A Warner Climate

By Sam Farmer

July 29, 2005 12 AM PT

Kurt Warner’s most compelling game tapes from last season, footage that helped him land a one-year, $4-million deal as starting quarterback for the Arizona Cardinals, came with a twist.

They starred Eli Manning.

Those tapes, the New York Giants’ final seven games of the 2004 season, proved that replacing Warner wasn’t a cure-all. Everyone expected Manning to encounter growing pains. Everyone understood how much pressure Coach Tom Coughlin was under to get the rookie on the field. What everyone didn’t know was that Warner, a two-time league most valuable player, was doing a respectable job before being benched.

Manning’s struggles -- he was 1-6 as a starter -- told that story.

“People couldn’t really get a read on how well I was playing until I was taken out,” Warner said this week in a telephone interview.

“It’s always frustrating when politics become a part of it. The draft picks, the money, all those things start to dictate a situation. Everybody close to the situation knew that I was the better player at that point in time. The decision was made for the bigger picture, the greater good or whatever. But that was the most difficult thing.”

That’s all a memory now, of course. Warner, 34, the most sought-after quarterback in free agency, is looking to reboot his career with a franchise that has won one playoff game since 1947.

Warner is among three former Super Bowl quarterbacks hoping to revive their careers with new teams this season. The others are Cleveland’s Trent Dilfer and Dallas’ Drew Bledsoe, guys who think like cagey old coaches on the field ... and also scramble like cagey old coaches on the field.

Of the three, Warner is in the best position to succeed this season. He’s playing for Dennis Green, a coach who proved in Minnesota he knows how to squeeze at least another season out of a quarterback most people thought was done. He did it with Warren Moon, Randall Cunningham and Jeff George, among others.

The Cardinal offense is a good fit for Warner and will give him far more opportunities to throw than he had in New York. He’ll also be playing in a weaker division. Seattle, at 9-7, was the only NFC West team to finish with a winning record last season.

“There’s always pressure on a starting quarterback in this league, but in a lot of ways Kurt will be able to go out there and just play,” Troy Aikman said. “The expectations won’t be nearly as high as they were in New York.”

The Cardinals have three of the best young receivers in football, Anquan Boldin, Larry Fitzgerald and Bryant Johnson, plus rookie running back J.J. Arrington of California.

Not everything is positive about the situation, though. The Cardinals have decent offensive tackles but are otherwise shaky along the line. Also, the team is on its fourth offensive coordinator in four years, Keith Rowen, who has never called a play in the NFL.

Still, Warner is where he wants to be, back in an offense where he is asked to win games and not just avoid losses.

“I like to be the guy who has the ball in my hands,” he said. “I want to have a chance to make plays that can win or lose a game. I just feel like I’m back in a system where I can just play football again.”

Aikman can understand Warner’s frustration with the play-not-to-lose mentality.

“If the whole idea was ‘Don’t lose it,’ why would you ever drop back and throw a pass?” the former Dallas Cowboy standout said. “It kills me when coaches think that way.”

The NFL was in Los Angeles last week shooting a series of commercials that will lead up to Super Bowl XL. The ad campaign is called the “Road to 40,” and each commercial features a chance encounter between a past Super Bowl hero and a current player.

In one, shot at the Coliseum, Green Bay great Bart Starr brushes past Minnesota quarterback Daunte Culpepper on -- where else? -- the 40-yard line. In another, Cowboy safety Roy Williams is giving a sideline interview when he’s bumped on the shoulder by Roger Staubach. A third features San Diego’s LaDainian Tomlinson and Pittsburgh’s Franco Harris.

Chicago cornerback Charles Tillman was hampered by injuries last season and failed to intercept a pass. He’s already making up for that at training camp. During a seven-on-seven drill Wednesday morning, he made a spectacular play that had everyone buzzing. Lined up against Muhsin Muhammad in red-zone coverage, Tillman tipped a Rex Grossman pass over Muhammad and caught the deflection on the other side of him. Tillman then evaded Grossman on the interception return, drawing laughter and cheers from players and onlookers when he used a golf cart parked near midfield as a blocker.

Dave Rayner wasn’t the last player selected in the 2005 draft, but he might as well consider himself Mr. Irrelevant. Rayner, a former Michigan State kicker, was a sixth-round selection of the Colts, who already have Mike Vanderjagt, the most accurate kicker in NFL history.

Actually, the Colts are hoping Rayner can handle kickoffs, although it’s unlikely they’ll wind up carrying two kickers on their roster. They tried this experiment last season too, drafting Penn State’s David Kimball in the seventh round before releasing him prior to the opener. Kimball is now on the Giants’ roster.

Running back Jamal Lewis won’t be around when Baltimore’s training camp opens Sunday, but it has nothing to do with a contract holdout. Lewis, the NFL’s offensive player of the year in 2003, is in the final days of his four-month federal drug sentence and will be released Tuesday from an Atlanta halfway house. He is expected to sit out of drills until the end of the second week of camp.

Try to figure out this one: It used to be tough to get tickets to Tampa Bay games, and the Buccaneers say their season-ticket waiting list exceeds 100,000 fans. Recently, however, everyone on that waiting list was given the opportunity to buy up to six tickets for each regular-season home game this season.

The Buccaneers say it’s to reward everyone on that list for their patience. But it couldn’t have anything to do with Tampa Bay having consecutive losing seasons after the winning the 2002 Super Bowl, could it?

Although you’ve probably never heard of him, Blair Buswell will be immortalized in the Pro Football Hall of Fame this summer -- for the 54th time.

Buswell has sculpted 53 busts of Hall of Famers, among them Al Davis, Bill Walsh, Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana. He’s now putting the finishing touches on his Steve Young bronze bust for the Aug. 7 induction ceremony.

Buswell and Young were teammates at Brigham Young, where Young was the star quarterback and Buswell was a reserve running back on an art scholarship. Years ago, Buswell told Young, “One day, I’ll do yours.”

Young laughed.

“That’s when I was backing up Joe,” Young recently told the San Francisco Chronicle. “So I said to Blair, ‘What are you smoking? There’s no way.’ ... I guess it’s kind of surreal that he’s doing mine now.”

New England linebacker Ted Johnson announced his retirement Thursday, another blow to the Patriots’ defense.

NFL players change cars the way most people change their minds, so it wasn’t surprising when Chicago defensive tackle Alphonso Boone rolled into training camp in a new ride. It was his choice of cars, though, that raised eyebrows. The 320-pound Boone swapped his Cadillac Escalade SUV for a Mini Cooper.

“It’s so good on gas, over 30 miles per gallon,” Boone explained to reporters. “And I’m not 340 anymore, so I can fit.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Old faces, new places

Former Super Bowl quarterbacks Kurt Warner, Trent Dilfer and Drew Bledsoe open their respective NFL training camps with new teams. Warner left New York for Arizona, Dilfer went from Seattle to Cleveland and Bledsoe is now the face of the Dallas Cowboys.

KURT WARNER

* Age: 34.

* Super Bowl experience: Led St. Louis Rams to win in SB XXXIV; lost SB XXXVI to New England.

* Last season: Started first nine games for

Giants before being replaced by Eli Manning.

* This season: Starting QB for Arizona.

TRENT DILFER

* Age: 33.

* Super Bowl experience: Led Baltimore Ravens to victory over Giants in SB XXXV.

* Last season: Backed up Matt Hasselbeck in Seattle. Played in only four games.

* This season: Starting QB for Cleveland.

DREW BLEDSOE