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Warner drives Cards to Super Bowl

GLENDALE, Ariz. — Some sights Philadelphia fans were glad they weren’t here to see:

Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner acting like he did in his glory days with the Rams, running through falling confetti to hug his wife in the front row. (The cameras missed his wife making a “Yuk” face and wiping off Warner’s sweat after he left.)

The University of Phoenix Stadium announcer explaining to Cardinals fans how to do the unthinkable—order Super Bowl packages.

Cardinals middle linebacker Gerald Hayes at a corner of the field, yelling to cameras, holding up an NFC Champs hat: “We got it right now! Look at me! Right now!”

After all that—after fans, some dressed in furry red, looking like Dr. Seuss characters, holding up signs like “We Are Who Nobody Thought We Were!”—the Cardinals talked about their composure on the winning drive and the smart thinking behind the last touchdown play, how they were able to use all that Eagles defensive aggression against them.

“I think the whole key is to understand where it’s coming from—then you can attack it,” Warner said of Eagles blitzes.

Warner’s 8-yard pass to running back Tim Hightower with 2 minutes and 53 seconds left— the game winner in Arizona’s 32-25 NFC championship game victory—was made to look like another kind of screen, a quick screen to a wide receiver outside.

“Not knowing if they were going to blitz or not blitz,” Warner said, the play was set up so it didn’t matter. Three blockers got outside to block. Hightower cut hard inside.

“We brought a lot of those type of speed screens down there in the red zone,” said Cardinals coach Ken Whisenhunt. “We have had a great deal of success with that. So we put a play in off of that, that worked well with that.

“A lot of times with Anquan Boldin down there, he’s so tough around the goal line, we’ll throw little screens to him and blocked it up to get him into the end zone,” Warner said of the fake to Boldin.

The winning 14-play drive took 7 minutes and 52 seconds, mostly mixing up runs, usually to the right side of the line, with passes to Larry Fitzgerald. There were two third-down conversion and a fourth-and-one conversion at the Eagles’ 49-yard line.

Asked if going for that was a hard decision, Whisenhunt said, “Not since we got it, it wasn’t.”

So much for the notion that Jim Johnson’s defense had the advantage here. In the regular season, three of Warner’s four lowest-rated games were against defenses devised by either Jim Johnson or a former assistant who adopted and adapted his theories — against the Eagles, Giants and Minnesota Vikings.

Sunday, Warner’s 145.7 rating was his second highest of the season.

Just as important, he brought his field downfield at the end, just like in the old days.

“I didn’t see any panic,” Warner said of the last drive. “We got into that huddle and I don’t think a lot was said. We knew what we had to accomplish. In guys’ minds there wasn’t any panic, no one was going crazy — hyperventilating or anything like that. We were just in the huddle saying, ’Hey, business as usual.’ “

Business as usual? When it was over, after the confetti fell, an NFL security guard was more on target about the Arizona Cardinals reaching the Super Bowl. The guy kept shouting into his cell phone: “Unbelievable! . . . Unbelievable!”