Take your pick
NFL legend offers Cardinals advice for more interceptions
In the NFL, making your first interception is kind of like remembering your first kiss.
“The first one is always the sweetest one,” Cardinals safety fety Budda Baker said.
For Baker, now in his fourth NFL season, the first one couldn’t uldn’t come soon enough. It finally happened on Monday Night Football l during the Cardinals’ 38-10 victory over the Cowboys at AT&T Stadium. um. Not only did he get his first career pick, but he added seven tackles, es, a sack, two quarterback hits, a forced fumble and a pass defensed in n winning NFC Defensive Player of the Week honors.
Cornerback Dre Kirkpatrick also added an interception as Arizona forced four total turnovers in improving to 4-2 entering Sunday’s showdown in Glendale against undefeated division rival Seattle
(5-0). It marked just the second and third interceptions of the season thus far for the Cardinals, who finished tied for the fewest ewest in the league last season with just seven.
It’s been a recurring theme for the Cardinals’ defense, which hich tied for the second-fewest interceptions (seven) in 2018. Why hy has it seemed to be so difficult for this unit to pick off its share of f passes over the past three seasons?
Former ASU star Mike Haynes had a knack for intercepting the football during his
playing career.
Look at the Cardinals’ Patrick Peterson. A likely future Hall of Fame cornerback, he tallied 20 interceptions in his first six years in the league with Arizona. But he’s had just six in the last three and a half years.
According to Hall of Fame cornerback Mike Haynes, a nine-time Pro Bowl selection out of Arizona State, the art of the interception is a personal want-to and a strong individual commitment to simply making it happen. And with 46 career picks, the member of the NFL’s 100th Anniversary All-Time team ought to know.
“It starts with your mindset,” Haynes, now 67, said during a phone interview Wednesday with The Republic. “My mindset, when I started playing, was, ‘I’m going to get this ball.’ My mindset was not to keep you from getting it. My mindset is, ‘I’m going to get it.’”
Haynes, who was born in Texas and raised in Southern California and was also a track and field star, was blessed with Olympic-type speed. He was known for his ability to back-pedal for at least the first 20 yards or so as fast or even faster than other corners were able to turn their hips, plant their foot, and try to run step-for-step with wide receivers in their routes.
But Haynes learned early on that if you wanted to make an interception, which is what every NFL cornerback always wants to do, you just go and make it. A pick, after all, is only as rare as a great golfer hitting a hole-in-one if that’s the limitation a cornerback sets for himself.
“When you’re trying to knock the ball down, you might miss the ball,” Haynes explained. “And a lot of times, you get a pass-interference call on you because you’re not in good position. Other times, the ball is in the air and you put one arm on the guy, just so he doesn’t get away from you, and you reach the other arm
out to knock the ball down.
“So, there are all these challenges. But if you’re going for the ball, and you get two hands on the ball, that’s a pick. That’s a turnover. And that’s more opportunity for your offense to run more plays and eat up more yards and eat up more clock and hopefully, score more points and win the game.”
Haynes had some memorable interceptions over the years during his days in the NFL from 1976 to 1989 with the Patriots and the Raiders. Probably half of them, he admits, came on tipped balls and deflections. But he also relentlessly studied his opponents, whether it was the quarterback, the receiver he was covering, and even members of the offensive line.
Back in Haynes’ heyday, there were always tell-tales to exploit, some of which still exist in today’s NFL. Sometimes, it’s reading a quarterback’s eyes. Other times, it’s watching a wideout during his pre-snap routine and looking to see if the receiver is double-checking whether his
helmet and chinstrap are on tight, signifying a likely pass play.
Even an offensive lineman can telegraph an upcoming pass play by not putting his hands firmly on the ground, so they can quickly pull up and get ready for a pass rush. As the game has evolved, coaches and players alike have become much more aware of those cheats, but they still happen on occasion.
“Yeah, now those guys put their hands barely down but it’s a run,” Haynes said. “It’s much more difficult now, but defensive backs have evolved over time, too. Being out of the game and seeing what people are doing now, I realize that there’s still a lot of room to teach people. There’s still a lot of stuff to know.
“Look, I talk to a lot of defensive backs and a lot of times they just say, ‘Hey man, my job is to just cover him and make sure he doesn’t catch anything. That’s it.’ And I never felt like that with my job. I always felt my job was to get the ball back for the offense. Stopping the opponent from moving up the field was part of my job, but the most important thing I could do to help my team was to create a turnover.”
Cardinals coach Kliff Kingsbury was a record-setting quarterback during his college days at Texas Tech and he said any passer worth his salt knows how to stay away from defensive backs with an appetite for being uber-aggressive and jumping a route.
“You’re definitely aware of where they’re at,” Kingsbury said. “They just have that savvy and they’ll bait you into stuff, especially if he knows the quarterback. As a coach, you teach coverages a certain way and how guys should play coverages a certain way and some of those guys don’t abide by those rules, if you will, and will sit on routes or do different things.
“They’ll do things that, based upon which you’ve been taught about the coverage, they shouldn’t do, and those are the ones you’ve really got to keep an eye on.”
No current defensive back on the Seahawks has more than 10 career interceptions. Peterson (26) and Kirkpatrick (11), meanwhile, are the only ones on the Cardinals’ roster with more than 10. Byron Murphy Jr., Arizona’s second-year cornerback who nearly had an interception Monday night against the Cowboys, is confident that he knows the secret.
“I think the biggest thing is obviously being where you’re supposed to be,” he said. “Getting to the ball, that’s the No.1 thing, because when you’re getting to the ball, anything can happen. A fumble, a tipped ball. So, getting to the ball is the key. But when you play your leverage and the opportunity comes, you just have to take advantage of it. Just being in the right position at all times, the ball is going to get there.”
But you’ve got to want it, Haynes says. And he should know. A Super Bowl champion who provided a key, late-game interception for the Raiders over Washington in Super Bowl XVIII, he always had a knack for finding the football and taking it away from you.