It will be one unlike anyone else’s in the different twists and turns that it took and it allows a lot more people to be able to associate with it, to be inspired by it, encouraged by it, because there is a great likelihood that there was a place along my road that so many other people find themselves in as they are chasing their dream or they’re trying to figure out what the future is going to look like for them. I wouldn’t want to change anything now because it is a route that will never look like anyone else’s, it will always be different. “And it is funny now that you find yourself here and you look back and I can’t say thank you enough for the route that I ended up taking. He can’t imagine it happening any other way. “As I was going through all these different routes and these different setbacks and I was just thinking to myself, ‘Why couldn’t I be the one to take that straight path?,” Warner said.īut as he looks back now, his greatness intact, his bust immortalized in Canton and his unlikely journey now an inspiration, Warner not only accepts the road he took. He stayed motivated by the fact he always excelled whenever he actually got on the field and through the support of his wife, Brenda, who kept urging him on to seek out his dream. In between, he played in the Arena League and NFL Europe.Īll the while, he kept believing and kept plugging away. The next invitation to an NFL camp wasn’t extended until five years later. He couldn’t stick in a tryout with the Packers, sending him back to Iowa to work out at a local grocery store and as a graduate assistant at Northern Iowa. It finally arrived during his senior year, and the former third-stringer responded with a season that earned him Gateway Conference Offensive Player of the Year honors. He had to sit his first three years at Northern Iowa, patiently waiting for his chance.
In real time, the lack of a clear path was beyond frustrating. As I was going through all these different routes and these different setbacks and I was just thinking to myself, ‘Why couldn’t I be the one to take that straight path? Why couldn’t it have worked out like that for me.’” Good high school career, get a scholarship, play in college, get drafted, blah blah blah, play with the team for a long time, have success, get to the Hall of Fame. “So, you have this straight path that you want to take. “You grow up and you have a particular path that you want to take, especially when you start dreaming about something – for me, being an NFL quarterback,” Warner said. Ironic, then, that there was a point in his life when all he hoped for was a straight line to whatever waited ahead of him in his quest to maximize whatever football opportunities his gifted right arm could muster. Warner’s story was, is and always will be one of perseverance, the unbending support of a family that never lost faith even when so many others stopped believing and triumph against unimaginable odds and obstacles.
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That, ultimately, resulted in an improbable crack at a starting job after Trent Green went down with a season-ending knee injury and, amazingly, one of the great statistical offensive runs in NFL history, two Super Bowl berths and one Super Bowl title.Īnd then, when everyone was counting him out like so many others had before at the outset of his dubious trip, rising up once again to lift the historically morbid Arizona Cardinals to a memorable run in 2008 that left them seconds short of a Super Bowl championship.
From there, he reached two Arena Football League championship games with the Iowa Barnstormers followed by a stint in NFL Europe and a training camp tryout with the St.
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The long, unlikely, windy road he took to the Pro Football Hall of Fame would have tested the technology of the most advanced GPS system available and blew through an unlimited data plan.įrom obscure, undrafted quarterback from tiny Northern Iowa to getting tossed into the scrap heap by the Green Bay Packers to stocking shelves at an Iowa grocery store. If there was a Hall of Fame for journeys taken to greatness, Kurt Warner would have been a first-ballot selection.
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