The 620 Sportsline producer Rod Lakin gave a guest column on Warner’s career and what this Sunday could mean to it.

If I told you, this September, that a future Hall of Famer would be quarterbacking his 2nd franchise to the Super Bowl, you would have told me that man’s name was Brett Favre. Well, you would have been wrong, mercifully so, as we’ve all been spared that ugly, alternate future - one that could hardly contain enough Chris Berman superlatives, or Broadway Joe analogies. Instead, this January’s analogy of choice is Craig Morton, the only other quarterback besides Kurt Warner to lead two football franchises to a Super Bowl.

The former is no small feat: Aged 37 years (same as Warner) former 49er great Joe Montana fell short by a game, and 8 points in his bid to get the Kansas City Chiefs to Super Bowl XXVII in 1994. Steve McNair (of Titan and Ravens fame) missed it by two games in 2006, and even the legendary, aforementioned Favre couldn’t come close to pulling it off when his Jets missed the playoffs this year.

The Favre comparison is a good one, partly because both will be identified as two of the greater quarterbacks of their time, and mainly because of the opposite paths both took to garner such acclaim. To claim Favre is anything other than great would be both foolish and irrational. To claim he has become anything but a self-consumed narcissist might be a little more argumentative, if not (to me, at least) plausible.

A second round pick in 1991, NFL starter at 23, and a Super Bowl champion at 28, Favre’s the Cal Ripken of his day, lionized for his “everyman” demeanor and work ethic, worshipped by the media, but hardly by his teammates. (Yes, even the great Ripken seemed “distant“ to some, given his separate travel arrangements, and hotel accommodations.) Needless to say, a Thomas Jones-style exposé will never be levied at the expense of Warner. Perhaps the best way to display this reciprocal affection, would be when Warner and the Cards played against Favre’s Jets on September 28th. That day Warner threw the pass that nearly ended Anquan Boldin’s career, and in the tense moments that followed this wicked helmet-to-helmet collision, Warner said he considered ending his own. This was a serious claim, much more so than the countless retirement flirtations of Favre. Favre’s most recent came last off-season, when he bid a tearful farewell to Green Bay, only to parade his services to other NFL franchises before training camp, commandeering the newspaper headlines and controlling the airwaves when his self-obsessed rant about the Packers organization and entitlement issues spilled out over Fox News. It was a shameful display, the manifest of many years of NFL worship, and the last several of “don’t go Brett” sentiment. Meanwhile in Flagstaff, another sentiment was growing.

Kurt Warner started 2008 in a familiar role. Despite a solid 2007 season, during which he threw 27 TD passes, when Matt Leinart returned from injury, Warner returned to the bench. Unlike Favre, who couldn’t even bring himself to compete with his young protégé Aaron Rodgers, Warner quietly outperformed Leinart throughout training camp and into the pre-season. It was his job by the start of the regular season, and Warner never looked back. This was nothing new.

Beloved by his teammates, and not by NFL scouts, the undrafted Warner broke into the league the same year Favre was dominating it. Like Favre, Warner was able to lead a team to Super Bowl glory at age 28, but unlike Favre, sustained success and starting quarterback status did not follow. If Favre is football’s Cal Ripken, Warner might be Jack Morris.  The winningest starting pitcher in the 1980s with the Detroit Tigers, Morris toiled in obscurity for a four-year period before re-launching a career at the ripe age of 36 with the Minnesota Twins. Morris won a championship that year, and Sunday Warner may be poised to do the same. In the week directly preceding, the media will likely feature the same Warner story that has been featured many times over. Perhaps it’s worth retelling, or perhaps we’ve heard it too many times. In any case, as “same old stories” go, I’ll gladly take this tired one over the loathsome farewell campaign that simply won’t retire.