We Need to Pump Up Trent Green Pt. 1: Homecoming

Part one of the Trent Green story sees the hometown kid signing for his hometown team, and shows that your dream can become your nightmare.

I'm angry everybody.

Would you like to know why I'm angry?

I'm angry because I've just recently decided I wanted to talk about some underrated players and teams from the NFL's history, so I began combing the internet for some solid 'most underrated QBs' lists, as I figured this would be a good place to start, and what I found shocked me to my core.

This most underrated list has all the features of a good one. It features Ken Anderson, Bert Jones, and Chad Pennington (any exclusion of any of these three players means your most underrated list is a bad list), and it seems to have been written by somebody who knows their stuff, even if they put too much emphasis on the W/L record for my liking.

This list has one huge problem though. Despite ranking an astounding forty-four players that the author considers to be underrated, up to and including Jay Fiedler of all people, there is not a single mention of Trent Green.

This is fine, I figured. One author gone rogue won't bother me too much. You know what fixes the author gone rogue problem? Community votes, so I decided to go on Ranker and check out their list of the best QBs never to win a Super Bowl. On this list you'll find the typical names: Dan Marino, Jim Kelly, Fran Tarkenton, Philip Rivers, etcetera. This list has Andrew Luck ranked 11th, Tony Romo ranked 12th, Alex Smith ranked 24th.

Behind all these names, all the way down in 54th, right between Steve Bartkowski and Ryan Fitzpatrick, you'll find Trent Green.

Ryan Fitzpatrick and Steve Bartkowski. Are you kidding me?

Don't get me wrong. These are both good quarterbacks who each had moments of being great. Anybody who's been reading here long enough knows I love me some Ryan Fitzpatrick, but there are levels to this, and to put Ryan Fitzpatrick and Trent Green on the same level is absurd, but still this did not set me over the edge. Following this snub, I decided to stay on Ranker and see what their list of most underrated QBs looked like.

What I found there was an interesting list. It featured Peyton Manning (an odd hit for an underrated QBs list, but there's some substance to it if you think hard enough), but it also featured galling picks like Nick Foles at number 40. I didn't know there were humans out there that considered Nick Foles underrated.

Through all this mess you have to scroll all the way down to number 51, between Jack Kemp and Neil Lomax (shockingly good company, as they’re all far too low), to find Trent Green.

I have all the respect in the world for Jack Kemp (perhaps the only great player ever to play an entire career in the AFL), who is often left off underrated lists because of just how great he was. I expect anybody literate enough in NFL history to be reading my stuff to have at least a passing knowledge of who Jack Kemp was, but Neil Lomax?

You don't know who Neil Lomax is do you?

He played a whole career with the St. Louis Cardinals, had one absolutely brilliant season in 1984 (well beyond His Year calibre), but didn't do much else in his career. This is what people think Trent Green was?

At this point, I am fuming. It's clear to me that the internet has no clue who Trent Green is, or how good he was at playing QB in the NFL.

Normally, I try very hard on these posts to not stray into the hype territory. I don't need to hype these players up. All I do is tell you readers in a more detailed fashion how good at football they actually were. In something like a His Year article, I do my best to downplay the bad and accentuate the good, but my job is not to pump up the subject of the piece.

We all know by now I love Chad Pennington. I love Josh McCown. I love the underdogs that finally find the right way, but my job is not to pump up Chad Pennington. He was the best QB in the NFL in 2002 and I felt the need to talk about that, but nothing more.

This however, is different. Trent Green should have a legacy as one of the best of his era, but he just doesn't. At the time and now, 20 years afterwards, people refuse to respect Trent for reasons I just don't understand. In due time I will get to all of those reasons and debunk them one by one, but right off the hop I want to clarify the mission statement of this piece. If you too are tired of people remembering the story incorrectly, then my cause and the cause of my readership is your cause too, and that cause is this.

We need to pump up Trent Green.

