FOX sports rumor on Haley as HC of Chiefs

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Strong resume plus it helps to be a tough coach

Cards’ Haley no stranger to heated discussions

By Charles Robinson, Yahoo! Sports
Jan 22, 1:25 pm EST

GLENDALE, Ariz. – Wideout Larry Fitzgerald leaned over to offensive coordinator Todd Haley in the midst of the on-field celebration and extended an olive branch.

“Thanks for pushing me and keeping your foot on my throat,” Fitzgerald said Sunday after the Arizona Cardinals had punched their ticket to Super Bowl XLIII against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Feb. 1. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

In a way, that brief moment would be the perfect snapshot of Haley. But you would have had to back away and see the entire picture. In one perspective, Arizona’s talented assistant coach had his marquee receiver embracing him – just moments after Fitzgerald broke Jerry Rice’s single-season playoff record for receiving yardage. But almost simultaneously, Haley’s other talented charge, wideout Anquan Boldin, had left the field and was trying to beat the media to the exits, lest he have to talk about a sideline confrontation with Haley which was caught by television cameras.

Thrust into the spotlight as this Super Bowl’s most buzzed-about coordinator, that snapshot displayed the two sides of Haley’s demanding nature: the one player who flourished and thanked his tormentor, the other who fumed and left the premises frustrated. It would be inaccurate to assess just one of the situations and stretch it into something bigger, framing either Fitzgerald’s or Boldin’s relationship based solely on what happened against the Philadelphia Eagles. Indeed, many Cardinals offensive players will tell you they’ve been on both sides of the fence with Haley, loathing him at one moment only to love him in the next. And in the longer view of history, they surely aren’t the first to have that experience.

“You know how many run-ins Todd and I had? Like 150,” ESPN studio analyst Keyshawn Johnson said with a laugh. Johnson credits Haley with molding him into a more complete player during their time together with the New York Jets and Dallas Cowboys. “That incident with Boldin, you know how many incidents like that me and Todd had? We’d have them on the sidelines, in the locker room, at halftime, walking out on the field before the half. That’s nothing new.

“That works for some guys. And some guys, they’ll fold their tent. I’ve watched a lot of guys, they just hate him, just like they hate [Bill] Parcells. Some guys view it as ‘I’m good, and he’s demeaning my skills.’ But that’s not true. He’s sharpening your tools.”

Johnson has long been one of Haley’s biggest advocates, and has been one of the loudest voices championing him for a head coaching job in recent days. He insists that Haley’s demanding coaching style is a rekindling of Parcells – a guy with the ability to break players down, motivate them, rebuild them and create a lasting bond of mutual respect.

And perhaps that is no surprise. While only 41, he’s long been exposed to a rich environment of coaches and personnel men. His father, Dick, was a storied personnel fixture of the Steelers, acting as the team’s director of player personnel from 1971 to 1991. One of Dick’s crowning achievements was what many consider to be the best draft class in NFL history: the 1974 haul that brought in eventual Hall of Famers John Stallworth, Lynn Swann, Jack Lambert and Mike Webster.

During Dick’s time with the Steelers, Todd was exposed to every facet of the franchise: studying game tape, watching practices, acting as a gopher in training camps and essentially soaking in one of the most dominant runs of success in NFL history. But his education would hardly stop there. As the Jets wide-receivers coach from 1995 to 2000, he’d forge a close relationship with Parcells. In that time, he also got to know current New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick (a Jets assistant from 1997 to 1999) and personnel wizard Scott Pioli (also with the Jets during that period), who earlier this month left the Patriots to take over as general manager of the Kansas City Chiefs.

“He’s a smart guy who really understands it from the personnel side,” Belichick said of Haley. “He obviously came up from that side of it with his father, so he has a good understanding of the matchup stuff and working with people’s strengths and weaknesses.

