With a day off and the splendor of the nation's capital at their disposal, Kurt Warner and Larry Fitzgerald instead did the jet-setter thing and went to New York for a Broadway show.
Another group of Arizona Cardinals had the more traditional D.C. outing, strolling past the White House and Capitol and some of the monuments. Some players went to the FBI training center, where they got to knock down a door with a battering ram.
The Cardinals were back at work Wednesday, practicing at Catholic University as part of coach Ken Whisenhunt's experiment of keeping the team on the East Coast between road games against the Washington Redskins and New York Jets. As they reassembled, there were stories to tell about their NFL rarity: a free day in another city during the regular season
"I bought a few things at the Spy Museum to play with,"
said Michael Adams, a practice squad cornerback who walked the city with three teammates. "I'm going to trick some guys this week. I got an electric shock pen, so when somebody asks to use a pen I'm going to shock them with it."
Warner, Fitzgerald and quarterback Matt Leinart were part of a small group that took off Monday night for the Big Apple. On Tuesday, they saw the musical "In the Heights"
before returning to the Virginia hotel that is their home for the week.
"I knew I was going to be in the hotel quite a bit and see a little of D.C.,"
Warner said, "so I just popped over there for a day."
Then there was the group of 15 or so that traveled to Quantico, Va., to learn how FBI agents are trained.
"They let us hit a door with a single-man battering ram,"
receiver Jerheme Urban said. "We got to climb on some helicopters, so that was pretty cool."
Someone who didn't get to enjoy the different surroundings was the man who came up with the idea. While Tuesday is the traditional players day off in the NFL, it's also the day the coaching staff hunkers down in meeting rooms and works on the week's game plan.
"It was a normal day,"
Whisenhunt said. "A lot of work for game-plan day."
The Cardinals (2-1) are here because this part of the country has produced unwelcome memories for a long time. The franchise is 2-15 in the eastern time zone since 2003, including last week's 24-17 loss to the Redskins. Whisenhunt hopes his team will be less tired and better acclimated for Sunday's game against the Jets, where a loss would effectively stifle the momentum from a 2-0 start.
Warner was one of the players who wasn't thrilled about the trip — he'd rather be at home with the family — but concedes there are positives now that he's here.
"Even coming in last week and coming in on Friday, that's a tough process, to come in late on Friday and get acclimated and get your rest and get everything done by Sunday,"
Warner said. "That's the one big benefit we're going to have. We're going to be acclimated, we're going to be in a normal routine come Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We're not going to be out of sorts and rushing to try to get anything done."
Of course, not everything goes as smoothly as it does back home. For one thing, there's no walking to practice from a team meeting. The Cardinals' hotel is in the congested suburbs, while Catholic University is across town in the Northeast quadrant of Washington.
The team was able to work out a deal with Catholic — whose sports teams, coincidentally, are nicknamed the Cardinals — in part because team president Michael Bidwill is a graduate of the university's law school. But concerns about the notorious D.C. traffic prompted the team to move up its morning schedule by an hour to leave time for the buses to make the trip.
When they return to the hotel in the evening, the players should be able to study in their rooms without the distractions of family — assuming they can avoid the temptation of the mammoth shopping mall next door.
"I think there's going to be some downtime as far as preparation is concerned,"
Warner said. "Sitting in the hotel room for a couple of hours every night, thinking about the game plan, maybe not having the distraction of the seven kids running around or somebody waking you up in the middle of the night, as much as I love that."
Said Urban: "It'll be a good opportunity to make sure we learn our playbooks and study some extra film this week. You can't go to the mall all day."
