Stan Kroenke’s memory may be a little foggy on Kurt Warner

Thomas: Who knew? Kroenke helped discover Warner

Jim Thomas

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/football/professional/thomas-who-knew-kroenke-helped-discover-warner/article_4d9b30d2-7399-5e5e-9821-de71c2c15d0d.html

Stan Kroenke’s alter ego took over at a news conference held before a small public audience in Inglewood, Calif., on Jan. 15. He laughed, cried, joked — but most surprising of all, he showed up to answer questions. (AP Photo)
Just when you thought the universe of people who helped discover Kurt Warner had long since been exhausted, along comes Stan Kroenke.

Kroenke, who gave zero interviews over the Rams’ last four years in St. Louis, can’t shut up now that the team is in Los Angeles. In his latest escapade, a recent interview with Jarrett Bell of USA Today, Kroenke recalled giving Dick Vermeil advice on Warner in 1998.

“Dick Vermeil asked me my opinion of who the third quarterback should be,” Kroenke told USA Today. “I told Dick, ‘OK, I’ve never even played football but you want my opinion? The kid from Northern Iowa can see. He’s got vision. It’s like a really good point guard (in basketball). Some guys have it. Some guys don’t.”

In 1998, Tony Banks was firmly ensconced as the starter. Steve Bono was acquired in a trade with Green Bay to be the backup. That left Will Furrer and Warner, who was signed as a “street” free agent early that offseason, competing for the No. 3 job.

Exactly how Kroenke came to his conclusion about Warner’s vision is uncertain. For one, Warner was assigned to the Amsterdam Admirals of NFL Europe that spring, so he didn’t participate in the Rams’ minicamps or OTAs.

For another, even back then as Rams minority owner, Kroenke almost never attended practice. And in preseason that summer, Warner threw all of four passes in exhibition play.

So apparently either Kroenke is a quick study in terms of what little he may have seen on the practice field. Or he was grinding out practice tape or NFL Europe film in his spare time.

On Saturday, Vermeil told the Post-Dispatch he doesn’t recall having that conversation with Kroenke. “But if he said it, I’m sure it was true,” Vermeil said.

Vermeil said Kroenke was almost timid about engaging with the team at that time, perhaps in deference to majority owner Georgia Frontiere. Whenever Kroenke was around, which wasn’t often, Vermeil said he tried to update him on what was going on with the team.

Keep in mind, Mike Martz had yet to be hired as offensive coordinator. In 1998, he was working as wide receivers coach for Washington. General manager Charley Armey was around, and he told the Post-Dispatch on Friday that he wasn’t privy to any conversation Kroenke may have had with Vermeil on the subject of Warner.

But Armey did have this to say about keeping Warner that year:

“The decision to keep Kurt Warner was 100 percent Dick Vermeil,” Armey said. “Everybody was lobbying for other people, including the next year when Trent Green got hurt. Some guys wanted Jeff Hostetler and some guys wanted Jeff George. Dick Vermeil stuck to his guns.”

Once the coaches got to see Warner on the practice field over the course of the 1998 regular season, respect grew for him. Armey told a reporter midway through the ’98 season that the team already had a quarterback on the roster who was much better than Banks — Warner.

When Vermeil hired Martz as offensive coordinator after the ’98 season, he told him to take a good look at Warner — both the practice film and NFL Europe tape — because he was the Rams’ scout team quarterback in ’98, and the starting defense had trouble stopping him.

And even though the Rams went 4-12 in 1998, they finished 10th in total defense and third in passing defense that year, so Warner was going against good personnel every day running the scout team.

Warner, in fact, won the offensive service award, as voted on by the coaching staff, as the team’s outstanding practice player in 1998.

Even saying all that, there is this long-forgotten fact about the Rams and Warner: He was exposed on the expansion list for the Cleveland Browns after the ’98 season.

There for the taking. The Browns didn’t claim him, so Warner stayed a Ram for a 1999 season that ended with a Super Bowl championship.

Warner’s response to the Kroenke story was as follows via his Twitter account:

“Trust me, he wasn’t only 1 responsible for discovering me … Haha all good I don’t care who gets credit!”

Some boards, you see people nail SK on this one. Some boards, you see people nail Thomas for even discussing it. I personally kind of note it with some interest but not even enough to break out popcorn. People just come from different places on this, and there’s more than just 2 views of it. I have no personal emotional stakes in the move, plus I don’t judge people who do–either way. I just found Thomas to be a decent beat writer in a small market where it was easy for the team to shut off access, and that he did fine with that. I didn’t always agree with him. If he has a vendetta for SK, it doesn’t matter to me either way…SK ought to be big enough to survive that, and it’s nothing compared to how the LA media treated Georgia. If SK becomes unpopular for whatever reason in LA, he will long for the days when his one media issue was JT picking on him now and then (that’s just because the LA media market is bigger and with so many sports loyalties to draw people’s attention, far less forgiving). I personally don’t feel loyalty to owners…and remember with some sense of distant mild post-traumatic stress syndrome the days back in 2000 when criticizing Zygmunt was the one thing you could do on message boards to draw down “pile-on” fury. Eventually everyone turned on Zygmunt. But at the time the few critics were saying “let people have different views.” It doesn’t matter to me if someone admires SK or attacks him—that’s a plausible range of different views, and I don’t have any stake in how that goes. I think SK kind of put himself out there for some criticism on this one, but then it’s a small thing and will pass without any real effects. I think JT has moments of anti-regime bitterness but then that doesn’t bother me either. I just try to be objective about the whole thing, though that just means in the end that I think having different views is healthy. I never agreed with everything JT did or said, but even in my strongest disagreements it never crossed the line into disdain or dismissiveness. Right now, JT knows more about the Rams than any LA writer, but then that situation won’t last. My hope is that it genuinely is a competitive media market and we get several good sources on the Rams, competing with each other to be the best. In terms of just reading about the Rams that would be best for us nomad fans anyway.