Albert Haynesworth may have played his last down as a Washington Redskin.  That's probably not the case.  But who really knows?  With the trade deadline approaching this afternoon, you have to at least allow for the fact that someone is going to meet the Redskins asking price of a second round pick.

But who?

The Redskins are a piece short on defense, and it's become clear over his three games in the lineup that Albert Haynesworth isn't the missing piece the team needs to compete.  They'll explore offers for him, but they're not going to settle for below market value, and so if Haynesworth remains on the team, they will have to increase his role to receive that value.  But the Redskins, a defense full of movable pieces, need to add another piece in the secondary in order to compete with the big dogs in the NFC East.  That includes pretty much any team that isn't Dallas right now.

Pass Defense

Not such a bad game from the perspective of the pass defense.  The Colts threw for 8.0 yards per attempt in this game.  That's a good day for any quarterback, but it's right around Peyton Manning's career average.  For this season, Manning is around 7.5 yards per attempt.  In essence, Manning got most of his yardage on the day on one coverage-splitting play in the first quarter.  He made a number of throws that could have been crushing mistakes if the Redskins would have just caught the ball.

Still, I left the tape feeling like the Redskins had possibly allocated too many resources to the passing game.  Let's take the example of how the Redskins linebackers and one lineman always stand up and walk around in the dime package.  This is useful because with subtle, hard to follow movements, the Redskins can walk around and more or less throw off the blocking schemes.

To combat this, Peyton Manning went no huddle.  Actually, the Colts always go no huddle.  On about three or four drives in this game, the Colts went legitimate all-out offensive hurry up.  Three or four snaps per game minute for an offense that never wants to see the football hit the ground.  This exposed a flaw in the Redskins defensive gameplan.

The Redskins found themselves playing a lot of base defense looks, running what would essentially be a four man front.  But the four lineman, Holliday or Golston at the nose tackle, and then Lorenzo Alexander as a stand-up three technique, and Brian Orakpo with Andre Carter at the dual ends.  It was a four-two nickel look with dime personnel: Reed Doughty played linebacker most of the day.  He did fine, but he wasn't confusing anyone by looking like a full time linebacker.

The Redskins could have stopped the run with that personnel, but really struggled with leverage against Colts offensive linemen (particularly Alexander).  They just couldn't anchor against players who had their hands in the dirt, and on a majority of the hurry up plays, it was a struggle just to get lined up and run the same four man rush.  There wasn't any time between plays with the Colts not making any substitutions, and so any plan about running creative pressures against Manning went by the wayside early.  If you think that wasn't by design, you're not familar with Manning's work.  Manning was well aware his offense wasn't going to be able to handle an onslaught of blitzes, so this is something he could do to protect them from that.

With that said, the Redskins got a lot of pressure on Manning in this game, which kept him from systematically carving the pass defense to shreads.  Manning missed a bunch of open receivers in this game because the Redskins were able to get a lot of limbs around him with just a four man rush.  By my count, the Redskins had 13 hits or hurries on 12 plays.  Manning's stats on these plays would be good for a mortal, but are well below expectation for Manning: 6 for 12 for 5 passing first downs and 75 yards, just 6.25 yards per attempt.

Manning took advantage of a couple of match-ups in this game.  His number one key was anytime we put Reed Doughty on Dallas Clark, which would have been our match-up in any man coverage situation.  He lived off that match-up whenever he got it.  Secondly, he looked for Reggie Wayne against Phillip Buchanon.  That would have been a match-up you'd expect the Colts to win, but in a mixed bag of results, it was probably won narrowly by Buchanon and decisively so on the last passing play of the game by the Colts.  Early on, the Colts thought they might be able to hit Austin Collie in the seam behind Carlos Rogers, but that one was a decisive win for Rogers who continues his streak of hot play -- and of games with a dropped interception, now at four.  The final match-up the Colts went with was anyone-with-a-pulse (Pierre Garcon or Blair White) against DeAngelo Hall.  The Colts had great success throwing against the "even" coverages of the Redskins (cover 2, quarters), significantly less success against the coverages that had Kareem Moore in the middle of the field.

