This story first appeared in Wednesday’s edition of Sporting News Today. If you are not receiving Sporting News Today, the only daily digital sports newspaper, sign up today for free.

TAMPA — So you’re a young quarterback, and you want to go to the Hall of Fame?

Here’s the path beaten for you:

Get drafted, work your way in a position to start and then lead the team for more than a decade. Win Super Bowl(s), set records, book trip to Canton, Ohio.

Tom Brady? Check.

Peyton Manning? Check.

Ben Roethlisberger? Check back, but he’s doing about 100 mph on that road right now.

And then you have Kurt Warner. He was undrafted, he was dumped by the Packers, he had to pass through the Arena League and NFL Europe to get back to the big stage, and that was just before his first incarnation as superstar quarterback.

His story might be a great one — from the HyVee in Cedar Falls, Iowa, to the heights of NFL — but it’s not easy to find peers to Warner’s accomplishments. The manner they’ve come in is just that unusual.

If you skim off the top, you’d conclude he should be in the Hall of Fame. He has two league MVPs and guided two bottom-feeders to three Super Bowl appearances, winning one with a chance at a second ring with a second team Sunday. He is 8-2 in playoff games, giving him a winning percentage that rivals the two greatest of alltime — Bart Starr (9-1, .900) and Brady (14-3, .824).

Warner also has completed 65.4 percent of his passes over his career. His career passer rating is 93.8, fourth all-time, just above Brady’s. Warner has thrown for 182 touchdowns, 17 more than Troy Aikman, 22 more than Joe Theismann, 29 more than Roger Staubach and 30 more than Starr.

And Hall of Fame voters, who take championships seriously when considering a quarterback’s candidacy, could be sold by the result of Sunday’s game vs. Pittsburgh. Some guys in the league, truth be told, already are.

“He’s a Hall of Fame player, no question about it,” said Pittsburgh defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau. “He throws the prettiest pass of anybody I’ve ever seen. And his accuracy, he would compete with any and compare with any of the great quarterbacks that were noted for putting the ball in the right spot at the right time.

“And Kurt’s story is a special story, too. He’s a Hall of Fame quarterback, easy, for me.”

But maybe not so much for everyone else.

The trouble with Warner is the majority of his accomplishments came in three seasons spread out over a 10-year period. In those years — 1999, 2001 and 2008 — he started 16 games. But in zero of the other seven years did Warner start more than 11 games, and there’s a fairly large period, from 2002-06, in which he looked more like Danny Kanell than Danny Marino.

“The thing you have to look at when you look at Hall of Famers is their body of work over the course of their whole career,” said Hall of Fame quarterback Warren Moon, who took his own winding road, through Canada of all places, to induction. “Consistency has a lot to do with it. Kurt had some great, great years with St. Louis, those first three or four years, then he all of a sudden fell off the map.

“But he’s back out of it again, and I think there’s something to be said about that.” Moon cited the Hall of Fame cases of Gale Sayers (successful) and Terrell Davis (unsuccessful) for the sake of comparison. Both had electric starts to their careers, then fell off a cliff.

Dallas Morning News football columnist Rick Gosselin, a Hall voter since the 1980s and recipient of the HOF’s McCann Award, evoked the name of John Henry Johnson, who was inducted in his 16th year of eligibility and ninth year as a finalist.

Johnson was a fairly good player early in his career but posted his best seasons in his ninth and 11th seasons, as a 33- and 35-yearold running back. Like Warner now, Johnson was with his third team by then, playing for the Steelers after starting his career with the 49ers and then going to the Lions.

Maybe it boils down, in the end, to what voters remember most.

With Johnson, the voters remembered how he flourished at an age when running backs rarely do, rather than how he flummoxed through his 20s.

So do you remember the Warner of ’99, ’01 and ’08, years he carried teams to Super Bowls and compiled this cumulative stat line: 1,101-of-1,643 for 13,766 yards, 107 touchdowns, 49 interceptions and a 102.1 passer rating?

Or do you better recall Warner’s other seven years, when he completed 1,226-of-1,914 passes for 14,825 yards, 75 touchdowns, 65 interceptions and an 86.6 passer rating?

And if you take both into account, how do you balance it?

Ask Warner’s favorite receiver, Larry Fitzgerald, and he says, “No question. To be able to lead two teams to a Super Bowl, you look at his numbers: His accomplishments are phenomenal. He just deserves to be in.”

If only it were that simple.

Staff writer Albert Breer covers the NFL for Sporting News. E-mail him at abreer@sportingnews.com.