Kurt Warner: An appreciation

The football world said goodbye to Kurt Warner last week, with the Cardinals QB calling it a career. And what a fascinating career it's been.



Warner's success story is one of the unlikeliest the NFL's ever seen, as he's gone from small-college QB to grocery bagger to Arena Football League and NFL Europe standout to unknown third-stringer to Super Bowl and league MVP. He also put up some of the sickest numbers the fantasy football era has ever seen.

Warner's out-of-nowhere MVP season of 1999 was almost too good to be true: He passed for 4,353 yards and 41 TDs that year (only three other QBs - Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Dan Marino - have ever reached the 40-TD plateau). And he was just as remarkable in his 2001 MVP campaign, this time throwing for 4,830 yards (third best in NFL history) and completing 68 percent of his passes with 36 TDs.

Supposedly there are no second acts in American lives, but that's not true in Warner's case. We thought the magic was gone after two injury plagued/ineffective years in St. Louis in 2002-03, and the QB seemed destined to be just a mediocre fantasy afterthought with the Giants (2004) and then in Arizona (2005). But everything clicked in 2007 with the Cardinals, and Warner once again became a fantasy stud. For three more years, he gave us star-quality stats - and then he was gone.

It's too bad the fantasy season doesn't include the NFL playoffs, because Warner's Super Bowl performances - three of the greatest the big game has ever seen - would have single-handedly won you a fantasy championship.

We'll miss you, Kurt. And so will our fantasy teams.