(Best E Casino) - The story of Kurt Warner has been told many times. From grocery store bagger to Arena League star to Super Bowl champion and NFL MVP, Warner has been a feel good story for some time.
But the story seemed to end a few seasons ago. St. Louis, the team Warner guided to a Super Bowl XXXIV title, didn't want the aging star anymore. He was 32 years of age in 2003, his last year with the Rams.
Warner took his talents to the New York Giants the following year, but played in 10 games before Eli Manning took over under center full-time.
A three-time Pro Bowl player and two-time league MVP, Warner then headed west in 2005 to Arizona, who drafted quarterback Matt Leinart one year after signing Warner. The Cardinals have wanted to give Leinart the starting job since, but Warner hasn't let them. And the reward for Arizona may just be a Super Bowl title. And another chapter in Warner's magical story.
Now 37, the Northern Iowa product is playing like days of old in St. Louis. Warner leads in the NFL in quarterback rating (106.4) and completion percentage (70.6) and is second in the league in passing yards (2,760) and touchdown passes (19). That has helped the Cardinals to a 6-3 record and a four-game lead for first place in the NFC West.
Arizona was primed for an upset on Monday night. In the national spotlight, the team fell behind to then 2-6 San Francisco. But Warner wouldn't let them fail. The Cards tried their best, getting flagged 10 times for 71 yards. Two of those calls negated pick-six touchdowns by the Cardinals.
The 49ers returned the opening kickoff for a touchdown and held leads of 14-3, 21-13 and 24-20. But the Cardinals and Warner refused to quit.
"I think we are starting to believe that we are not out of any football game," Warner said. "As crazy as it sounds, the Jets loss (56-35 in Week 4) might have done wonders for this football team. To come back from 30 points. It doesn't matter how far back we are or how far down we are, we believe we can come back."
Warner put the offense on his back against San Francisco. With Arizona gaining just 46 yards of offense on the ground, the quarterback threw for 328 yards and three touchdowns, including the game-winning four-yard scoring strike to Anquan Boldin with under five minutes to play.
"In the second half we went into our no-huddle mode and started to move the ball down the field," said head coach Ken Whisenhunt.
In 102 career games, Warner has surpassed the 300-yard passing mark in 45.1 percent of his games, the best such percentage of any player with at least 100 career games played. Dan Fouts is second at 28.2 percent.
What is amazing is that Warner is continuing to do it so late in his career. He has gone over 300 yards passing in three straight games, just the second quarterback in Cardinals history to do so. He is also the 11th signal-caller in NFL history to reach 10,000 yards passing with two separate teams and has thrown at least one touchdown pass in 17 straight games.
A scary hit to Boldin back in Week 4 that saw the wideout suffer a string of facial injuries after a helmet-to-helmet hit had Warner thinking about retirement. However, this year's play may have the pending free agent back under center for the Cardinals for the next couple of years. After all, everything he does is magic.
UP NEXT: The Cardinals continue their quest for their first division title since 1975 when they visit Seattle this weekend. The Seahawks have won the last four NFC West crowns, but are just 2-7 this year. Seattle, though, has won five of the last seven in the series.
SEAHAWKS: HOLMGREN SEES QUICK TURNAROUND
Seven games. That is all that is left in the Mike Holmgren era for Seattle, a span of nine-plus seasons that have produced 84 wins, five division titles -- including each of the last four seasons -- six playoff berths and one Super Bowl appearance.
But at 2-7 this year, Holmgren probably can't wait for it to be over. Each week it is the same story. The Seahawks fail to move the ball through the air on offense and can't stop the big play on defense. Their two wins this year have come against St. Louis and San Francisco, which are a combined 4-14 this year.
It is not like the team is quitting on Holmgren because of his lame-duck status. Although Seattle fell behind 14-0 versus the Miami Dolphins this past Sunday, it made a game of it late. Quarterback Seneca Wallace completed a three-yard touchdown pass to Koren Robinson with 2:57 left in the game, but the two-point try failed, leaving the Seahawks on the wrong end of a 21-19 game.
"It's a little bit like Groundhog Day," said Holmgren. "We made it close at the end, but too little, too late. I think there were some great efforts (Sunday)."
Holmgren praised his club's emotion and effort despite the poor record, but added that those elements can only take a team so far. What the team has lacked has been execution.
Perhaps the Seahawks have been trying to do too much for their 60-year-old coach in his final year. Holmgren, though, sees a quick turnaround once he is gone.
"They're trying real hard, but it's kind of just piling on, and pretty soon it's pretty hard to breathe underneath the pile," he said. "But they're a resilient group, and this year kind of up to this point has been the perfect storm for us, but it's not typical of what our team is about. Or what the team will be about in the future. I will tell you that right now.
"This is a little bit of a different year for us. There are reasons, without going into a lot of cloak and dagger and all that, there are obvious reasons for why it's going the way its going. I'm pleased with how hard (the players) are trying, and I don't suspect you'll see this around here again for a while."
With many tough games left on the schedule -- including two against first- place Arizona, a road test in Dallas and home games versus Washington, New England and the New York Jets -- it looks like Holmgren will go out with his first losing record since going 7-9 in 2002.
However, he gets one more challenge, as the retiring head coach has to figure out how to win with a banged-up quarterback group. Starter Matt Hasselbeck has missed the last four games due to a back issue, while Wallace suffered a groin injury early in the game on his first scramble.
