Straight and narrow

Warner's books help him maintain focus off the field

This is the ninth in a series of postcards Sports Illustrated's Peter King will e-mail from his annual NFL training camp tour.

Thursday, Aug. 1

Team: St. Louis Rams

In Macomb, Ill., about three hours north of St. Louis, for Rams camp at Western Illinois University. This is the most isolated training camp in the NFL. The best way to get here is to fly to Peoria, then drive 71 miles through the soybeans and corn of Illinois. Coach Mike Martz loves it here. The Rams never have to get in a car, or even a golf cart. They stay in a high-rise dorm with a cafeteria on the ground floor and meeting rooms in the same building. They walk 200 yards across a campus road to the practice fields.

1. I think the Rams might be hurt for the very short term by letting Ryan Tucker go to Cleveland in free agency. Converted college center John St. Clair, who has never taken an NFL snap, has bulked up to NFL-tackle size (6-foot-4, 320 pounds) and will likely win the right tackle job. He'll have to go a ways to be as tough as Tucker, a classic overachiever. Now, Tucker wasn't the player Dick Vermeil projected him to be (in a classic Sparky Andersonism, Vermeil once said Tucker would be a 10-year Pro Bowler, but he's probably most infamous as a Ram for giving Michael Strahan four sacks in one game last year), but he was a popular guy who played hurt. I don't see him as a very big loss over the long haul, though.

2. I think the Rams expect Az Hakim to fail playing every down, or trying to, in Detroit. Just too small.

3. I think now that Marshall Faulk is signed for the rest of his career, the Rams' next priority will be tackle Orlando Pace, who they'll have to redo next year. I would caution president Jay Zygmunt, who is doing a very good job keeping the core of this team intact, to not forget to leave a few crumbs next offseason for Torry Holt, who will enter the final year of his deal in 2003. St. Louis is not the same team without him.

4. I think the Rams keep waiting for Damione Lewis, the first of last year's three No. 1 picks, who has big-time potential at defensive tackle, to get healthy. After late-season knee surgery last year, he had another procedure in the spring and now is probably two weeks away from playing. In the Rams' ideal world, Lewis and fellow '01 first-rounder Ryan Pickett would form a 615-pound spine of the defense, with underrated Jeff Zgonina and the unknown (except by the appreciative Rams coaches) Brian Young making a solid four-man rotation.

5. I think it's interesting to see Kevin Greene, as loud as ever, on the coaching staff. He's a volunteer linebackers coach. Could you imagine this guy coaching for a living? Heads would be bitten off ... in pregame warmups.

Brandon Manumaleuna, the tight end with the impossible name, will use his imposing size (6-2, 288) to spell Ernie Conwell more this year. A fourth-rounder from the 2001 draft, the kid (I won't try to spell it again) showed decent hands for a big guy last year.

The protection of quarterback Kurt Warner. No one here wants to talk about it, but they're conscious of the thumb woes that plagued Warner last year and will devote more resources this fall to protecting him. Look for less of the five-wide stuff here.

Martz ordered Eric Crouch to cease his St. Louis Post-Dispatch daily diary from training camp after one installment so he could concentrate on football.

I found out something interesting about Kurt Warner today.

Very nice eats. Entree: Penne pasta with fresh mushrooms and garlic in a marinara sauce. Excellent when you're eating light. Or, if you're like me, eating heavy at every stop on this trip. Grade: A- Vegetables: Salad of romaine, leaf, baby carrots and raw zucchini, with raspberry vinaigrette. Much needed. Grade: B+ Dessert: Fresh raspberries and watermelon in a bowl. Can't do better than that on a 96-degree Illinois day. Grade: B+ Drink: Venti latte. There's a real, legit espresso machine here. And it's perfect. I have never seen one of these at a training camp before. Usually I'm happy to get a cup of Daily Swill. Excellent addition. A very nice drink as well. Grade: A Overall grade: A-. Easily in my top three meals since hitting the road.

Warner and his wife, Brenda, had an interesting vacation this past offseason. They spent seven days near Fiji, on an island with only 12 small, resort-type huts. They watched no TV. They had access to no media of any kind. They just vegged out. Coincidentally, hoopster A.C. Green and his wife were on the island at the same time, but most of the other people had no idea who Warner was.

"We just read and relaxed and shared fellowship," he told me outside the Rams' cafeteria this afternoon.

"You're a reader?" I asked.

"I love to read," he said. "Just love it. One of my problems, though, is I don't have much time to read with my life the way it is. So this was great. I took two books with me. I finished them the first two days, then I read the Bible the rest of the time."

Warner reads only Christian books that he believes will help him feel closer to the Lord. He has not read a piece of secular literature in a long time. He has even been offered Christian fiction. "But I have no interest in that whatsoever," he said. One book he read on this trip was about men being Christian men and leading Christian lives. The other, he said, was "about being bold in your faith."

"You've never read a Grisham book?" I said.

"No. My whole quest is to strengthen my relationship with Christ," he said. "So I have no desire to read anything else."

Not something that I could do. But I will not sit in judgment of a man who signs every last autograph at camp, who answers every last question from us, who apparently does not have a bad side that anyone in the football business has ever seen. He's one of the best human beings in sports today.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Orlando, Fla.

Check back soon for more of Peter King's Postcards from Camp. Or visit the archive to catch up.