A big problem with the dime coverages was that zone or man was easily definable by the positioning of the three safeties.  We did what we could to disguise our zones earlier in the game, but on the Garcon 57 yard TD, we fooled no one.  The problem was that Manning's read against what we tried to show (cover three) would have been identical to what we actually ran (quarters).  When we rotated the coverage, dropping Landry, all Garcon had to do was alter the depth that he ran that skinny post at in order to run at an angle that puts any zone coverage in a bind.  DeAngelo Hall's only job on that play is to stay over the top of the route.  Landry needs to be in a position to play on that ball.  Landry was out of position at the snap, of course, which is his excuse.  Hall just got run past.

Run Defense

Here is where the dime package really hurt us, because without the lineman putting their hands on the ground, they can be driven off the ball by anybody (and were).  Without the flexibility to substitute, the Redskins were in dime most of the game.  HB Blades started for Rocky McIntosh at linebacker.  I believe that he played just four plays in the game: the first two, and two of the last three.  I know on the third drive of the game, Perry Riley got a snap at linebacker and made a very violent tackle.  He and Blades had a tackle each in this game.  For 94% of this game, London Fletcher was a lone linebacker.  He played well.

Still the Redskins' desire to force Manning to put the ball on the ground and take the game out of his hands was systematic in nature.  We weren't looking for all time great run prevention numbers in this game.  We were just looking to keep their rushing stats to not look like passing stats.  Even at that standard, they failed.

You can blame shoddy tackling for the difference between tempting Manning to run the ball, and losing a game in the process.  Joseph Addai and Mike Hart were going to have an endless string of 6 yard carries, but a 14 yarder to the right side and a 46 yarder to the left side included missed tackles by DeAngelo Hall and Kareem Moore respectively.  A 13 yard TD run occured because Reed Doughty (at linebacker) whiffed in the hole, and because neither of the aforementioned "football players" made any semblance of a tackle attempt on Addai.  Moore might have actually assisted him in staying on his feet.  Moore's footing was terrible the whole game, slipping to the ground more or less any time he made a cut.

A solution

There are no moral victories against the Colts, which is the frusterating thing about playing them.  We may have learned some life lessons, but no team out there is emulating the Colts approach to things.  No film from this game is going to improve us in the future.

However, I believe that we need a solution to our defensive issues, personnel wise, and that we need that player in our secondary.  In my assessment, we have in DeAngelo Hall and Kareem Moore two identical secondary players who have similar skill sets and can back up one another.  We do not have a cover corner in either of them.  If Hall and Moore split time as free safeties, we would need another corner to field a nickle unit (Philip Buchanon is currently playing a the level of a starter).

Going bold, I would try to secure CB Nnamdi Asomugha from Oakland, who could be had from them before the trade deadline (Tuesday) for the right price.  That's a team that would welcome Albert Haynesworth with open arms, problem being that they don't exactly have a need at defensive tackle with Richard Seymour in the lineup.  But Seymour is an impending free agent and Haynesworth has a team-friendly contract, mostly to the cost of Dan Snyder.  That could be an attractive long-term move for the Raiders.

And what a move it would for the Redskins to bring in one of the game's best cover corners to complement Carlos Rogers and Phillip Buchanon.  This would probably cost future draft pick (2012?) considerations, perhaps in the first round.  But Asomugha would be a big pickup for the Redskins, has a contract option for the 2011 season, and could tilt the balance of power in the NFC East in favor of Mike Shanahan's team.

More subtle solutions would include using Adam Carriker, our best down lineman, more often in passing situations as an interior rusher alongside Haynesworth (so long as Haynesworth is a Redskin).  We can push Lorenzo Alexnader to the edge, and bring LaRon Landry up and get to Jay Cutler in creative ways next week.  London Fletcher showed great versatility this week in moving from primarily the strong side to the weak side with Rocky sidelined, and we might find that playing more HB Blades or Perry Riley is an excellent short and long term move that improves us as a defensive team.