Our story begins in St Louis, which in the early 70s welcomes Jim and Judy Green, along with their young son Trent. Growing up in St Louis, Trent would develop the reputation locally as a dedicated, hard working human, albeit one without many physical talents. Funnily enough, this is a reputation he will never ever lose.

Not very highly recruited out of high school, Trent would play college football for the University of Indiana. Not exactly a national powerhouse, and even on this team Trent would have to wait until his junior season to be named the starter outright (spending his sophomore season in an awkward both QBs playing exactly the same number of snaps scenario that you sometimes see in college). Not exactly somebody who had all the trappings of being able to make it at the next level.

In 1991, everybody wanted Dan Marino or Jim Kelly to be their quarterback, in the same way that every NFL team these days is looking to draft the next Josh Allen or Russell Wilson. However, Trent Green did not play like Dan Marino or Jim Kelly. In fact, Trent was one of the early innovators of the Aaron Rodgers type QB. By this I mean that he was sneakily mobile despite not being especially athletic, and he would use this to burn you if you let him.

In that 1991 junior season Trent and this playstyle would lead the Indiana Hoosiers to a 7-5-1 record and what remains their most recent bowl win to date, defeating a Baylor team in the Copper Bowl that most figured would crush little Indiana. This was only the third bowl win in program history, for a program that joined the Big Ten in 1900. This was a big deal. For this contribution, Trent would be inducted into the UIndiana Athletics Hall of Fame in 2011, but ultimately he became another lesson that NFL-bound players would follow.

If you play great in your junior year, enter the draft.

This has become slightly less true in the new era of teams being allowed to pay their players, so the risk is smaller, but generally there is no reason to stay for a senior season if you played very well your junior season. There’s nothing to gain and everything to lose, and Trent learned this the hard way.

His senior year at Indiana was a big step back from his junior season, and caused the NFL to cool on him big time. For a man who once had so much hype around him, hearing his name called as the 26th pick of the eighth round (222 overall), two picks away from being Mr. Irrelevant, must have been really disappointing. In what was likely the best QB draft of the 1990s (not as big a compliment as it sounds), Trent was the very last one taken, and his NFL career was on track for backup duty only.

I give Trent all the credit in the world for not being satisfied with this. He quit the NFL and went up north to play in the Canadian Football League for the BC Lions in hopes of more playing time. This was the era where teams would still give QBs from Canada a chance (Warren Moon, Doug Flutie, Jeff Garcia, etc.), and so it was worth a shot to at least go and try.

Recall that Trent was not exactly a hot prospect at this time. There was no hype when he showed up in Vancouver, and was quickly cut from there too, and I’m not in Trent’s head, but this surely had to have left him at an impasse.

This is the point where many players just quit football. Being cut from the CFL was the impetus that at last caused Johnny Football to hang up the cleats. The same goes for almost every NFL washout QB. If you can’t make it even with the more offence friendly Canadian game, then it’s just over for you.

Trent has come out in interviews in the years since saying that he had discussed with his wife at length the possibility of quitting. As a business graduate from Indiana with all the contacts that come with having been the star QB for the Hoosiers, he certainly did not need football to sustain himself. Trent gives all the credit to his wife Julie for understanding the mentality of a football player better than the actual football player in the family.

If he were to quit now, he would spend his whole life wondering, likely regretting. If I had one more training camp, would that have made the difference? Trent knows how skilled he is. It’s just a matter of making a coach see it, but having been cut by two teams in two seasons it’s clear that he isn’t having much success doing so. Nevertheless, Julie does not want her husband to live life with these regrets, and convinces him to play on.

Give credit to the real MVPs.

Even after being cut from the CFL, it wasn’t over for Trent Green.

Coming back down South for 1995, Trent caught on with the Washington Redskins after the Chargers (who still held his NFL rights) elected to simply allow him to do so. Likely a bad move for a team that would have so many QB struggles throughout the 1990s, but this proved a fantastic opportunity for our man.

