Over the last several months, I put together a 13-person panel to rank the top 30 quarterbacks of the Super Bowl era. Matthew Stafford was ranked No. 30, and now another Rams legend has made an appearance on the list. Kurt Warner was ranked as the No. 19 quarterback of the Super Bowl era. Sam Monson of The 33rd Team did the tribute word from the panel.“As much as there is a tendency to distill football down to statistics sometimes, there is still room for the story, and Kurt Warner has one of the best stories in NFL history, so much so that he is a member of more than one Hall of Fame thanks to his professional career,” Sam Monson writes. “An undrafted free agent, Warner was released before he ever got a shot in the NFL. He stocked shelves at a grocery, played Arena football, and was then sent to NFL Europe before finally sticking on a roster in the NFL with the Rams. Even then, Warner needed an injury to starter Trent Green to get the opportunity to lead the Rams, and he led them to not only a Super Bowl, but to one of the most explosive offensive outputs in NFL history. Warner’s career was a consistent story of perseverance, which showed up again during his time with the Arizona Cardinals. Given up on as a starter, Warner won back the job and took the Cardinals to a Super Bowl, narrowly missing out on another ring in one of the best games in NFL history.”
As Monson points out, Warner had one of the most improbable MVP seasons in NFL history that culminated in a Super Bowl win for the Rams in the 1999 campaign. Leading the Cardinals to the Super Bowl in 2008 gave him two of the most unlikely Super Bowl berths in history, and he will forever reside in Canton in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.