Kurt Warner

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 where he left off, the quarterback job in St. Louis would be wide open in 2003.