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Ram tough Rising star beats odds, competition
Posted: Thursday January 20, 2000 06:00 PM
By Josie Karp, CNNSI.com (ST. LOUIS) -- Kurt Warner's success is concrete. He's got an MVP award to prove it. The foundation for his success is much more fragile, paved from Iowa to Amsterdam to St. Louis with a trail of what-ifs. For instance, what if Trent Green never got hurt? "I never knew what the script was going to be," Warner said. "It was not anything close to what I would have written." What if head coach Dick Vermeil acquired a veteran quarterback to take Green's place? Chareley Armey, the team's vice-president of player personnel remembers the conversation. "I said, 'What are we going to do?'" And to my delight he [Vermeil] said, 'Kurt's our quarterback.' He says, 'I have great confidence he can do the job.'" What if, once given the chance to play, Warner flopped? "Everybody handles pressure differently," says Vermeil. "Okay. Some people can handle it, some people cannot." Some, like Warner, combat pressure with supreme confidence. It is his defining trait, even if it is hard to comprehend how someone so raw comes by it in such abundance. "When I flew over to NFL Europe and watched him play with the Amsterdam Admirals and took him to dinner, Armey said, "he looked me right in the eye. He said, 'If I get the opportunity, I'll be your quarterback.' He always believed in himself." Warner says his outlook on life has provided him with the mental toughness to survive and flourish in the NFL. "The things that have affected me off the field have allowed me to realize that football is still just a game and there's going to be highs and lows just like there is in life. And you can't waver in those things. You've got to stay focused on what your goal is." Warner's confidence in himself is matched only by Vermeil's confidence in his quarterback. A younger coach, with more to lose, might have hesitated before staking his season on a quarterback who had thrown only 11 passes in the NFL. "The only thing I could lose was my job if it didn't work," the coach said. "And at 63-years old, you're not too concerned about that." "For somebody to go out on a limb, stick their neck out for me in this situation, it meant a lot to me," Warner admitted. "I told him [Vermeil] from day one, that I'm going to prove him right and prove everybody else wrong who was doubting the situation." It was a stunning show of support for a player the Rams had only months earlier exposed in the expansion draft. For here was a player whose first NFL experience started in Green Bay's training camp in 1994 and ended that same summer with Warner stocking shelves in a Cedar Falls grocery store.
"It was difficult and a humbling experience," Warner says. "But I think it really helped me to keep things in perspective and not allow me to get all caught up with the football things." Not only that, Warner believes he's in St. Louis for a reason. "There's a plan and I know it's all going to work out." Any questions there were about Warner not performing as well in the playoffs as in the regular season were answered on Sunday. He played better. Warner threw for 391 yards and five touchdowns in a performance that put the Rams just one game away from the Super Bowl. "I think that's what Arena Football helped me with," he said. "It put me in a lot of situations, a lot of playoff situations where it was door die. We had to win or we were out."
Vermeil offered a little history lesson in explaining how and why Warner has flourished so well in such a short time. "Pressure is pressure and it's all relative to where you find yourself at that time in your life. I felt tremendous pressure at Hillsdale High School playing Capuccino for the Thanksgiving Day championship game. Tremendous pressure. He will handle the pressure fine. It will be a tool for him to get better and play better." The ability Warner showed this season to rise to the occasion means next season the Rams could face a dilemma. With a healthy Green back in the mix, St. Louis will have two quarterbacks demanding to start. For Warner, that leaves one familiar question. What if? "I want to be a starter in this league and I want to stay here in St. Louis," he says. "But, a lot of that is out of my control to a degree. "We can't do anything prematurely with the quarterback situation," Armey explained. "It's been my experience over the years, 20 years in the NFL, that these things have a tendency to sort themselves out." That's the scenario Warner is hoping for. Because he says he doesn't to go back to the bench. "I've waited too long to get to this point to earn this opportunity and I don't want to go back and sit on the bench and have to wait for it to happen again.
Warner still has one more season before he reaches restricted free agency and the Rams could retain him by paying him the veteran minimum next year. But as Armey said recently, Warner will be rewarded for what he's done. And that has already happened. The Rams gave him some money they had left over, thanks to being under the cap.
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