QBREES9

New Orleans Saints fans, beware of Kurt Warner
Times-Picayune
January 11, 2010, 6:30AM
Who Dats beware.
He's on his way to the Superdome and he's taking the Arizona Cardinals with him.


Think about it.

Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner carved up the NFL's No. 2 defense Sunday.
Has there ever been a better story in the NFL than Kurt Warner?
Two years after he was stocking shelves in a supermarket for $5.50 an hour, he was the Super Bowl's Most Valuable Player as a member of the St. Louis Rams.
That was 10 years ago.
Well, there he was Sunday, at age 38, still pitching, keeping his hopes alive to play in a fourth Super Bowl.
After throwing for five touchdowns, after completing 24 of 28 passes, Warner watched his team win an offensive spectacular with a defensive play, win it in overtime over the Green Bay Packers, 45-38.
What he watched was Aaron Rogers, who had thrown for four touchdowns, become a blitz victim and fumble the ball away for the winning score.
Was it fair?
Rogers had brought the Packers back from an early 17-0 deficit, later from a 21-point hole, after settling down from two interceptions and a fumble.
But would it have been fair to see Warner have to watch the Packers win after he marched the Cardinals downfield in the final two minutes to set up a 34-yard field goal try in the final 14 seconds of regulation that went wide left?
This one belonged to the Arena League graduate no one believed in. After Warner was turned down by Notre Dame and Indiana because he weighed a mere 145 pounds, he wound up at Northern Iowa, and, coming out of college, was signed by Green Bay as a training-camp "arm'' for $5,000. And was soon cut.
With his NFL dreams shattered, Warner returned home to Iowa, got a job at a supermarket and, a few months later, hooked on with the Iowa Barnstormers of the Arena League.
From the Barnstormers, he went to NFL Europe, then to the St. Louis Rams as "quarterback insurance.''
When Trent Green, a free-agent signee with a multi-million-dollar contract, suffered a knee injury in preseason, Kurt Warner took over and became a meteor. He was an MVP as a rookie, throwing for 41 touchdowns in 16 regular-season games.
"Kurt's story is a lot like the story of Johnny Unitas,'' Cowboys Coach Wade Phillips once told me during Senior Bowl week. "When he got a chance, he made the most of it. His biggest positive was having the instincts to make good decisions. He proved he could make good decisions on the fly in the Arena League, on a small field, just like Doug Flutie proved himself on a much larger field in the Canadian League.''
Warner kept making those kind of decisions on Sunday against Packers, treading the ball through some tight coverage at times, also having the patience to wait for his target to find a sliver of daylight.
Perhaps the biggest surprise of a runaway offensive display was the manner in which Warner carved up the NFL's No. 2 defense that had the Packers on a late-season roll, winning seven of their last eight.
From his body language, you could tell Warner felt right at home trading touchdowns with Rodgers in a game that started 17-0, 17-7, 24-7, 24-10. After intermission, as Rodgers came alive, the pace quickened to 31-10, 31-17, 31-24, 38-24, 38-31, 38-38, 45-38, 45-45.
Chalk it up to the football gods that, after 60 minutes of football that produced 62 first downs, it would all be decided by a 17-yard fumble return.
It was a fumble return that sends Kurt Warner back to a building where, eight years ago, he could only watch as Adam Vinatieri of the Patriots kicked a 48-yard field goal as time expired to beat his St. Louis Rams, 20-17, this after Warner had marched the Rams to two fourth-quarter touchdowns.
A year ago, Warner marched the lightly regarded Cardinals into the championship.
Now he's on the march again
Who Dats beware.

New Orleans Saints fans, beware of Kurt Warner: Peter Finney | New Orleans Saints Central - - NOLA.com

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