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Golden Arm The Rams' Kurt Warner is putting on the greatest air show in NFL history
October 9, 2000
SPORTS ILLUSTRATED
You sit in a dark meeting room at the practice facility of theSt. Louis Rams, watching videotape of the team's 235 plays from scrimmage in the first four games of this season. You see what makes Kurt Warner a great passer--accuracy, mostly, along with toughness, poise and the smarts to run the most prolific offense the NFL has ever seen. You chart the 135 passes that Warner threw in those four games and find that 113, or 84%, were catchable.
You call Fox analyst John Madden, who has seen two of Warner's games this year, and he tells you, "Warner's accuracy reminds me of Joe Montana. His toughness reminds me of Bobby Layne."
You sit with St. Louis coach Mike Martz, architect of this high-tech offense, and talk about the success this team has had since Warner became the quarterback before the start of the 1999 season. This was the losingest NFC team of the '90s, yet Warnerhas taken the Rams on a 20-3 ride, including playoffs. "With any luck, we'd be 23-0 with Kurt," Martz says. "We could have easily won the three we lost."
You go to Sunday's game against the San Diego Chargers at the Trans World Dome. You see that Warner is throwing even better than he did in his first four games. You see the trust Martz has in him: The coach calls for passes on the first 18 plays, and you can't recall a team going that deep into a game without calling a running play. Warner completes 13 passes for 201 yards and two touchdowns and scrambles for a first down on another of those plays. He's in for eight series--the Rams score four touchdown sand four field goals--before leaving midway through the thirdquarter with a 40-17 lead. Only two throws aren't within the intended receiver's grasp: On one the man fell and on the other he was detoured in traffic.
Final stat line: 24 completions in 30 attempts, 390 yards, four touchdowns, no interceptions. It's a performance that can be likened to Pedro Martinez's pitching against the Toledo Mud Hens.The numbers are so good that when you punch them into the computer to figure out Warner's passer rating for the day, you get the max, 158.3, a perfect game by football standards.
You walk off the field with Warner. You say, "Just another day at the office, huh?" He replies, "Not really. Finally I played a game where I felt good. I haven't felt like I was in a zone this year until today. I felt comfortable from the start."
You tell him that of the 165 passes he has thrown this year 85%have been catchable. "What happened on the other 15 percent?" he says with sincerity. "I want to put those where my guys can catch'em."
You go into the San Diego locker room and you see a proud defense, which ranked first in the NFL in 1998 and 12th las tyear. That unit is not ashamed of its performance against St.Louis, despite having been shredded for 614 yards. You search for the right word to describe the Chargers' attitude, and it comes to you after chatting up strong safety Rodney Harrison--awestruck.
"Can you imagine a team with the best back in the game, Marshall Faulk, throwing on every play of the first quarter?" Harrison says. "Unbelievable. But with that quarterback and those weapons,who needs to run? This league has never seen anything like this offense. And Warner, no one's better than him. We watched him on film all week, and we saw his amazing accuracy, his poise, his timing with the receivers. He was even better in person.Tremendous presence in the pocket. The heart to stand in there and take our best shot. The accuracy to hit his guys in stride so they can run after the catch. I don't see any defense stopping him--or them."
Maybe we don't appreciate the greatness before our eyes because Warner's story was told so many times last year. Or because he makes playing quarterback in the NFL look so easy. Coming to a stadium near you! Kurt Warner throws for 375 yards! The Rams score 40 points! Or because Warner and his teammates are so unassuming. He doesn't spike the ball at midfield to show up foes, or give a cameraman the finger. His first 13 months on the job have been the stuff of myth. Warner, the 1999 league and Super Bowl MVP, has passed for 6,300 yards and 55 touchdowns,completed 66.9% of his attempts and put up a 112.4 passer rating,all NFL bests for a quarterback over his first 21 regular-season starts.
Is he great because of a remarkable supporting cast, which includes speedy wideouts Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt and Az Hakim in addition to the gifted Faulk? Is he great because he operates ina system that confuses defenses with an array of motion and often gives him five players to throw to? Is he great because of the support from a coach who, when Warner throws an interception and comes to the sideline shaking his head, says, "Hey, no problem.You were just playing football. It happens." Or is he that talented?
