 Out of Nowhere: Kurt
Warner & his family take the NFL by storm(10/4) |
||
| Back
to the Main Page FEATURES- The E-Zine's Quarterback Watch- -Front Office Debate- Ram-ble's Offseason Analyses Zack Neruda's FOD Analysis "E-ZINE" Fan Profiles- GRITS Ram Fan Smack Chick The HERD's home- RAMS Message Board Add yourself to The HERD's Official Roster (guestbook), if you think you are man enough! The HERD's ULTIMATE link page-add your favorite here! |
By GARY MYERS Daily News Sports Writer Last Wednesday, Zachary Warner and his seven-year-old sister Jesse wore their dad's No. 13 Rams football jersey to school in suburban St. Louis. Zachary is a fifth-grader and he is proud of his dad, not because he is Kurt Warner, the starting quarterback for the Rams, but because he is just dad, the guy who helps him do his homework and believes in him. Kurt Warner has led the Rams to a surprising 2-0 start and is the No. 2-rated quarterback in the NFL. Kurt Warner is the No. 2-ranked passer in the NFL, the quarterback of an undefeated team and, off the early returns, one of the most compelling NFL success stories of the decade. Warner appreciates that. How could he not? In many ways, Warner's story is an odyssey, with stops through football's small-town outposts in the Midwest and its cosmopolitan training grounds in Europe and maybe most importantly, a country and western dance in Iowa. It was there that Warner met his wife Brenda and began the real journey, the one in which the day-to-day triumphs of life far outshine the accomplishments on the field. Warner laughs at the inevitable question he gets from strangers - Kurt who?- because he knows the answer. His professional world tour - from the Iowa Barnstormers of the Arena Football League to the Amsterdam Admirals of NFL Europe - pales in comparison to his personal pilgrimage. "We've been through a lot of things," Warner says. "We've had some good times and some bad times. We realize what is important in life." Warner knows that the bumps in the road from Des Moines to St. Louis are nothing compared to the daily struggles of Zachary, his 10-year old adopted son. Or the anguish his wife Brenda endured when doctors told her that a tragic accident had left her four-month-old son not only legally blind but with brain damage. Warner will never forget the look on his wife's face when she learned three years ago that her parents had been killed - victims of a tornado that swept through their home in Arkansas. "The things that are important are not throwing a bunch of touchdown passes," Warner says. "It's not where we hang our hat. We hang our hat on family and faith. Whether I continue to thrive on the football field, it's not what shapes who I am and who the family is. We are already the people we are and who we want to be." If Warner's success proves to be fleeting, in other words, there's little chance he won't be able to handle it. Kurt Warner was a football player at Northern Iowa in 1992 when he met his future wife at a country and western dance in Cedar Falls. She was a divorced mother of two, living with her parents, and trying to deal with her son's injuries. She told Warner that she had two children and that if he didn't want to see her again, she would understand. "He showed up the next morning with a rose and wanted to meet the kids," she says. "He fell in love with them before he fell in love with me. The kids just adore him." They will celebrate their second anniversary on Oct. 11. "To me," Warner says, "the kids were just a bonus. I was blessed by three people instead of just one." The morning he brought her the rose, Brenda told him about Zachary. She told him that as her husband was taking him out of the bathtub, the four-month-old baby slipped out of his hands and hit the back of his head on the side of the tub. "It was totally an accident," she says. "It was an awful, awful moment." "Initially they told Brenda he would be lucky to live," Warner says. "They said he would probably never sit up and that he definitely would not walk." At the time, she says she thought, "It's up to God what becomes of him, not what the doctors tell me." Warner spends time at home with his children, Jesse (top), Zachary and Kade. Zachary is now in a regular elementary school and gets special assistance with his academics. He talks fine, he walks, he is learning to read. "He's able to do just about anything he needs to do," Warner says. "Everything might take a little bit longer or is more cumbersome than for other kids his age. Everything is a struggle for him. But he's an unbelievable kid and has come so far in the last few years. If you talk to him and saw him, you would never know anything is wrong." Although he is legally blind, he can see things when they are close to his face, so when he attends Rams games, he goes to the child care room for the players' kids and stands right next to the television. He does have neurological problems, says Brenda, "and he can't run like a normal boy. He has certain characteristics that go along with brain damage." Brenda says the accident took its toll on her first marriage, because, she adds, her ex-husband had "to deal with his guilt and all the feelings that went with it." Warner adopted her children early in 1998, a few months after he and Brenda were married. "They are mine," he says. "There's no other way I would ever look at it. I've been with them a long time. They are my children." A year ago they had a son together, Kade. Warner says Zachary is not a big football fan. "He doesn't care what his dad does," he says. "He cares about me as an individual." Because he is blind, says Brenda, Zachary "knows people by their hearts." Last summer, Zachary attended Camp Barnabas in southern Missouri a camp for kids with special needs that also allows the campers' siblings to attend. Each week is designated for children with a specific disability. The Warners were so impressed with the camp that they have decided to donate money to help it grow and will host charity events to raise funds for the camp. Brenda also worked there as a volunteer nurse. "He's one of the most special children I ever met," Warner says. "He's a child who loves you for the way you love him. Whether I throw five touchdowns or five interceptions, it doesn't matter. He's got a smile on his face and is ready to wrestle with dad no matter what. That's what life is all about." One night in 1996, after Brenda's parents had moved to Mountain View, Ark., they were planning to attend their new church to be baptized. But her mother had a headache and they decided to stay home. A tornado hit the town and Brenda's parents house was ripped apart. Their bodies were found in the next yard. The people who made it to church that night were safe. "It affects the rest of my life," Brenda Warner says. "Even Kurt's success is not as good as it could