Kurt Warner announces retirement from NFL..

Arizona Cardinals’ quarterback Kurt Warner put an end to his 12-year playing career on Friday, as he announced his retirement from football.

Warner’s story to stardom is an astonshing one, as he had failed tryouts with the Green Bay Packers & Chicago Bears before returning to his native Iowa to become a grocery shelf stocker.

He spent two years in the Arena League before finally getting his chance in 1998 with the St. Louis Rams, but was sent to play in NFL Europe for a year. He was teammates with current Carolina Panthers quarterback Jake Delhomme & led the league in both touchdowns & passing yards.

Kurt took the NFL in storm in 1999, but only due to an ACL injury suffered by 1st string starter Trent Green in a pre-season game.

That’s when he put together one of the best rookie seasons ever by a quarterback, as he threw for 41 touchdown passes & 4,353 passing yards while leading the Rams to a 13-3 record, which concluded with a Super Bowl XXXIV win over the Tennessee Titans after Warner threw a 73-yard game winner to Isaac Bruce with a little over two minutes left.

Kurt also holds a Super Bowl record for most passing yards with his 414-yard effort in the win over Tennessee.

Warner showed that his special ’99 season wasn’t a fluke the following year, but he broke his hand midway through the 2000 campaign after tossing 19 touchdown passes in 6 games.

The very following year, the magic was still there as he threw for an NFL-high 36 touchdown passes to go with 4,830 passing yards (3rd highest single-season total of all-time) while leading the Rams to a 14-2 record, which won him his 2nd MVP award in 3 years.

This got St. Louis to Super Bowl XXXVI, but they were stunned by the underdog New England Patriots.

Warner then had two turnover/injury plagued seasons with the Rams, which forced them to go with the younger Marc Bulger, who would end up making 2 Pro Bowl appearences.

He spent 1 season with the New York Giants in 2004, but only lasted 9 games as Tom Coughlin benched him in favor of rookie Eli Manning, who lost 6 of his first 7 NFL starts.

Warner then signed with the Arizona Cardinals in 2005, and had some injury issues while almost losing his job to backup Josh McCown.

Dennis Green gave Warner another shot though, as he finished out the season as the team’s starting quarterback.

He then acheived a personal historic milestone in Week 3 of the 2006 season, as he became the 2nd fastest player in league history to surpass 20,000 career passing yards.

This was not enough to keep his starting job, as he was replaced by Matt Leinart for a majority of the season.

Warner would come off the bench in 2007, but had a memorable near comeback attempt against Baltimore where he passed for 258 yards in almost a full quarter & threw for 2 touchdown passes, but Arizona fell short in overtime.

Leinart would wind up suffering a season-ending injury, which caused Warner to start for the rest of the season.

2008 would be Warner’s year though, as he led Arizona to their first division title in 33 years & also led the team to their 1st ever Super Bowl appearence.

Despite losing Super Bowl XLIII to the Pittsburgh Steelers, Warner threw for 377 passing yards (3rd highest total) & now holds the top three passing yardage performances in Super Bowl history.

The San Francisco 49ers tried to pry Warner away from his Arizona Cardinals, but he wound up re-signing for 2 years at $23 million.

Kurt showed he still had plenty in the tank left during the 2009 season, as he completed 24 of 26 passes for an NFL record 92.3% completion rate during their 31-17 win over Jacksonville.

He was knocked out of their November 22nd win against his former Rams team with a concussion, but returned with a venegance as he went through a 4 week stretch with a QB rating of 120 or higher, which has only been done one other time in league history.

On December 27th, Warner tossed his 100th career touchdown pass in a Cardinals uniform, which made him just the 2nd quarterback (Fran Tarkenton) to throw 100 touchdowns passes with two different teams.

He led Arizona to a thrilling 51-45 overtime win over the Green Bay Packers in a Wild-Card NFC Playoff game that saw Warner have more touchdown passes (5) than incompletions (4) in the highest-scoring playoff game ever.

Warner became the 1st quarterback since the AFL/NFL merger to toss five touchdown passes in a playoff game twice & also became the oldest quarterback to throw for 5 touchdowns in the playoffs.

His last NFL game was on January 16th, where he was injured & re-intered the game during Arizona’s 45-14 loss to the NFC champion New Orleans Saints.