Yes, yes, yes and yes. Everyone affiliated with this offense has a hand in its success. "I think it's the best offense in thehistory of football," Madden says. The offense would be sorely diminished without receivers who consistently get open and without the multidimensional Faulk, who last season set a league record for yards from scrimmage, with 2,429. Quarterback Trent Green, whose knee injury in the third preseason game of 1999 opened the door for Warner, had also looked superb running the offense. That Green and Warner, both journeymen, have excelled istestament to Martz, the team's offensive coordinator before succeeding Dick Vermeil this season.
But don't think for a second the Rams' success isn't due mostlyt o Warner. An illustration: Video clicker in hand as he sits in his office, Martz keeps replaying an 80-yard touchdown pass that Warner threw to Holt against the Atlanta Falcons on Sept. 24.Martz shows it nine times on the big screen, the last insuper-slow motion. "This play," Martz says, "is what makes Kurt different from anyone else in football."
The game is tied at 10 just before halftime, and St. Louis faces second-and-10 from its 20. The night before, Martz says, Warner had told Holt, "If they blitz on this play, and the corner issitting there waiting for me to throw quickly so he can pick itoff, you take off." Atlanta does blitz, with 245-pound middle linebacker Keith Brooking shooting up the middle unblocked.Warner looks left for Holt. "Now," Martz says, as Brooking is two slo-mo steps on tape from blowing up Warner, "most guys will take the sack right here. They'll tuck it in and go down. There's nowhere to turn. But look at Kurt's head--staring right at Holt,not flinching. Kurt is waiting for Torry to separate from the corner. Now he does, and here comes the ball. Perfect throw."
The ball is released a millisecond before Brooking pancakes Warner. Cornerback Ashley Ambrose, assuming he'll see a short throw, can only flail as the ball flies past. "Kurt gets killed by the linebacker," Martz says. "He knew it was coming, but his courage is unmatched. He knew he had to wait for Holt to make his adjustment. He knew he had to be accurate enough to put the ballin there under extreme pressure."
Holt gathers in the knee-high throw and out sprints four Falcons to the end zone. That's something else that separates this offense from others: the elusiveness of the St. Louis receivers.Of the Rams' six touchdown pass plays that have covered more than 60 yards this season, three have come on throws that traveled fewer than 15 yards beyond the line of scrimmage. Warner'sability to place the ball where his receivers can catch it on therun is a big reason that the wideouts break off big gainers."Nine out of 10 passes," Bruce says, patting his gut, "are righthere. Right on the numbers."
Warner worked on his accuracy after being cut by the Green Bay Packers during training camp in 1994. He stocked shelves by night in a Cedar Falls, Iowa, grocery store and threw passes by day to anyone he could talk into catching them. The 1,646 passes he tossed in the Arena League and NFL Europe, from 1995 through '98,didn't hurt either. "It's meaningful that I got cut by Green Bay," he says. "It's meaningful that I stocked shelves. The work I had to do, the road I took, is all part of it."
He likes to spread the ball among all his receivers, which forces the defense to stick to any potential receiver on every play.Trailing the San Francisco 49ers 10-3 on Sept. 17, the Rams flooded the secondary with five receivers. Warner's fifth option was end-of-the-bench wideout Tony Horne, a speedy return specialist who was on the field to draw a safety from the primary receivers. "I could run 100 scenarios of how that play would go and never think I'd throw to Tony," says Warner. But he didn' tlike what he saw after scanning the field, and then watched asthe safety came off Horne. Warner threw a strike to Horne for an18-yard touchdown. All told this year, Warner has completed passes to as many as nine players in a game, and to no fewer than six.
Warner is no Steve Young when he scrambles, but like the precocious Peyton Manning, he's superb at making plays if his protection breaks down. Flushed left by Atlanta's pass rush, hes printed to get out of harm's way, then spied Hakim 27 yards downfield, between a cornerback and a safety. Warner slowed and slung the ball across his body on a line, right into Hakim's numbers. It's the type of play you have to watch six times to confirm what you thought you saw.
Two days before the San Diego game, you are sitting with Warner,who's eating soup and a sandwich. You mention that he has put up better stats through 20 games than any other quarterback in history (chart, below). You ask, "Can you keep it up?"
You see the wry smile framed by the three-day, salt-and-pepper beard of a 29-year-old man who has been through a lot to get to this point. You see a man who is not about to let it get away."When I'm out there," he says, "I don't think. I don't fathom. I play. I never think, Wow. How did I make that throw? Nothing I have done has surprised me, because it's all within the realm ofmy ability. To think that a year from now, two years from now, Iwon't be able to do it? That's crazy. I will be the same player.I think I can play this way for 10 years."
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