Even in bad luck stories there must be good luck or there is no story. Washington’s first round draft pick in 1994, QB Heath Shuler, is going to be an all time bust, but nobody knows that yet.

How is this important to us?

If everybody had known how awful Heath Shuler was going to turn out to be, every backup type QB in the NFL would’ve been clamouring for this Washington job. Trent never would’ve gotten it, and who knows where we would’ve gone from there.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This is a third string QB job, and one that sees him behind one of the best QBs in the NFL in 1996 Gus Frerotte, but it’s still a fairly good one. 1997 saw Trent, five seasons into his career, finally getting to throw a pass in the NFL. It was only one and he didn’t complete it, but he’d at last arrived onto the NFL football field.

At the same time however, going into the 1998 season Trent is 28 and has never even been a backup. If this were any year that started with 201x, Trent’s career would’ve been over already, because teams don’t keep experienced backups around anymore. Teams generally favour failed starters (Case Keenum types), but this is not the 2010s. These are the 1990s. Odd things happen in the 1990s, and in 1998, the stars finally align for Trent Green.

There’s a famous story that comes out of 1998 training camp. During a scrimmage practice between Washington and Pittsburgh, Trent is playing, and Steelers’ head coach Bill Cowher cannot believe his eyes. Who is this Trent Green character, and why has he never seen him before? He brings this up to Washington head coach Norv Turner, who makes it clear that he’s not available.

Imagine Trent Green on the 2000s Steelers. It’s an interesting thought.

With Jeff Hostetler injured, Trent finally gets his to at least be a backup, and before you know it, in the third quarter of week one, Gus Frerotte throws interceptions on back to back pass attempts, both leading to easy Giants touchdowns. Norv Turner has seen enough, and Trent Green is going to get NFL action.

For real this time.

It doesn’t take Trent long to narrow Washington’s deficit, with the first possession of Trent’s NFL career being an easy touchdown that sees no third downs. Trent throws another touchdown in the fourth to narrow the deficit to 31-24, but this is as close as it gets. Trent can get each of Washington’s last two drives into Giant territory but no further, and his first game ends as a 31-24 loss. Nevertheless, 17 of 25 for 205 and two touchdowns in a quarter and a half is a fantastic way to start an NFL career.

They do not all go this well for Trent, although week two does. The first start of Trent’s NFL career is on Monday Night Football against the 1998 San Francisco 49ers. Not exactly small apples, but Trent acquaints himself fairly well. He generates positive EPA/Play, and the Skins could’ve gone into half down just 21-16 if not for two missed FG tries. In the second half he gets entirely shut down, but it’s the 49ers in the 90s, and it’s the man’s first NFL start. Give him a break.

As it turns out, the first half of 1998 is actually going to be quite bad for Trent. Going into the bye week Washington is 0-7 and our man has lost his starting position, but during that bye week it all changes. Trent is named the permanent starter going forward, and leads the team to a 6-3 finish to end the season on a 6-10 record.

Two of those losses characterize this Washington season quite well, and start a trend that will characterize Trent’s whole career. Interestingly enough they both come at the hands of the Arizona Cardinals, at the time a division rival, and led by a man who will become a recurring character in this story, the permanent obstacle Jake Plummer. In the first try, The Cardinals take the game 29-27 on account of a safety taken by Washington punter Matt Turk described in the play by play data as ‘missing the snap.’ Whatever that means.

The second game between these two teams is a 45-42 firefight that Washington again comes out on the losing end of, but one which sees Trent play the best game of his young career so far. The Cardinals take a 31-0 first half lead, but the Skins score six touchdowns in a row in the second half to get all the way back to within three, but due in large part to some missed first half field goals, we miss out on one of the most electrifying comebacks in NFL history. -15.7 total EPA from the special teams really hurt in a game like this. For the second time Trent has outplayed Jake Plummer yet lost, which is a pattern that will not soon change.

