NFL: Get Off The Kurt Warner Band Wagon

Warner threw for 41 touchdowns last year, won the MVP, and a Super Bowl. But he still hasn’t convinced me that he is a great quarterback.

As far as I’m concerned Warner’s success is just because of the offense he is in. He has the second best running back in football in Marshall Faulk, and he has the sickest group of receivers in the NFL.

Warner hasn’t really had to make tough decisions in this offense, and when he has I always see him throwing an interception. Usually his receivers are so wide open that all Warner has to do is throw the football in their direction. And most of the time Warner only has to throw the football ten yards and his receivers run fifty or sixty yards after the catch. It makes his stats look way better than they should be.

I guarantee if you put one of the Billy Joe’s in that offense that they would be an MVP quarterback, and would have won a Super Bowl last year. The offense that Warner is in is just quarterback friendly. Every quarterback in football would have a field day in this offense. Trent Green was on his way last year until he messed up his knee in preseason.

Teams are starting to figure out how to rattle Kurt Warner and force him into bad throws. If you get any kind of pressure in Warner’s face he forces the football. Or if his receivers happen not to be open on a play he will still try to force the ball to his receivers and it has started to result in points for the opposing defense.

He has almost 900 yards passing and seven or eight touchdowns and is still getting all this praise. But I guarantee if the Rams didn’t pull out their last two games, announcers and the fans of the Rams would start talking about the costly interceptions and mistakes Warner has been making. Against the Broncos he had three interceptions and two of them he had no business throwing. The one that Al Wilson picked off when he was covering Marshall Faulk was just horrible, and the same goes for the one that Terrell Buckley returned for a touchdown. This week he threw another horrible pass against the Seahawks that resulted in another touchdown for the defense.

That’s four interceptions in two weeks and in both weeks the defense has returned an interception for a touchdown. Usually when a defense scores points it proves to be the factor in games, but the Rams offense is just to explosive. Until the Rams stop pulling out these close games then Warner will continue to get praise.

I don’t care if Warner throws for over 40 touchdowns and 5000 yards this year. Out of the 5000 yards he throws probably 2000 will be yards after the catch from his receivers. I watched Warner play last year and for a few games I started to get on the Warner band wagon. But towards the end of the season I began to see the real Kurt Warner, and he is just another average quarterback in the National Football League. He just happens to be in one of the best offenses ever created in NFL history. Put Kurt Warner in an offense that he has to make real decisions in, and I guarantee he struggles big time.