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As a Cardinal, Kurt Warner has risen like a Phoenix

TEMPE, Ariz. — He has been pronounced dead on several occasions, booed off his own home field, benched, doubted, undervalued and underestimated.

When the Eagles last saw Kurt Warner alive, he looked every bit his 37 years of age, looked slow, looked weak, looked like a guy in the last year of a contract and a career. He threw three interceptions that Thanksgiving night, was mugged all night long, trudged off the Linc field on the bad end of a 48-20 loss.

“That’s what you realize about great quarterbacks,” Kurt Warner was saying after practice. “And maybe this relates to my situation a little bit ... you don’t just go from one week to the next and forget how to play this game. If you’re a good quarterback, you’re a good quarterback.”

Truth in advertising: Warner wasn’t calling himself great Wednesday. He was asked why he stood up for Donovan McNabb before that late November game, what he saw that made him say that McNabb would rebound from the worst slump of his playing career.

He saw himself. Kurt Warner was the Most Valuable Player of the NFL at age 30, leading the St. Louis Rams over the Eagles in the NFC Championship Game. At age 31, he played in just seven games because of a busted-up finger and hand. At 32, he made it through two games before a concussion sidelined him.

At age 33, he was a New York Giant. He lost his job after 10 games to rookie Eli Manning. At age 34, with few suitors, he took his career here, to the desert.

To die. We thought.

Sure he could still dial up one of those 300-yard passing days, but his team lost those games as often as they won them. He was throwing because there was nothing else his team could do. And he was getting hit a lot. And hurt a lot.

He started 10 games that first season in Arizona, five in 2006, 11 the following year. Retirement seemed inevitable. The idea was to groom USC star Matt Leinart to become the efficient machine Warner had been in St. Louis.

That idea was still valid when training camp began this year. “It was a tight competition right until the end,” Cardinals second-year head coach Ken Whisenhunt was saying of the training-camp competition between the two. “I think what really, finally made the decision was thinking that Kurt would give us the chance to start quick.”

Warner started so quickly that he was a candidate for another MVP trophy before his team swooned down the stretch. On those good weekends, he looked six years younger, dissecting the defenses placed in front of him as if he were in their huddle. On those weekends, he looked well worth another contract.

And so you wonder: Could McNabb be this effective five seasons from now? Should the Eagles take one look at Warner and dial up another long-distance contract for the battle-tested, 32-year-old McNabb?

Or do they note what Warner went through to get here and do the precise opposite?

They are different players, of course. McNabb has a stronger build, a stronger arm, which sometimes affects his touch. Warner is weaker, which becomes most evident when the elements factor in. His worst games this season came in New York against the Jets, in Philadelphia against the Eagles, in Foxborough against the Patriots. In that last one, a 47-7 doozie, he completed six of 18 passes for 30 yards.

But he is here again, in his third NFC Championship Game, looking to make it to his third Super Bowl, playing it, again, at home in a dome. The Cardinals are 7-2 in Phoenix this season. Any argument that things will be different this time around than they were on that cold Thanksgiving night should start with that.

He will be operating with a running game this time, with Anquan Boldin back out there running routes with Larry Fitzgerald, with Edgerrin James amid his own resurrection. He will take into the game not the psychological scars of being kicked around for much of the last five years, he said, but with a heightened appreciation of how moments like Sunday’s ultimately define the journey.

“I think there have been times where he thought he may not get this opportunity again,” said his coach. “So, I think it is special for him.”

“Given the opportunity, I felt like I would do it again,” Warner said. “I don’t know if there is satisfaction. There’s not any I-told-you-so or whatever. I think it’s more appreciation for this organization and the coaching staff to give me that opportunity again. All I wanted was that opportunity, and I try to work as hard as I could to let them know how I much I appreciate it.”