As a whole the 1998 season went okay for Trent. The very good second half meshes with the quite bad first one to make a QB that ranks 14th on my tier list for 1998. 14th in 2023 was Derek Carr, so that’s the level of QB we’re talking about here, which for a man who’d never even been able to crack second string before this was enough evidence to make a lot of coaches all around the football world look like fools. A lot of people had this man in their room and missed it.

There’s one man that didn’t miss it.

Following the 1998 season, Trent becomes a free agent, and Washington wants him back quite badly, offering him a four year deal to stay as their starter, but there’s one man who wants him even worse. The one man in the whole NFL who knows what he has on his hands.

Mike Martz has been the QB coach in Washington for the last two years, so of anybody in the entire football world, there’s likely that knows Trent better than he does, and he wants him badly. Over the offseason Martz has moved on to become the offensive coordinator in St Louis, the same city Green used to star at Vianney High School, and throughout this whole process Martz has been angling hard for his QB to come home with him.

You wonder how in the world it would be hard to convince a man to go play for the St Louis Rams, who are going to be one of the best football teams of all time in 1999, but you only say that because you know what’s coming.

As of the 1999 offseason, the Rams have been a doormat for years. They’ve not had a winning season since 1989, even with great QB play along the way out of Jim Everett, and they’ve not come particularly close either. Bringing in Dick Vermeil as Head Coach has not fixed anything, as the Rams went 4-12 in 1998. Orlando Pace is there, and that’s great, especially for a sack prone QB like Trent is early in his career. However, what else is there?

Saying that sentence about the 1999 Rams sounds absurd, but let’s go through it from Trent Green’s perspective. Isaac Bruce is coming off of two down years in a row in both 1997 and 1998, and hasn’t been truly elite since 1995. Ricky Proehl was good in 1998, but that’s never going to happen twice. You don’t know that Az-Zahir Hakim is going to take the massive step up that he takes in 1999. You don’t know that they’re going to draft Torry Holt. You don’t know that they’re going to trade for Marshall Faulk.

Think of the 1999 Rams like the 2023 Houston Texans. As it turns out, they had an amazing offence loaded to the brim with weapons, but nobody predicted that beforehand. These Rams were no different, but that’s not what got Trent Green home.

Trent was enamoured with two things. The first is the film he was shown by Mike Martz. It became immediately clear that this man knew what he was doing as an offensive coach. It’s an overstatement to say that anybody saw the Greatest Show on Turf coming, but I imagine as a QB in a meeting with the OC about coming to lead it and him showing you everything he’s got, it might have become somewhat predictable in your head, but my supposition is that even this motivation falls in second place.

The allure of home is just hard to pass up. Julie is now pregnant, and I suspect the opportunity to live near family in St Louis as the Greens go through the process of bringing a child into the world would’ve been extremely hard to pass up, even if it means going to the perpetual losers that are the St Louis Rams.

Whichever of these factors are the most important, one of them got to Trent, as he signs a four year deal to stay with Mike Martz and become the starting QB for the St Louis Rams. This is fantastic for Trent Green the human, and as we get into training camp it’s quickly becoming apparent that this is also fantastic for Trent Green the football player.

Everything is coming together perfectly. Trent talks regularly about how fantastic it feels to be able to decorate a house, and for the first time in his career to not have to worry about his roster spot through camp. This allows him a lot more time to just focus on getting better, and he does. A lot better.

The players know what’s going on here. They know that they’ve got something special on their hands as they watch this offence operate. Take note that the Rams also have the best defence in the NFL for 1999, so practicing against them couldn’t have hurt anything. The public is of course not let in on this information. They think it’s going to be the same horrendous Rams that they always are. The preseason over under is set at 5.5. Little to they all know what they’re about to see.

Snap.

Oh no.

It can’t be.

It is. Trent knows it before he even hits the turf.

