Celebrated QB in Super Bowl again

Six months ago, Kurt Warner toured flood damage in his Cedar Rapids hometown with an American Red Cross unit and never said a word about football.

He had more important concerns that day, of course. But what would there have been to say, that at 37 he would have a colossal season and lead the forlorn Arizona Cardinals to their first Super Bowl?

After interviews late Sunday afternoon, Warner plopped on a foot stool in the spacious Cardinals' dressing room and remembered what he thought about his football prospects that July day.

"At that point I wasn't even starting," Warner said. "In every year, I go into training camp believing I'll be starting and believing we'll go to the Super Bowl. But as you realize, that doesn't always work out as you believe it."

But sometimes, for the right player in the right spot, it does.

After throwing four touchdown passes against the vaunted Philadelphia Eagles defense at the insanely loud University of Phoenix Stadium, Warner is going to his third Super Bowl, and first since he was with the St. Louis Rams seven years ago.

The score was Cardinals 32, Eagles 25. The game-winning points that pulled Arizona out of a 25-24 deficit and into its first Super Bowl came on one of Warner's dinkiest tosses of the day, which rookie Tim Hightower took 8 yards for a touchdown with 2:53 left.

The Cardinals' defense held on to assure an NFC championship. And another wildly unlikely chapter was added to the storybook career of the former quarterback of the Cedar Rapids Regis Royals, the Northern Iowa Panthers and the Iowa Barnstormers.

"I'm still a little bit amazed that we're in this place," a weary Warner said, sitting on that stool. "I don't know if I would have told you two weeks ago that we'd be here. So it's really, really special."

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