Frank Thomas

Notable Sports Figures
Awards and Accomplishments
1999, 2001 Most Valuable Player, National Football League
2000 Most Valuable Player, Super Bowl XXXIV (1999 season);
passed for record 424 yards as St. Louis Rams defeated
Tennessee Titans 23-16.
2000 Outstanding Pro Football Performer, ESPN Espy Awards
2000 Breakthrough Athlete, ESPN Espy Awards
touchdown passes in his first four starts (14) than any
NFL player.
In the NFC playoffs, Warner completed twenty-seven
of thirty-three passes for 391 yards and five touchdowns
in a 49-37 victory over the Minnesota Vikings, then
threw the winning 30-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver
Ricky Proehl with 4:44 remaining to give Rams
11-6 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the NFC
Championship game.
In Super Bowl XXIV in Atlanta, against the American
Football Conference champion Tennessee Titans, Warner
passed for a record 414 yards and threw the winning 73yard
touchdown pass to a leaping Isaac Bruce with 1:54
remaining. The Rams stopped Tennessee on the 1-yard
line on the game’s final play and St. Louis emerged a 23-
16 winner. It was the first championship since 1951 for
the franchise, which began in Cleveland in 1937, moved
to Los Angeles in 1946 and then to St. Louis in 1995.
“It is not a fairy tale, it is real life,” Vermeil said of
Warner, who wears number 13 largely to show his disdain
for superstition. “He is a great example of persistence
and believing in himself and a deep faith. He is a
movie; he is a book, this guy.”
After the season, the Rams signed Warner to a sevenyear,
$46.5 million deal that included a $11.5 million
signing bonus. “We just laughed,” Brenda Warner said.
“Our first two kids were born in poverty and our next
two years are born with, you know, riches. It’s kind of a
different world.” The Warners established charities with
some of their money. Hy-Vee stores throughout Iowa,
meanwhile, began stocking shelves with Warner’s new
frosted flake cereal, Warner’s Crunch Time.
Returns to Super Bowl
Warner missed five games in 2000 with a broken right
little finger and the Rams exited in the first round of the
playoffs. St. Louis stormed back the following season,
and Warner, despite difficulties with his hand, earned
MVP honors for the second time in three seasons, edging
teammate and running back Marshall Faulk by one vote.
Warner led the NFL in passing yards with 4,830, second
most in league history, and touchdown passes.
In three postseason games, Warner completed sixtyeight
of 107 passes for 793 yards with four touchdowns.
Kurt Warner
The Rams, under Martz, who succeeded the retired Vermeil
in 2000, beat Green Bay 45-17 and Philadelphia
29-24 to capture another NFC title, and were 14-point
favorites to beat the New England Patriots in Super
Bowl XXXVI in New Orleans.
New England, however, won 20-17 on Adam
Vinatieri’s 48-yard field goal as time expired. The Patriots
forced Warner to throw two interceptions, one of
which defensive back Ty Law returned for a 47-yard
touchdown. Warner completed twenty-eight of forty-six
passes and rallied St. Louis from a 17-3 fourth-quarter
deficit to tie the game right before Vinatieri’s winning
kick. Warner ran for a two-yard touchdown and threw a
twenty-six-yard pass to Ricky Proehl.
Turbulent 2002
Warner
He is a family man and a man of God, an out-of-nowhere sensation
whose story has been called too schmaltzy even for Hollywood.... With
Super Bowl XXXIV slipping out of the grasp of the St. Louis Rams, Warner
took over in a way that must have impressed even the game’s legendary
signal-callers.... Warner dropped five steps in the pocket and, an instant before
absorbing a hellacious hit from defensive end Jevon Kearse, launched
the 73-yard touchdown pass to wideout Isaac Bruce that gave the Rams a
23-16 victory in the greatest Super Bowl ever. All across the land spines
straightened and eyes moistened, and anyone who has ever been doubted
felt a surge of satisfaction.
Source: Silver, Michael.cnnsi.com, February 7, 2000.
The Rams, picked by many to return to the Super
Bowl, stumbled badly in the 2002 season, dropping their
first five games. In the fourth loss, Warner broke the same
right pinkie. In stepped rookie Marc Bulger, as Warner
had for Green in 1999; the Rams won five straight under
Bulger to pull to 5-5 and within a shot of a playoff berth.
But Bulger sprained his right index finger and Warner
returned, insisting his hand was fine; St. Louis, though,
dropped three straight to fall out of playoff contention.
Warner reinjured his hand, this time a hairline fracture at
the knuckle of his little finger. Although Martz during the
season accused Warner’s critics of being part of an “amnesia
crowd,” controversy erupted in early December
when Brenda Warner called a radio talk show to complain
that she, not Martz, insisted her husband have his
hand X-rayed. “Martz had nothing to do with it,” she
said. “All week long I said, ‘Kurt, I’m a nurse, you
should go get it X-rayed.’ The doctors never once said he
should get an X-ray. They said, ‘No, it’s only bruised.’”
“Once he let his wife take the lead in fighting his
football battles, then he lost sight of what it takes to play
this game,” Michael Kinney wrote in the Sedalia Democrat.
The Rams in mid-December put Warner on the injured
reserve list, thus ending his season. One day
before doing so, Martz said that if Bulger picked up
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