When you hear a broomstick snap and then feel a burning in your knee, that means that you’re gone for the season with a torn ACL, and everybody is devastated. They’re honestly so devastated that it shines some light onto how well this team had come together over the offseason. Isaac Bruce is seen slamming his helmet to the ground several times in anger. Trent has to cover his face so nobody can see him crying. At the infamous press conference (‘we will rally around Kurt Warner…’) Dick Vermeil breaks down in tears over the news.

Dick might have said how confident he was that they would rally around Kurt Warner and still play winning football, but he didn’t believe it. Nobody believed it. Elsewise everybody wouldn’t have been acting like they’ve just lost the Greatest Show on Turf when Trent hit the ground.

As it turns out, the Rams have not lost out on the Greatest Show on Turf. The only one who’s lost it is Trent Green.

As the season rolls along, and it becomes clear that Kurt Warner is the best QB in the NFL, and that these Rams are a real contender for being the best team in NFL history, and even as the team goes out of their way to try to make sure that Trent feels included it still becomes more and more awkward, Trent (and myself) are left with one question. Could Trent have done this?

This is such a difficult question to answer, because Trent Green and Kurt Warner (while having very similar stories) are very different football players. Trent is a lot more of a make up for frequent mistakes with big plays type (like 2010s Tom Brady), whereas Kurt is a very high success rate type of player (like Peyton Manning). I do think Trent was slightly worse (in 1999, not career wise) than Kurt Warner, but slightly worse makes no difference, as these Rams lost every close game they played anyway.

Kurt Warner generated negative EPA/Play in the NFC Championship and played better than Steve McNair in the Super Bowl. Quite frankly, I think Trent could have done both these things and could have done them in such easy fashion that they really don’t warrant discussing. My question is about the divisional round game, where Jeff George came to play and in real life the Rams had to win 49-37 on the back of 0.505 EPA/Play from Kurt Warner.

You’re going to think this is a ludicrous conclusion to come to, but I think Trent Green could’ve led the Rams to the same 13-3 record and won MVP just like Kurt Warner did. He’ll lead a worse team than this to a 13-3 record in the future. He also could’ve won the NFC Championship and the Super Bowl, neither of which required fantastic Warner performances, but could he have gotten by Jeff George and the Minnesota Vikings in the first playoff game?

Come to your own conclusions on that, but perhaps wait to do so until we see how Trent performs once he gets his own chance in the playoffs. In due time.

In the end the Rams got the Super Bowl, and all Trent got was knee surgery. Going into the 2000 NFL season Trent Green is left in limbo. Eloquently described in Sports Illustrated as ‘neither a loser nor a winner,’ Trent is now an extraordinarily highly paid backup. Still raking in all that money that had to be paid to lure him out of Washington, but with the starting job no longer up for grabs, this leaves Trent in an extremely awkward position of having agreed to a big money contract to come home, then coming to the realization that surely he would be traded.

But he isn’t traded.

This gets even more awkward.

The Rams know how good Trent is, and so they want a first round pick for him, but when you take a step back and think about it logically, this is a man who is now 30 years old. In all that time he’s been a full time starter once, a season in which he played just okay. That is now two years ago, and since then has gone through a torn ACL. Would you want to trade a first round pick for that guy?

I’m normally pretty good at coming up with modern allegories for historical situations, but this is a tough one because I think it’s unprecedented. Trent Green in 2000 finds himself in a situation no QB has ever found himself in before. He remains in St Louis despite clearly being starting calibre, because his team couldn’t trade him for what he’s worth because he’s never had a chance to show what he’s worth in a real NFL game.

They could smell him in St Louis too, because this is the first real example of the Trent Green rule: wherever Trent Green goes, there will be fantastic offence and horrendous defence. I’ve taken the liberty of spending roughly 66 seconds on the following beautiful graph for you:

Even without my beautifully designed legend, I bet you could’ve guessed which year Trent was there.

