Kurt Warner, Still a Cardinal, Talks Super Bowl
May 20, 2009 – 10:15 am by Will Brinson
Kurt Warner was never leaving Arizona (in my humble opinion) despite the shoddy, shoddy way the Cardinals treated him in off-season negotiations this summer. That’s an indictment of the Arizona organization, obviously, and not Warner’s negotiations skills.
Because negotiation isn’t where his true talent lies, obviously; it’s in throwing the football. And talking about God. Which is cool; fortunately (because I don’t care for a public discussion of religion) in the excerpts below, he mainly focuses on last year’s Super Bowl run and how hard it might be to win this year without the same cast and crew on the Cardinals roster.
On excitement based on last year’s Super Bowl run:
I think there’s a lot of excitement based on what we did last year, still a Super Bowl buzz and just the idea that we’re at a place as a team where people could actually talk Super Bowl. I remember those days in St. Louis where that’s really what you play for is to win a championship, and for a long time around here you might say that, but it was really not in anybody’s realm of their imagination that we would be doing that. And to now be on a team that’s been there and can legitimately, because we’ve kept so much of it together, say that we’ve got a chance to go back is fun and it’s exciting and I think it’s exciting for all the guys, it’s exciting for the community, they’re excited about it, that’s why they want to talk more football, all those things going on so it is going to be neat and it’s gonna be exciting when that times comes because the buzz from last year, it just doesn’t go away especially in a place where you’ve never been there before. And so people are gonna hang on that for a while and the challenge for us is to be able to come off of that loss, that disappointment, not put too much pressure on ourselves to have to get back there and win a championship, but to just go out and play the way we did down the stretch because if we could do that we’ve got so many pieces in place and so much talent that it’s gonna be a really, really fun year.
On losing players from successful teams players from successful teams wanting raises:
When we’ve been on Super Bowl teams I’ve seen it a number of times. Our #3 guy at a certain position, who played a key role in us being successful, now all the sudden, he’s probably a perfect 3, but somebody on the other team’s telling him, and he did a great job for us at that position, well now let’s make him a #2. And so now they’re ready to throw a couple million more at him, and that’s where it gets sticky, and it gets tough, and you gotta make those tough decisions, you gotta figure out how do we keep these guys happy? Who do we have to keep around? And that’s the difficult part of the process, we’re in that boat with a number of different players and I don’t know if we have to money to be able to take care of all of them, as much as you want to. And I think that’s the bottom line, is that if we had it there I think they would try to do, you know, at least a number of those guys this year, including Anquan, knowing he deserves it as much as anybody. But, because of the situations of a couple other guys that are more pressing, does Anquan get put on the backburner again because we’re not in the situation to do it, and I think that’s where it gets hard for an organization and it gets hard for the players to say, “Well, I’m in line and I deserve this, I’ve been waiting for this,” and to have to hear, “Well, we just can’t get to you right now because the numbers just don’t fit right.” And I think those are going to be the difficult parts of it, and hopefully both sides can come to some kind of agreement that works for everybody, that makes everybody happy in the short term but also down the road in the long term.
Listen to Kurt Warner on XTRA 910 in Phoenix with Bickley & MJ
Tags: Arizona Cardinals, football interviews, Kurt Warner, NFL