be because they are not here to share it. It's so much for us. It's hard to see your son turning a year old and they will never see him. People think we've got it made, but they don't know where we've been. "The Lord tells me he won't give me more than I can handle," she adds. "But he's really pushing it." The Warners are deeply religious and say their faith and their family helped them get through the tough times. "You fight it every day, especially when you have parents that are so close to you," says Warner. "It's one of those things we continue to struggle with. We go day by day. She is a strong woman and has been through a lot." Warner didn't start at Northern Iowa until his senior season and he was not taken in the NFL draft. He signed as a free agent with the Packers, but considering that Green Bay's three quarterbacks were Brett Favre, Mark Brunell and Ty Detmer, he had no shot to make the team. Mike Holmgren, then the Packers coach, says he doesn't remember much about Warner that summer "other than the fact that he was a great young guy. "He didn't get a whole lot of snaps and probably didn't get much of a chance with us," Holmgren says. "We looked at him more like your fourth camp quarterback. I really hadn't heard much about him since then except if I saw an Arena League game. Unlike the Bill Walsh coaching tree, I can't take any credit for Kurt Warner." After the Packers let him go, Warner tried to catch on in NFL Europe but nobody wanted to sign him. He went back to Iowa to play for the Barnstormers and became a star. He threw 183 touchdown passes in three seasons. In 1997, he threw 79. He once tossed nine in a game. But the most money he ever made in a season with his incentive-laden contracts was $65,000. Twice, he took the Barnstormers to the Arena Bowl game. In the offseason, he supplemented his income with other jobs. He did some counseling with at-risk youth and visited inner city schools. But he was not playing on the "big field," as he calls it. In the Arena League, it's 8-on-8 on a 50-yard field that is about half the width of the NFL's. The game is played at a fast pace and 90% of the calls are pass plays. "Everybody says it's like playing in a little cracker box," he says. Despite his prolific numbers and the shortage of quarterbacks in the NFL, no team tried to sign him. He had some tryouts, but nothing panned out. "I wasn't getting any respect at all," he says. But before the '98 NFL Europe season began, Warner got a call from Amsterdam coach Al Lugenbill, who arranged for the Rams to give Warner a tryout. "There are some good quarterbacks in the Arena League," Lugenbill says. Warner thought the tryout was so bad that the team wouldn't be interested in him. Shortly after, he packed up and headed to Jamaica for his honeymoon. He was supposed to work out for the Bears when he came back, but while he was in Jamaica he was bitten on his right elbow, possibly by a scorpion or centipede. He could barely move his elbow, was on antibiotics for a month and never worked out for the Bears. But the Rams had liked what they saw, signed him and allocated him to Amsterdam, where he led NFL Europe in yards, touchdowns, completions and attempts. Warner tries to evade Detroit Lions linebacker Allen Aldridge. Still, he barely made the Rams in 1998 as the third string quarterback, beating out Will Furrer. He was inactive for the first 14 games before finally throwing the first 11 passes of his NFL career in the Rams final game of the season in San Francisco. St. Louis signed free agent Trent Green to a $16.5 million contract in February, and with the departures of Tony Banks and Steve Bono, the backup job belonged to Warner. Then Green suffered a season-ending knee injury in the third preseason game and suddenly, two years out of the Arena League, Warner was the Rams starter. "It's been fun," he says. "It's always been something I believed was going to happen." Kurt Who? "I think it's funny," he says. "I know who I am. I thought I belonged in the NFL for a long time. People don't know much about me now. It's not a fluke thing. I think it's funny to hear people putting all my success into two weeks. I know it's been in me for a long time." But his success came in the Arena League and how can you not be skeptical about that? "It's still playing football," he says. "It's throwing the football and making plays. That's what it's all about." In the season opener against Baltimore, Warner threw for 316 yards and three touchdowns and coach Dick Vermeil was so happy for Warner, he got teary-eyed in the post-game press conference. Last week against the NFC champion Falcons, he threw for 275 yards and three more touchdowns. He also ran for a score. "I'd be a liar to say I thought he'd be the second leading passer in the NFL after two starts," Vermeil says. Before the opener, however, Vermeil predicted, "Kurt is going to play better than any of the No. 1 draft picks at quarterback this year." He is paid a lot less, too. He's making the second year minimum of $250,000 and, according to his agent, Mark Bartelstein, does not have any incentives based on starts. But if he continues to play well, he will make his money, despite his relative anonymity. "I don't know a thing about him," Bucs personnel director Jerry Angelo admits. "Northern Iowa, Arena League, World League - I don't know him." After Warner played well in Amsterdam, teams called the Rams to find out if they were going to keep him. "We had plans for him," Rams VP of personnel Charley Armey says. Armey's scouting report on Warner: accurate, poised, handles pressure, smart, pretty good arm, adequate mobility. And Armey wasn't scared off by the Arena League background because he felt he knew enough about Warner. "Football players are where you find them. Every once in a while a guy slips through the cracks," Armey says. "Things fell into place for us. I look for this kid to do well. He's not doing any better than I thought he would do." And he's won over his teammates in a big way. "Kurt Warner is Larry Bird," defensive tackle DeMarco Farr says. "He has the Larry Bird look. We lost Trent Green and they told him, 'You're our guy for the season.' There was no batting of an eye. Nothing but calm. He took the ball, warmed up and started playing. The only guys that were shocked and scared about Kurt playing were people outside this lockerroom. We knew what he could do." It is only two games. But considering how far Warner has come and how he's persevered, he has already made his point. He can play in this league. "What a great story that is," Holmgren says. After his first start, a 27-10 win over the Ravens, Warner went over to the stands where his wife was sitting and presented her with the game ball. Sounds almost like the end to a tear-jerking movie. But for Kurt Warner, and his family, it's just the beginning |
|