Cardinals take Todd Haley's play from pie in the sky to reality
PRO FOOTBALL
Arizona's offensive coordinator uses air travel time to watch tape and find way to thwart familiar formation by Carolina defense. It helps propel Cardinals past Panthers and closer to Super Bowl.
It's just a scrap of paper marked up with some scribblings. But to Todd Haley and the rest of the Arizona Cardinals, it's a masterpiece.
In fact, the offensive coordinator plans to frame the keepsake and hang it on his office wall.
And why not? The doodling helped propel the Cardinals to the unlikeliest of places -- one victory away from the Super Bowl.
Rewind to last Friday, when the Cardinals were making their four-hour charter flight to Charlotte, N.C., for a divisional playoff game against the Carolina Panthers, who were favored by 10. Throughout the regular season, Arizona failed to win a road game outside of its division, and was 0-5 in games played in the Eastern time zone.
Haley, a former assistant coach with the New York Jets, Chicago Bears and Dallas Cowboys, was doing what he typically does on flights -- or any spare moment, really. He was watching game footage on his laptop.
"I love long flights," he said in a phone interview later. "Just to sit there for four or five hours and watch tape with no distractions. It's great."
On this flight, of course, he was studying footage of the Panthers against NFC South opponents. He was looking for tendencies by Carolina's defense, any pre-snap cues that might tip off what the Panthers liked to do, any weaknesses in their coverage schemes.
"I kept seeing a familiar formation show up," he said. "The left corner did the same thing over and over. I could see how they were trying to play the defense."
So, naturally, Haley went on the offensive. He tore out a sheet of notebook paper, clicked open his pen and started to sketch a play. It called for quarterback Kurt Warner to freeze the defense with a fake pitch, roll right, then look for star receiver Larry Fitzgerald streaking the left middle of the field.
The next step for Haley? Creating a name. He called the play "Fake Toss 339 Taxi Pass X-Pylon."
With that, he got up from his seat, and like a sandlot quarterback in the sky, walked around the plane and explained his creation to each member of the offense. It would work, he told them, and they just might try it against the Panthers.
The Cardinals arrived in Charlotte on Friday afternoon and had only a brief walk-through practice to prepare for the game. Players wear sweats for those, and typically spend about a half-hour walking through roughly a dozen plays.
