While watching the Kansas City Chiefs player-organized practice this afternoon I thought of Todd Haley a number of times.
First, there was a Haley look-alike on the field -- QB Tyler Palko. Sporting the slightly longer hair, Palko looked like Haley from a distance (and his teammates apparently reminded him of that).
Second, though, it was Chiefs QB Matt Cassel whose actions certainly resembled the head coach. As we noted in our practice report, Cassel was clearly in charge of what went down this week.
That he was acting like Haley is no surprise. Cassel told me in a phone interview this afternoon that he set the practices up to resemble a normal minicamp or OTA.
"I just pretty much went off of what we would normally do at a minicamp or an OTA practice," Cassel said. "I just kind of followed that same schedule. We did everything from walk-through to individual drills for 20 minutes, to routes on air with the group and we did run team run period, 7 on 7 and a team pass period.
"And then at the very end, which coach Haley likes to do, is a competitive period whether it's third down -- the first day was two minutes -- and just work on different aspects of your game and we were able to accomplish all that int these three days."
He says his teammates have flown in and out of town this offseason and he's worked with them throwing the ball around but "if you're throwing with one or two guys out there it's not the same."
Thus the need for a more organized get together.
We'll have more coming up on our conversation with Cassel but suffice to say he's ready to get back to football at Arrowhead.