DeAngelo Hall Sounds Off - And I Like It

While working on the requisite post-draft analysis piece (probably posting tomorrow), I stumbled on yesterday's PFT blurb about some comments from Redskins CB DeAngelo Hall.

If you haven't read them yet ...

DeAngelo Hall: "We'll dominate our division"

"It's based on the talent we feel like we've got. "It's based on the improvements I feel like we've made. It's based on the scheme," Hall said. "The scheme alone is gonna give us four or five more wins. The games we lost by two, three points, we'll win those games, easy."


"We'll dominate our division, off of bringing Donovan McNabb in here, a guy who's dominated the division in the past," Hall said. "So that's just an educated guess. That's an educated guess, and I stand behind. I'll stand behind that. I'll fight and claw to try to make that happen."

Funny how the mind works.

Normally, I brush off empty public bravado, particularly when the source has a history of such vacuous yappery.

Without a doubt, Hall is part diva. And he may be as much flash as substance (like when opposing running backs come barreling around the corner, say, on key third downs, and Hall is the only thing standing between them and game-clinching first downs--no DeAngelo, we have not forgotten).*  And honestly, I've had about enough yappery and diva-ry in my professional football players.

But ...

I'll be damned if I didn't like it. I can't even tell you why, really, not in cogently specific terms. It was just a quick jumble of first reaction thoughts that added up.

Maybe it will piss new Head Coach (and no shrinking violet) Mike Shanahan off enough that he'll run Hall up the proverbial flagpole and use this silliness as an object lesson, furthering setting the new serious tone at Ashburn.

Maybe he'll use it for just the opposite, and not say a word, letting his locker room and the practice field take care of it.

Maybe the other veteran players will take Hall outside, find something resembling a woodshed, and have a little talk with him.

Maybe they will just roll their collective eyes and say something wry about Hall just being Hall.

Or maybe ... just maybe ... some of them feel the same way.

You know?

Come September no one will remember a cocky cornerback's commentary back in April. Between now and then there will be dozens of breathless news cycles of all shapes and sizes that by opening day will long have relegated this blip to memory's discard pile.

So there's really no downside to any of this, not on any meaningful level.  And by tomorrow I may feel different--perspective tends to round off the edges of gut reaction.

But today, for one unguarded moment ... I have to admit liked the sound of it.

I liked that part of me grabbed it, held it up to the light, moved it this way and that inspecting it for clarity, and found it exhilirating. And you know what ... why not?

You can't achieve what you can't conceive.

EDIT: it's even worse than I thought. I am reminded by a caring friend that it wasn't a running back at all, but former Carolina QB Jake Delhomme.

* shudder *