“He worked with Charlie [Weis] and Dan Henning, too, so he has a really good understanding of the game plan and what you’re trying to set up. With the Jets, he had Wayne [Chrebet] and Keyshawn, and he did a good job with them. Wayne had already been in the league for five or six years, but Keyshawn was just in his second year. What he was able to do with Keyshawn was refine Keyshawn’s blocking, his footwork on the sideline, his understanding of the passing game. Keyshawn is a big guy who could always get open, but he wasn’t the fastest guy, so he had things he had to refine.”

Looking back, Johnson credits Haley with much of his growth. But as has been the case with many of Haley’s former players, it didn’t come without some tense moments. Indeed, Haley has had his fair share of those. From Johnson and Chrebet to his time with Marty Booker with the Chicago Bears and Terry Glenn in Dallas, he’s earned a reputation for pushing buttons to get results. He butted heads with Bears offensive coordinator John Shoop, got into some heated “talks” with Parcells and, most famously, had a jagged relationship with Cowboys wideout Terrell Owens.

The friction with Owens may even have cost Haley a shot at taking over the Cowboys upon Parcells’ departure in 2006. Haley interviewed for that job with owner Jerry Jones but reportedly said he couldn’t coach the team if Owens was going to remain. Several days later, he went another way, taking over as the offensive coordinator of the Cardinals.

“Todd was a little sensitive when he first got started working as a coach,” Belichick said. “Again, he had come up on the personnel side. He was a golfer first and then a scout, so those guys are a little off by themselves. Plus, his father Dick was just a wonderful man who would never yell or scream. Dick wouldn’t yell at you if you stole his car; he was that kind of person. So here Todd comes over to the coaching side and it’s a little different. You’ve got Bill [Parcells], myself, other guys, and we’re yelling or screaming something, but he adjusted.”

That Haley “adjusted” may be an understatement. In a way, he has morphed into a coach similar to the New Orleans Saints’ Sean Payton – a talented offensive mind with Herculean vocal chords. He’s the kind of coach who ends up shouting with Boldin and quarterback Kurt Warner in the NFC championship game.

“My wife tells me every week, ‘What in the world were you and Todd yelling about this week?’ ” Warner said. “… I’ve had it happen with Todd a number of times this year, and after the game we’re talking and we’re texting and we’re just saying, ‘Hey, it is what it is.’ We still are going to go to battle and we’re still going to compete and we’re still going to appreciate one another. But sometimes as competitors you get into some of those things.”

Of course, it’s easier to let go when you’re having success, and Haley is undoubtedly paying big dividends for the Cardinals. Over the past two seasons, he’s brought out the immense talent of Steve Breaston, a speedy wideout who was never quite able to realize all his tools while playing at the University of Michigan. He incorporated Edgerrin James back into the team’s scheme late in the season, when most had written off the running back. And he helped Fitzgerald become a sharper route runner and run blocker, while also pushing him – much like Johnson before him – to be aggressive in going up and fighting for jump balls. Haley also has gone beyond showcasing his ability to motivate, ferreting out key tendencies in game tape and helping turn them into big plays.

Against Carolina in the NFC divisional round, he noticed that the Panthers’ defensive backs tended to freeze on certain play-action plays. So he designed a fake pitch to James that froze Carolina’s secondary on a third-and-one play, resulting in a 41-yard completion to Fitzgerald. And it was Haley who pulled “Philly special” out of mothballs, bringing back the flea-flicker designed for the Eagles while he was an assistant for Dallas. The result? A 62-yard touchdown in the second quarter.

“We were waiting for that one,” a grinning Haley said afterward. “Larry made a great play and Kurt really let it go at the perfect time. … We’ve worked with Kurt on maybe just staying with Larry just a little bit longer, even if he looks covered, and I think that has [produced] some of the results late.”

Haley paused for a second, and once more the motivator and tormentor inside him bled through.

“To be honest,” he said with a sly smile, “I think Larry is just playing better, too.”

Charles Robinson is a national NFL writer for Yahoo! Sports.

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