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Danny White on Max Hall

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Danny White on Max Hall 

Post#1 » by Mr. Sun » Sun Sep 5, 2010 4:48 am

The team jettisoned Matt Leinart on Saturday, and we're convinced that everything the Cardinals saw in Hall from the moment he signed is the stuff they never saw enough of in Leinart.

Hall is tough. He's a natural leader. When he gets wide-eyed and licks those fingers, teammates believe in him.

He's got . . .

Well, we're going to let Hall's uncle, former Arizona State and Dallas Cowboys star Danny White, who was off in the White Mountains about to go fly-fishing, try to explain it.

"Coach (Tom) Landry used to say there were guys who had 'it,' " White said. "If you asked him what 'it' means, he'd say 'I don't know. Just "it." '

"You might sit back and watch Max play, and after his team wins you'd say, 'Well, the defense played great. The running game was going good. That's just luck.' You know what? It isn't luck.

"There are guys who other guys just feed off of. The way he played the other night (in the Cardinals' final preseason game) was prototypical Max Hall. All of a sudden, the whole team was playing better - the special teams, the defense, the offensive line. You can't explain that."

Mesa Mountain View fans saw it. Brigham Young fans saw it. Arizona State fans wish they'd seen it.

So how come NFL scouts evidently didn't?

"The draft isn't an exact science," White said. "It works for defensive linemen and receivers and linebackers.

"But so much of the quarterback position is intangibles - leadership, confidence, decision making - that you can't measure.


"A quarterback has a lot of options. Throw to the primary receiver. Check down. Throw it into a tight spot or throw it away. Move around to buy time. Run with it. And he has to factor in field position, the time, the score.

"Max factors those options so fast, as well as anybody I've seen. And he's right most of the time."

Whisenhunt said Hall isn't "the Second Coming at the position" but did confirm he's the second quarterback.

And he joked that Hall probably was mad that he wasn't named the starter.

Coincidentally, when we asked White if he was surprised that Hall emerged as the No. 2 guy, he joked, "He probably thinks he should be starting."

Spooky!

"He's definitely not afraid to make a mistake or call a play or get in somebody's face," Whisenhunt said. "There's a little bit of that. He obviously doesn't like Utah very much, either, based on what I've read."

That got a laugh from the assembled media. Hall got in a bit of trouble for once saying of BYU's rival: "I don't like Utah. In fact, I hate them."

"He's not shy about expressing his emotions," Whisenhunt said. "And some of the best competitors I've ever been around have been like that.

"If you can back it up with consistency of play and how you handle yourself around teammates, that's a good thing."

White agreed.

"That's Max," he said. "When I heard they were going to try to keep him under wraps and put him on the practice squad, I thought, 'Then you better not put him in a game,'

"It might not be pretty. He won't rifle it down the field. He'll just take his team down and score points. He's done it his whole life, and he's done it at a higher percentage than anybody I've seen."


Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/sports/heatind ... z0ycwFQ9Lq

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