The Trent Green rule went in Washington, where a fairly good QB was saddled with an atrocious defence and could only lead the team to a 6-10 record. It also goes right now, where in between being one of the better teams ever seen in the NFL in both 1999 and 2001 buoyed by being top five in defence in both of those years in addition to the untouchable offence, 2000 sees the Ram offence be the best it ever gets, but the defence sink to fifth to last in the NFL by EPA/Play.

Can you explain that? The offence gets even better but the defence plummets to the bottom of the league in the one year Trent actually gets to suit up for his hometown squad? I don’t think you can explain it, but this is going to be a theme for Trent’s career.

In fact, the next game Trent plays is the perfect embodiment of this. On the final play of the first half of week eight against the Kansas City Chiefs (which is a beautiful part of this story), Kurt Warner breaks his hand. This means Trent gets to face down this 34-14 deficit that Kurt has created for him. Trent plays fantastic, generating 0.477 EPA/Play on this day, but is matched shot for shot by Elvis Grbac as the Rams lose 54-34. Even Chiefs backup Warren Moon gets in on the action, completing his three passes for almost 100 yards, which is a demonstration of just how bad this game got for the Ram defence as they take their first loss of the year to drop to 6-1.

Healing a broken hand for a QB is not a one week job, so this is going to be Trent’s team for a little while, which surely makes the defensive players shudder, because we all know they’re going to be playing quite badly. Week nine gives us the head to head matchup we didn’t know we needed between Trent Green and 2000 Jeff Garcia, who as of this point is possibly the best QB in the NFL.

This time I will give the Rams’ defence some credit, as they play like it’s 1999 again, holding one of the NFL’s best in Jeff Garcia to negative EPA/Play and just seven second half points as the Rams quietly pull away to a 34-24 win. Week ten is no such luck for Trent, as without 2000 MVP Marshall Faulk the Rams run the ball 14 times and are successful (meaning more likely to score after the play than beforehand) just twice, meanwhile Trent is throwing for over 400 yards and generating 0.357 EPA/Play this day against the Carolina Panthers.

Even despite the horrendous rush offence that the Rams still felt the need to call on 14 times, this game could have been won if not for the -8.12 total EPA contributed by special teams, largely lost on two missed field goals, which seems even more killer once you learn this was a 27-24 loss.

Week 11 is at last an easy win over the New York Giants, who in 2000 are going to be the NFC’s Super Bowl representative (don’t say Trent can’t beat the good teams). Week 12 sees Trent’s former team the Skins come to St Louis, and perhaps they still knew what they were going up against, as this is the first time in his mini comeback that Trent actually struggles, generating 0 EPA/Play flat in a fairly easy 33-20 loss. Week 12 sees a bit more of the same, with Trent generating negative EPA/Play for the first time.

And that my friends is how you go 2-3 as the starter despite generating 0.183 EPA/Play (7th) and 7.63 Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt (3rd), as Kurt Warner comes back for week 14. He shouldn’t have, as he’s absolutely horrendous as the Greatest Show on Turf gets held to three points in a 16-3 loss. This is actually a loss that drops the once 6-0 Rams entirely out of the playoff picture, so Kurt absolutely should not have been in there as he was not ready. Nevertheless, he was, and so Trent’s comeback is over.

It may be over, but it’s proven something.

Seventh and third is very impressive, and all of a sudden the Rams have no trouble at all finding a first round pick to trade for Trent. If he thought he was going to be traded prior to the 2000 season, it’s virtually certain that he’s going to be traded now. The Rams couldn’t afford his contract to begin with, and it’s a miracle that he even made it through the 2000 season on their books.

There are two real teams in the Trent Green sweepstakes. The first is the Miami Dolphins, who are tired of waiting around for Jay Fiedler to have a fully healthy season. As it turns out, he’s going to have one in 2001 and play fantastic, but at the 2001 Draft nobody knows that yet. The team they have to compete with is the Kansas City Chiefs, who have just lost Elvis Grbac in free agency to the Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens, and with the 14th overall pick have no chance of landing Michael Vick, who is clearly going to go first.