But I believe right now the biggest need for additional personnel is in the secondary, where the Redskins just don't match-up well on the offensive right side, where Hall's short coverage gets little deep help from Landry or Kareem Moore.  Teams are really going to keep pressing us there until we show we can stop it.  Right now, I'm not certain the Redskins can stop anyone, through the air.

Conclusions

What needs to be said about this past match-ups: we still think of the Colts of an offensive juggernaut, but that's really not the case anymore.  The Colts are no longer a great football team.  They are a still quite good football team that wins battles relative to it's opponents strengths and weaknesses, and makes sure to have the game in the hands of Peyton Manning when it matters most.  They never trailed in this game.  That's not a good sign, because the Colts made many of mistakes and gave the Redskins every chance to seize control of this one.

The Redskins defense lost it's battles to an offense that is more talented than it is, understandably.  However, it's minor wins in the passing game were combined by inexcusable lapses in concentation against a running game that no team considers to be a threat.  That's not really excusable for a proud unit like the Redskins.  The Colts netted under 300 passing yards.  If given that fact at the beginning of the game, Redskins fans need to be confident that their team could have pulled out a close one.

We'll look into some of the offensive reasons why the Redskins came up just short, but it's not inaccurate to look at this game as another close home loss to an AFC South team that simply got away.

Mike Shanahan mystifies me. He fascinates me, too. Six weeks into the season and I'll be darned if I can figure him out.

I like that he is playing younger players. I wonder if he's putting the best defense on the field with those players instead of Albert Haynesworth who wasn't even active for the game against the Indianapolis Colts.

Haynesworth said that, tragedy aside, he was ready to play and that he wanted to play. But he suspected since his return to practice last Thursday that he would not play since he only practiced with the scout team and wasn't in any defense package for the Colts game.

Haynesworth is quoted in a story appearing on the Sunday Night Football All Access web site where he reminded that he had more experience against the Colts than any other player on defense.

That's a good point. I hear coach Shanahan say he wants to win now. He did not win with DT Vonnie Holiday on the defensive line. Big Al might have made some difference on a critical down or two.

How do we read that Haynesworth spent the week on the practice squad? Sounds bad, yet Brandon Banks spent the week before the Eagles game on the scout team. The Redskins signed Banks to the active roster the day before the game and he played.

When Chris Cooley let slip that Haynesworth was practicing with the scout team, Shanahan said it meant nothing. Every veteran would spend time on the scout team.

So what was with the talk until Sunday that Haynesworth was a game time decision? Was it to keep the Colts guessing? Is that how you win?

The Washington Redskins forgot how to build perennial winners. That sad situation predates Daniel Snyder. Norv Turner's regular season record here was 49-59-1, .454, between 1994 and 2000.

Shanahan adheres to a process. Practice and you can stay. Practice well and you can play. Practice perfect and you can start. I love that approach. The Washington Redskins need that approach. It is still disconcerting to see high value players on the inactive list.

Greg Blache was rigid in his approach to defense and inflexible in his use of players. That seemed bad to me. Isn't it equally bad when Shanahan does the same?

Sunday Night Football shines a spotlight on trade-bait players. Do we infer from Haynesworth's absence Sunday that Shanahan does not seek to trade him?

Is Shanahan making the point that winners are not built around stars. Stars emerge from the process. To whom is he making that point?

The Redskins were in the Colts game until the end with a mix of young (Torain, Armstrong) and veteran (Holiday, Galloway) players. Torain was the leading rusher in Week 6 going into the Monday Night game. That contest features Chris Johnson (Titans), so Torain's lead may not hold up. But we don't expect to see that performance when Clinton Portis is on the bench.

You sense that Shanahan is moving in the right direction. The table is set for a 10-win season next year. But some of Shanahan's moves are real head-scratchers.

That's one thing I miss from last season. Jim Zorn was candid. Shanahan obfuscates. The press will ask him about Haynesworth Monday. Shanahan will give a 30-word answer that divulges nothing.

He is a mystery.

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The writers at Redskins Hog Heaven figured the Washington Redskins for seven or eight wins this season. The Redskins are on that pace. The only surprise is the three teams they actually beat

The scenario  we envisioned for the Redskins to break out to nine or more wins involved Albert Haynesworth and tonight's opponent, the Indianapolis Colts.

