"Kurt Warner's final years in the NFL were almost as dramatic and as unbelievable as his initial rise to fame.

Just as his career started in St. Louis, his tenure in Arizona began with doubts.

With the Rams, he was the classic nobody from nowhere when he suddenly had to step in for an injured started on opening day 1999 against the Baltimore Ravens.

"I remember like it was yesterday," former Ravens coach Brian Billick said Friday. " . . . (The Rams coaches) were under a lot of fire because Trent Green went down in the preseason and they had just signed Paul Justin, the old quarterback out of Arizona State. Dick (Vermiel the Rams coach) tells me, 'Well, we got this kid named Kurt Warner and if he can just hold on for a couple games 'til we get Justin ready to take over, we should be OK.'

"Just think about that for a minute. 'Just hold on for a couple games?' Turns out, it's a Hall of Famer he was talking about."

By the time Warner got to Arizona, he was a journeyman backup, a player with a propensity for turnovers and getting injured. Warner considered himself a starter with something to prove, and when Ken Whisenhunt became head coach in 2007, there was an instant clash of style and battle of wills between the two.

Warner wanted to play and constantly throw the ball downfield like his days in St. Louis. Whisenhunt, the former Steelers offensive coordinator, preferred a more balanced attack with a nod toward the ground game.

Eventually, they realized they both needed each other to turn around a perpetual losing franchise.

"I've been around coaches that have a mindset and believe it should be done one way and that's all they listen to," Warner said. "A credit to Coach Whiz and his staff here is that they've never taken that approach. . . . What I loved about this process has been our ability to come together, with my skills, his skills, with the team we had, and mesh that together to do some great things. That's always a neat part of the process."

That, Warner said, made it even more rewarding then the glory days in St. Louis when he directed an offense known as "The Greatest Show on Turf."

"You just didn't step into this place and everything was set up and you just rode it to the Super Bowl," he said. "There was a lot of screaming matches. Sometimes it was each of us trying to beat into the other what we believed in and what we wanted to do. But to me, that was fun.""