ALBANY – Kurt Warner has gone from rags to riches once. And now he tries again.
“Playing quarterback in the NFL, so much of it has to do with fate,” said former Giants star QB Phil Simms. “What happens if Trent Green doesn’t get hurt?”
We might never have witnessed what was arguably the greatest success story in NFL history: the grocery clerk who against all odds, followed his NFL dream from the Iowa Barnstormers of the Arena Football League to the Amsterdam Admirals of the World Football League to the Super Bowl XXXIV championship as MVP quarterback. But expected Rams starter Trent Green did get hurt in preseason, and Warner wound up teary-eyed next to Dick Vermeil on top of a podium inside the Georgia Dome – and on top of the world after writing a fairy tale for the ages.
Simms, during his CBS analyst travels that year, had a ball interviewing the triggerman of The Greatest Show on Turf, who could stand in the pocket and deliver with uncanny accuracy even as 300-pound predators knocked his brains out.
“It was arrogance, but it was good arrogance,” Simms said. “I really enjoyed it as a broadcaster to listen and hear their arrogance, to hear their confidence and to say what they truly felt, how they knew they were gonna score points. Not, ‘We’ll try our best.'”
Simms, like virtually everyone else around the NFL, has questions about the 33-year-old Warner, who is likely to start the season for the Giants as Eli Manning cuts his teeth on the sidelines. “But you don’t have the kind of success he had in the NFL if you’re not a really tremendous competitor,” Simms said.
Warner has been bitten by Murphy’s Law since losing to Bill Belichick and the Patriots in Super Bowl XXXVI. There was a bum thumb. A concussion. A this, a that. A falling out with Mike Martz. A loss of his job to Marc Bulger.
“Do I think that the Rams would have had the same success with Trent Green?” Simms asks. “Absolutely.”
This season, Green tries to get Vermeil his second Super Bowl in Kansas City. Warner tries to get Tom Coughlin his first. He’ll be plenty motivated. “Maybe it’s not desperation,” Simms says. “But you only get so many chances in the NFL as a starting quarterback.”
It makes Warner more a competitor than tutor for Manning. “I’ll try to watch him and ask him questions,” Manning said. “So far, we’ve been on good terms and everything, and I think it’s gonna stay that way. I have nothing against Kurt, I don’t think he has anything against me.”
Careful, Kid. The old gunslinger still thinks he’s quick on the draw.
