, he's not going anywhere.

Except to the Pro Football Hall of Fame five years after he eventually retires.

Because of a few injury-marred seasons during 2002-2007, there was some question whether Warner - a two-time league MVP and Super Bowl MVP with the Rams in 1999 - was a legitimate Hall of Famer or someone who got hot for just a few seasons.

But Warner has showed in his last two seasons with Arizona, in leading the Cardinals to a Super Bowl last year and a second straight NFC West title this season, that he's an all-timer.

"He plays his best ball in these big playoff games," said former San Francisco head coach Steve Mariucci, who faced Warner twice a year during the Rams' Greatest Show on Turf years. "He at some point will be a Hall of Famer, no doubt."

Warner, bidding to become the first quarterback to win Super Bowls with two different franchises, was at his best against Green Bay. He completed 29 of 33 passes for 379 yards, five touchdowns and no interceptions. He finished with a passer rating of 154.1 and threw more touchdown passes than incompletions.

"Kurt Warner is playing the position as well as I've seen anybody in a long time," said CBS Sports analyst and former Super Bowl MVP Phil Simms. "There are a lot of ways to play it, a lot of ways to get it done. You see Peyton Manning, and it's high energy and everything is a little frantic.

"Kurt Warner is just the opposite. His shoulders are relaxed, he's never in a hurry and makes good decisions. That's about as well as I've seen him throw the ball under some tough conditions. He had people all around him, a couple of times he dropped down and did a little sidearm action ... he was tremendous."

Warner's performance against the Packers - the second-ranked defense in the NFL - gave him a 9-3 record in the playoffs heading into Saturday night's NFC second-round game at New Orleans and improved his career post season passer rating to 104.6, just shy of the NFL record 104.8 set by Bart Starr a generation ago. Warner's 3,747 passing yards and average of 312.3 yards per game are NFL records, and his 31 touchdown passes rank fourth.

Clearly, the playoffs bring out the best in him.

"Playoff time is just special, and it's different," Warner said. "I said that to somebody last week, 'It's time to elevate, it's time to raise that standard.' You have to bring your game up. You have to bring up your consistency level. There is something about knowing that this is it, that every game you could be going home, that it's just more fun. It's more exciting.

"You don't get a second chance. You don't get another opportunity. This is it. So, you better bring it every time, and lay it all on the line. To me, that's fun. Having the success that I've had, it even pushes more in that direction. I've accomplished the ultimate goal in this business, and I really don't have anything else I play for. It's all I play for every year.

"I don't care about the stats. I don't care how many touchdowns I end up with. I want to win a championship, so that's fun. When you get here, it's like throw everything else aside and forget what we've ever done. It starts right now and you see how long you can keep it going."

Warner, a father of seven, does care about his health, so when he suffered a concussion in a game at St. Louis in November, he sat out the following week's game at Tennessee.

"When I talked to people 10 years ago when I had a concussion I was trying to get back on the field as soon as I could," he said. "Now it's different because people are talking about it differently, they're talking about long-term effects, they're talking about the knowledge they have now that they maybe didn't have then, and it makes you a lot more cautious moving forward than I think we were before.

"And then when you finally do go back in after taking a week off you start to wonder. You're a little scared going in, there's a little bit of fear taking that first hit, or if I take another hit, what does that mean for my future?"

It's possible the fear of another concussion prompted the reports that Warner, who has one year left on his contract and Matt Leinart waiting in the wings, will retire after the playoffs, especially if he can finish on top.

But the rumors are news to Warner.

"I asked my whole family when I came home on Sunday, 'Who was it, who was the close source?' " Warner said. "But I don't know. You never know how those things get out, who says what, what they read into it, or what a close source is. You find humor in it, and it's funny.

"It's part of this business that they try to dig up anything or take any innuendo made by someone to mean something. It's funny, but I have no idea who it was."

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