Kurt Warner

Kurt Warner (born June 22, 1971, Burlington, Iowa, U.S.) is an American professional gridiron football quarterback who won two National Football League (NFL) Most Valuable Player (MVP) awards (1999, 2001) and a Super Bowl title (2000) as a player for the St. Louis Rams. He also guided the Arizona Cardinals to the franchise’s first Super Bowl berth (2009).

Unable to land a football scholarship to a Division I-A (now known as Football Bowl Subdivision) college, Warner attended the University of Northern Iowa, where he did not become a starter until his fifth and final year. After an unsuccessful tryout with the NFL’s Green Bay Packers in 1994, he played football in the Arena Football League with the Iowa Barnstormers from 1995 to 1997. In December 1997 Warner signed with the St. Louis Rams, and he was sent to play for the Amsterdam Admirals of NFL Europe the following spring. Starting all 10 games for the Admirals that season, he led the league in passing with 2,101 yards.

Warner was called up by St. Louis for the 1998 NFL season and spent the year as a backup quarterback, playing in only the final game of the team’s 4–12 season. When starting quarterback Trent Green injured his knee during the 1999 preseason, Warner became the team’s starter and led the Rams to an unexpected resurgence. He led the NFL in pass completion percentage, touchdowns thrown, and passer rating that season, as the Rams won 13 games in the second greatest single-season win improvement in league history. Warner was named the NFL’s MVP, and the Rams advanced to a berth in the Super Bowl the following January. There he threw for a Super Bowl-record 414 yards and was named the game’s MVP as the Rams defeated the Tennessee Titans 23–16 for the franchise’s first Super Bowl title.

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Warner again led the Rams to the play-offs in 2000, but the team lost in the opening round. In 2001 Warner led the NFL in all major passing categories to earn his second MVP award, and the 14–2 Rams went into Super Bowl XXXVI as overwhelming favourites but were defeated by the 14-point underdog New England Patriots. An injury forced him to miss all but seven games of the 2002 season, and he was ineffective in his short time on the field. After a disastrous first game in 2003 that saw Warner fumble six times, he was relegated to a backup role for the remainder of the season. He was released by the Rams at the end of the year and then spent a nondescript season playing for the New York Giants.

Just as it seemed his playing days were nearing their end, Warner signed with the Arizona Cardinals in 2005 and rejuvenated his career. He started just over half the team’s games in his first three seasons with Arizona, because of a number of injuries and the franchise’s investment in young quarterback Matt Leinart, but in 2008 he started all 16 games, threw for more than 4,000 yards for the first time since 2001, was named to his fourth career Pro Bowl, and led the Cardinals in a close loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLIII. Warner and the Cardinals returned to the play-offs after the 2009 season but were eliminated by the New Orleans Saints in the divisional round. Warner retired from professional football soon after the loss and became a telelvision analyst the following NFL season. In 2017 he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.