The choice is Warner, hands down

Sporting News, The, Feb 24, 2003 by Dan Pompei

In the midst of an intense discussion about offensive philosophy, Mike Martz ignores his ringing phone. Shortly after, he is interrupted by a knock on his office door. It's his executive assistant, Carol Kovac. "Did you want to talk to Kurt?" she asks. "Yeah, I'd better take this" he says.

Kurt Warner, you see, is a very important man at Rams Park. Martz and Warner have a friendly phone conversation about upcoming offseason activities and minicamp. They are charting their future together, head coach and starting quarterback.

"Kurt's our quarterback" Martz says after hanging up. "There's only one Kurt Warner." Martz says Warner will not be in competition with Marc Bulger and there is no reason Warner won't be in St. Louis.

And that's the way it should be.

The Rams are convinced Warner's shoulder and hand are fine, based on a comprehensive medical examination last month. Martz says there are no issues with their relationship, which he considers a close one. He says he even understands why Warner's wife, Brenda, questioned team management on a radio show last season.

Now there's just the matter of Warner and the Rams coming to an agreement on how to handle a $6 million bonus payment Warner is due February 28. The Rams need Warner to restructure his contract to give them maneuverability beneath the salary cap. Warner's agent says that will happen if the quarterback receives the same amount of money.

The truth is Warner, one of the NFL's great quarterbacks, is worth it. The Rams would be idiots to let him go. It's easy to look at Warner's numbers from last season and come to the conclusion that midnight has struck and the two-time MVP has turned back into a grocery store stock boy.

But Warner played in only three full games when he was entirely healthy last year, the first three games of the season. How thoroughly can a player be judged on three games? In the fourth game of the year, he threw only two passes before a broken finger knocked him out, in his next start--nearly two months later--he broke his hand in the second quarter. Even though Warner finished that game and started the next, a quarterback with a broken hand is like a submarine with a cracked seal.

Even when Warner was healthy, nothing went his way. Opponents built leads on the Rams and made them one-dimensional, a major problem for an offense that couldn't protect the quarterback and was dependent on a downfield attack. Warner was exposed to a wicked barrage of hits. As brilliantly conceived as the Rams' scheme is, it is useless without above-average protection.

Warner's receivers also betrayed him. A breakdown of Warner's season shows seven of his 11 interceptions were not his fault. Inexperienced teammates turned the wrong way on some routes. Some of his balls were tipped in the air at the line. Marshall Faulk slipped and fell on one. Starting wideouts Torry Holt and Isaac Bruce dropped a combined 22 passes.

The schedule was not a friend. In the five games Warner was the team's primary quarterback, he faced defenses that all ranked among the top nine in the filial rankings.

Early in the season, the Rams' offense was out of sync, struggling to compensate for the loss of nickel receiver Az-Zahir Hakim. It was left to Warner to bail his team out. "We probably were trying to do too much, giving Kurt too much to think about" Martz says.

Out of all this, Warner became less decisive and more jittery. He undoubtedly was less comfortable with his responsibilities and receivers, and after being hit so often and so hard, Warner was rattled into making some poor throws. There probably isn't a quarterback in the league who wouldn't have responded similarly.

It would be a mistake to use Bulger's success to build a case against Warner. When Bulger became the starter, the Rams' offense was a different planet. Martz says he simplified the game plans at that point, in part because of injuries in the offensive line.

In the six games Bulger was the Rams' primary quarterback, the Rams averaged 10.1 more runs and 7.4 fewer passes than when Warner was the primary quarterback. The Rams averaged 53 fewer rushing yards per game in Warner's games, and their average per rush was 4.3 compared with 4.6 with Bulger.

This isn't to downplay Bulger's incredible debut. One of his games, against the Chargers, was one of the two finest performances by a quarterback I saw all year. The other was by Denver's Brian Griese against the same defense. Bulger actually has a stronger arm and quicker release than Warner's.

But Warner is special in a lot of ways. He's the most accurate passer in football. He plays with rare abandon. He's usually fearless in the face of pressure. He can make throws from impossible angles. And he understands the game like few do. "I've never been around somebody who can see things and digest them so fast," Martz said. "To be able to come off to the sideline and tell you exactly what happened. It's said about great players that the game seems to slow down for them. With him it does."