Warner throws perceptions for loops

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

TAMPA, Fla. - He says he understood why the whole National Football League basically gave up on him. But that doesn't mean Kurt Warner ever agreed with it, not for a moment.

Traditional Super Bowl Media Day silliness swirled around him Tuesday at Raymond James Stadium. From an 11-year-old kid representing Weekly Reader to a transvestite with horrid fashion sense, it was again clear that media credentials to this event weren't exactly parsed out sparingly.

But Warner stuck to serious answers about a career that looked destined never to return to its heights of 1999 through 2001 in St. Louis.

"I think the perception around the league about me was that I couldn't play any more, any way, that there was no more football left," Warner said.

"He's basically just trying to survive, and Arizona being in the situation it hasn't won, it brought in a guy like Emmitt Smith (to finish out his running back career with a whimper, not a bang), they bring this guy in because of his name, but it's probably just like everything else. The Cardinals won't win and Kurt Warner can't really play."

The numbers supported those theories. Arizona went 5-11 in 2005, Warner's first season there, and he threw just 11 touchdown passes in nine starts. The next year, he had just five starts and lost his job to rookie Matt Leinart. That made five consecutive seasons in which Warner did nothing to resemble that three-year reign of statistical terror (98 TD passes, 12,612 passing yards, two NFC titles, one Super Bowl win) in St. Louis.

"There were questions all along the way," Warner said. "What my future would look like, would it be as a backup or would I get an opportunity as a starter? Those questions were there all along."

Opportunity knocked in the middle of last season when Leinart suffered a collarbone injury that ended his season. Warner threw for 21 touchdowns in the final eight games.

So did Coach Ken Whisenhunt automatically make him the starter for 2008? No. He said the job would be won in the preseason.

Running back Marshall Faulk was one of the other headliners of "The Greatest Show on Turf," the Rams' glory years with Warner. Faulk, now a commentator on The NFL Network, said certain other quarterbacks who have never played in a Super Bowl have threatened to retire if they weren't promised a starting job.

"After what Kurt did toward the end of last year and we'll still ask you to compete with Matt Leinart for a job?" Faulk exclaimed. "As a two-time MVP, a Super Bowl MVP, a Super Bowl champion, he says yes, I'll compete.

"It tells you something about Kurt, his character and the person that he is."

Warner won the job in August, and here he is starting a third Super Bowl. That was 30 regular-season and eight playoff touchdown passes ago. That was his fourth year with the Cardinals, the only team willing to sign him after the New York Giants disposed of him after one season.

"This game is so much about perception," Warner said. "This league is so much built on what someone's perception of you is. I know even when this coaching staff came here, even though I'd been here two years, I believe they even had the same approach, that they felt, well, this guy's on the tail-end of his career, he's just kind of hanging on.

"They hadn't watched me play a lot or really knew a lot about me, it was just because the perception around the league through the media or through other coaches was this, so that's what they came in with, that mindset.

"I'm just fortunate they had an open-enough mind to say ‘Hey, even though this is our perception, let's figure out what the reality is. If he can help us in any way, shape, or form, let's be open to that.' They have been, and I've been very fortunate to reap the benefits of it."

When in his salad days in St. Louis, Warner would think about going to the Super Bowl while in training camp. This may have been the first season he had similar thoughts since those days of yore.

"There were moments when you just thought of starting," he said, "getting back in and playing, and playing well. I've never felt like the physical part of my game ever disappeared. I felt like that was always there. The one question I had when I left St. Louis was if I would ever get the opportunity to display that again."

It helps to have a chance, and it helps to have potent weapons alongside you. As he did in his St. Louis days, Warner has a great set of receivers. Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin may be the league's best pair.

"When you have quickness, speed, and size," Warner said, "it's a whole different animal. They can punish you. They can jump over you. They can steal balls away from you because their hands are so strong."

Plus, the three of them have played on the same team for four years now.

"We've continually gotten more comfortable with each other," Warner said. "As our offense has grown we've kind of grabbed hold of it and understood what it is. I don't think we're as good as we can be yet."

Warner is 37. Quarterbacks his age don't tend to discuss possible future glories. Then again, quarterbacks his age tend not to be on an upward slope, career-wise.

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