"I couldn't run like I wanted, so I think that took away from some of the roll out and movement-type stuff that we had in our package this week," said Wallace.
Like Holmgren said, a perfect storm.
UP NEXT: Seattle gets its first crack at first-place Arizona this Sunday in the first of two straight home games for the Seahawks. The two clubs split their two-game set last year, with each team winning at home. Seattle, though, has won five of the last seven in the series.
49ERS: INEXPERIENCE PROVES COSTLY
Mike Singletary was serving as head coach in only his second game. Quarterback Shaun Hill was making just his third career start. Offensive coordinator Mike Martz isn't used to running the ball.
All three factors added up to a heartbreaking loss against the Arizona Cardinals for the San Francisco 49ers on Monday night.
Coaching in just his second game since the 49ers fired Mike Nolan, Singletary was putting his stamp on the offense. He started Hill in place of J.T. O'Sullivan, who won a training camp battle to earn the No. 1 job after spending the previous season with Martz in Detroit.
Singletary wanted to make the 49ers a running team. That isn't exactly Martz's speciality. Yet Martz called Frank Gore's number often on Monday, giving the back 23 carries. Twelve of those came in the first half.
Then those three worlds collided.
Having just blown a 24-23 lead, Hill had to start gunning it. And he did so with efficiency, moving San Francisco from its own 38 to the Arizona 18. However, he then tried to do too much, shoveling an ill-advised pass Gore's way that was intercepted. Gore had already turned to block on the play, thinking Hill was going to keep it.
After a defensive stand, Hill and the Niners got the ball back at the Cardinals 42 with just over a minute left. Three straight completions to Jason Hill moved them to the goal line. However, San Francisco was slow getting to the line before eventually spiking the ball with 20 ticks left.
Out of timeouts, Martz called for a Gore run off left tackle. He lost a yard. With four seconds left, Martz called for the 6-foot-1, 223-pound Michael Robinson to take it up the middle. He was stopped shy of the goal line.
Ballgame.
"I think we could have done a lot better job," said Singletary. "We weren't quite set for whatever reason. It looked like Shaun was taking all day, but we have to have guys aligned right or it is a penalty. So we had to wait on guys before we could spike it. We lost about 10 or 12 seconds (on that play), and that was ridiculous."
Now hindsight sets in. Perhaps a more experienced quarterback wouldn't have wasted so much time spiking the ball, leaving the 49ers with more time and more options. Perhaps Martz should have stuck to his strength and called for a pass option so close to the end zone. Perhaps Singletary shouldn't be trying to change the 49ers overnight.
Two weekends ago in his coaching debut, Singletary came off like a man who was going to take charge. However, he threw his team under the bus a bit after Monday night's loss.
"We have a vision that we believe in thoroughly, but that vision did not get carried out tonight," the head coach said. "Part of that is ball control. We played as a team but we did not finish. It's simple as we did not finish."
Hopefully, the Niners will learn how to finish. It just takes some experience.
UP NEXT: The 49ers return home to host the fellow 2-7 St. Louis Rams on Sunday. It is the first of two meetings between the clubs this year. San Francisco has won four of the last six in the series, though the teams split their two-game set last season.
RAMS: HASLETT PUTS IT ON THE PLAYERS
St. Louis interim head coach Jim Haslett doesn't think anything is wrong with the coaching staff or the scheme for the Rams. Instead, he is putting it all on the players.
What he is not sure of is if the team can't -- or won't -- get better.
"What I said was they either didn't want to it (get better) or they're just not good enough to do it," Haslett said of his players on Monday. "Maybe a little bit of both, probably a little bit of both."
Haslett is apparently done messing around with the Rams club he inherited from the fired Scott Linehan in late September. Who can blame him after Sunday's ugly 47-3 loss to the New York Jets?
After winning their first two games under Haslett, the Rams have lost three in a row to fall to 2-7 on the season and 9-27 over their last 36 games. They are getting outscored 104-32 over their current losing streak, and the 282 points the Rams have allowed this year is the most in the league.
On the other side of the coin, St. Louis is just 30th in points scored with 128.
"On the defensive side (on Sunday), there were plays that I saw run in practice 15 times last week that we didn't execute in the game and the same guys that ran the same defense for the last three years, so I don't want to hear that they didn't know what they were doing or whatever, because we've run the same stuff for a long time," said Haslett.
Minus Steven Jackson because of a lingering thigh injury, the Rams ran for only 80 yards versus the Jets and totaled just 200 yards of offense. The defense, meanwhile, allowed New York running backs to run for 149 yards and three touchdowns.
The Rams trailed 40-0 at halftime.
After gelling in two games under Haslett, St. Louis now looks like the team that went 0-4 under Linehan. The former head coach was desperate before being fired, so he benched quarterback Marc Bulger at one point during the season- opening losing streak. Haslett did the same on Sunday.
Despite Bulger throwing for just 65 yards with an interception on 6-of-13 passing, Haslett said on Monday that the quarterback will start this Sunday's game versus the 49ers.
Haslett knows that St. Louis has a lot of work to do until then.
"On offense, there was a breakdown on every single play, and add all that up with five turnovers and four in the first half that led to 27 points and then two opportunities on defense that we didn't get."
The two defensive opportunities Haslett was referring to where dropped interceptions by corners Fakhir Brown and Jason Craft. The Jets scored after both drops.
UP NEXT: The Rams visit the 49ers this weekend and will later host the club in Week 16.
