You Don’t Do Any Business on His Corner

When Mike Haynes caught a pass in Super Bowl XVIII, you might have thought that was the dream of a lifetime.

Not true. If Mike Haynes had a dream about catching passes in a Super Bowl, it would have been a whole flock of them, including perhaps the winning one with only seconds to play in a daring leap against a fooled secondary. His picture would have been flashed on every television tube in the country all night long.

You see, Mike is like the rest of us. Everyone wants to be someone else. The king envies the Gypsy. And vice versa. The comic yearns to play Hamlet, the tragedian wants to get laughs. Even a sportswriter thinks that, except for a lousy break, he might have been Hemingway. Caruso might have been sorry he couldn’t dance.

Mike Haynes might be the best cornerback ever to play pro football. It’s for sure he’s one of them. He raised the play of the position to an art form. No one can remember a quarterback ever completing a long bomb over his head for a score. He’s too good for his own good.

“Ever notice nothing ever happens in Mike Haynes’ zone?” a coach once asked innocently.

Haynes never gets the headlines because the opposing coaches take his position right out of the game plan. Mike is like a batter you pitch around, a fortress a good general bypasses.

There’s a reason for this. If you put a pass play into motion in Haynes’ area, chances are he will turn out to be the receiver. In his first year in the league, Mike caught eight. Pretty good for a guy who wasn’t even in the pattern. He rolled up 649 yards with the football. Pretty good for a guy who never gets the football on purpose.

The interceptions dwindled as the ball came into his air space with less and less frequency. Quarterbacks preferred to complete passes to their own people.

But Mike had never envisaged this role for himself. He felt like an artist who is called upon to do calendars. Or ceilings.

Mike could run the 40 in 4.4, sprinter’s speed. He had all the moves and, Lord knows, could catch anything he could reach.

When he was a young aspiring player, Mike wanted to run pass routes forward and, when he got to Arizona State in the ‘70s, he thought he would. But when the coach, Frank Kush, announced in the press one day that a young man he had recruited in Texas was “the greatest receiver I have ever seen,” Mike knew he was in trouble.

John Jefferson turned out to be everything Coach Kush said he was and Mike Haynes turned out to be a cornerback.

“I wanted to play, I wanted to contribute,” Mike says. “So I had to learn how to run backwards.”

Mike Haynes being Mike Haynes, he became the best there was. But his objection to cornerback was not all aesthetic.

“I checked the money position of cornerback,” he says. “The only ones traditionally receiving less than corners were the kickers and the punters. There is a definite pecking order in the NFL. Quarterbacks get the most, followed by running backs, then wide receivers, then linebackers, defensive ends and offensive tackles and guards.”

Cornerbacks were the charladies of the NFL. They were out there in the killing zone but they got enlisted men’s pay.

Actually, Mike Haynes became a Raider precisely because he couldn’t take the accepted order of pay for play.

He kept holding out for more from the New England Patriots, who reacted as if the butler wanted the family car.

After three seasons in which he intercepted 19 passes and made the Haynes vector his private No Man’s Land, Haynes held out in earnest. He sat out five games and proposed to make it the whole season.

Technically, he was a free agent but, according to the complicated rules of pro football, any signing team had to give up precious draft rights to the Patriots if they signed him. Giving up draft choices is to a football team what giving up mineral rights would be to a Saudi Arabian.

When the Patriots told the Raiders’ Al Davis that “Haynes will cost dearly,” Davis’ reply was, “I would expect he would.”

The Raiders wanted Haynes because they knew he meant instant Super Bowl. Just stir in one Mike Haynes, add water and, presto! Tampa and the rout of the Washington Redskins.

As Al Davis expected, it cost him dearly. A first- and a second-round draft choice and Haynes’ stiff demands.

“I tried to equalize the position in the payroll department,” Haynes says.

If he couldn’t be a wide receiver, Haynes at least wanted to get paid like one.

But if Mike Haynes dreamed of being Lynn Swann or Lance Alworth, a lot of kids on sandlots or high school fields dream of being Mike Haynes.

He brought a new dimension to the post. He turned it into a real coffin corner for the quarterbacks.

“It’s a tough position,” he says, adding that it’s as much cerebral as physical and calls for a back to be able to read a receiver like a pitcher sizing up a batter.

“You have to know what his tendencies are. You have to try to get him to do what you want him to do. But you also have to know the quarterback.

“I remember one time very early on, Terry Bradshaw was running around loose back there, scrambling under a rush, and he had to throw 60 yards across field to get to where Lynn Swann was running.

“So, I just let Swann go, figuring if he threw it, I would intercept it. No one could throw the ball that far, I figured. Well,the pass went over my head and Swann caught it for a first down. Only a 7-yard gain but the pass went 67. I never let a Bradshaw receiver get between me and our goal line after that.”

Every cornerback’s nightmare is the long touchdown bomb.

“You have to train yourself not to look back too soon when you’re running with the receiver,” Haynes says. “You have to be able to sense by his eyes or his body language when the ball is coming. He tells you where the ball is. If the defensive back looks back and the ball’s not there, he’s beaten.”

What makes Mike Haynes great is, he tries to be the one there when the ball is. And to make the catch. After all, he feels he’s entitled. In his heart, he’s still a wide receiver.