There are some other options around the NFL, but after the Miami Dolphins drop out of the race (a decision head coach Dave Wennstadt will take some heat for as the years go along), the Kansas City Chiefs have the privilege of trading their first (14th overall) pick in order to have Trent Green on their team.

That’s that.

Trent’s homecoming is over, and it’s over with shockingly little fanfare. The man brought in from Washington to save the team, and who everybody knew was going to save the team if not for that dang carpet in St Louis, is gone.

In the aftermath of the trade, Trent was shockingly honest (much more honest than any QB would be these days). He knows that he could have led the Rams to the exact same success Kurt Warner did. He knows that if not for that dang carpet that Kurt Warner likely never would’ve gotten any chance in the NFL, and he says all of this aloud for everybody to hear.

This is purely supposition on my part, but it’s almost as if you can feel the bitterness here, and would you not be bitter? Your teammates got Super Bowl rings. Your replacement got to be such a media favourite in your hometown that nobody kicked up much of a fuss when you left, and all you got was five starts and four knee surgeries. I would be bitter too.

I’m not accusing Trent of harbouring any ill will towards the Rams, but it can’t hurt his psyche to know that in the end this was absolutely the wrong choice for them. After another MVP season in 2001, Kurt Warner would fall into being (in literal terms) a real pick for the worst QB in the entire NFL in 2002. He generated -0.108 EPA/Play (37th) and 3.59 ANY/A (40th), numbers so bad that he was benched for third QB Marc Bulger, who played so well in Kurt’s absence that Kurt never get his job back.

As soon as 2003, the Rams were left with an anchor of a contract. They thought they’d signed it for the league’s MVP. In fact they’d given all this money for the NFL’s worst QB (again, that sentence is quite literal). They eventually had to just eat it and tell Kurt to go away, which he did, and then the Rams had neither Kurt Warner nor Trent Green.

There were good Rams teams (2002, 2003, 2004, 2006) that were entirely wasted because of this QB problem. I envision if the Rams could have found a way to keep Trent for just one season longer then the NFC could’ve looked a lot different through the mid 2000s than it did. I can almost assure you that it wouldn’t have been the weakest conference in NFL history in the way that it turned into in the real world, because the Rams (and not the Eagles) would’ve still been sitting right there on top of it, but they picked the wrong horse.

The Rams let Trent Green go in order to keep 962 plays of 0.084 EPA/Play, 6.13 ANY/A football out of Kurt Warner. Those are Geno Smith numbers. I’m not going to disclose Trent’s numbers over this stretch here because I’m going to go into them next time, but I will spoil that they were a great deal better than this.

Take note that in no way am I taking aim at Rams’ brass when I mention all of this. None of us saw Kurt’s falloff coming, but that doesn’t change the fact that they picked the wrong guy, and that one decision cost them at least two (2002 and 2003) real chances at another Super Bowl. In the real world they did not get close to another Super Bowl, and the era faded fast, and this is the reason why.

Just imagine the hype that would’ve come with getting the Rams the second Super Bowl that Kurt Warner couldn’t. There’d be no need for me to be writing this article right now, and I can say with near certainty that Trent would be in the Hall of Fame and Kurt wouldn’t. If you disagree with that assertion feel free to let me know, but I believe it to the tip of my toes.

If you wonder why I always clamour for teams not to get rid of the QB too soon (Justin Fields from Chicago, Sam Darnold from Carolina, Jacoby Brissett from lots of places, etc.), it’s because of this Trent Green-Kurt Warner convergence. You never know when you may be getting rid of the Mustang that is 2001-5 Trent Green in favour of the lemon that is the rest of Kurt’s Rams career.

Trent leaves behind a lot of what ifs in St Louis, but he’s got a lot of career left ahead of him. Click back next time to see the Trent Green rule in full effect, and yet another story involving an elite QB in Kansas City.

Thanks so much for reading.