This is the last round of weekend games before the NFL trading deadline on October 19. What better time for Big Al and Mike Shanahan to work together on the outcome they both seem to want--Albert elsewhere. Both have been saying all the right things lately. That can be interpreted as talking up Haynesworth's trade value.

A great showing tonight might brand Haynesworth enough as a "must have" player that some GM might kick in the draft picks Washington needs to restock the team. GMs will just sit on their hands otherwise and wait out the Redskins who may release Haynesworth next season.

Haynesworth suffered a death in his family. He took bereavement leave from the team and did not return until Thursday. People deal with death in ways unique to themselves. We don't know how Big Al is coping. Whether he plays or not is a game time decision and it's likely his decision.

Working your craft while dealing with death is incredibly difficult. If you are my age, you've been through it. If you have, then you know what must be going through Big Al's head today. If you are under 40, just sit tight. Your day is coming.

To over-simplify the point, one can cope by withdrawing from work, or throwing oneself into it. If Haynesworth's head is not in tonight's game, he should remove himself without any comment or finger pointing from the peanut gallery.

Sports teams are entertainers and losses suffered by NFL players are very public. Its affect can take strange turns in the locker room. Look no further than what happened at FedEx Field December 2, 2007.

What we learned from the 2007 Redskins

The Redskins tried to channel grief from the death of Sean Taylor into an emotional win against the Buffalo Bills. Grief led them to a series of dumb moves. The 'Skins opened their defense of the Bills' first possession with 10 men on the field to honor Taylor as the "missing man." LaRon Landry played deep safety as thestopgap against a long pass.

Instead, the Bills ran the ball gaining 22 yards on the play. The Bills did not score, but there were severe repercussions for the Redskins.

Daniel Snyder seethed that Gregg Williams colluded with the defensive players on the stunt without the knowledge of head coach Joe Gibbs. It cost Williams any shot at head coach when Gibbs stepped down at the end of the season.

Grief-stricken Snyder would name Vinny Cerrato as executive vice president of football operations. Cerrato led the coach search that gave us Jim Zorn and all that followed.

Gibbs was holding his emotionally compromised team together while rethinking life and where he was at that moment. His then three-year old grandson was diagnosed with blood cancer. For the second time in his professional career, he found himself in touch with his family by video while he was with the team. Life was repeating itself and he did not like it.

Late that game, Gibbs attempted to call two consecutive time-outs to ice Buffalo kicker Rian Lindell's go-ahead field goal attempt. Lindell was successful on both attempts. The Bills won a game 17-16 that they were expected to lose.

Gibbs was lambasted afterwards for the double time-outs, mostly by insensitive fans who said he lost it to age rather than grief. Gibbs never complained, but the episode must have fed thoughts of "I don't need this sh*t." He walked away at the end of the season.

The Bills ranked low in rushing defense that season. They held Clinton Portis, Taylor's close friend, to 50 yards rushing. They went 1-3 in their last four games.

The Redskins won their last four games to make the playoffs. If they hadn't worn their grief on their sleeves, they might have beat Buffalo that night to finish the season 10-6 instead of 9-7. They might have avoided the trip west to face the Seattle Seahawks, a 35-14 loss. They, not the New York Giants, might have upset the Cowboys the following weekend then faced the Packers for the conference championship. Gregg Williams might have been named head coach.

Playing well was the fitting tribute to Sean Taylor.

The dream scenario

If life flowed like a Hollywood script, Haynesworth would be so inspired by his brother's death that he would be a one-man wrecking crew on national television tonight against the Colts to fuel a Redskins win.

The Colts are not a movie. Life doesn't follow a script. Players should play if their head is in the game, if they are making smart plays, or at least avoiding dumb ones.

If playing well helps Haynesworth cope with his loss, then good for him and God help the Colts.

If Big Al isn't at that point, then he should take time out and God help him.

However it goes, no comments from the peanut gallery please. Grief is going to happen to you too.

Point after: Redskins Hog Heaven again extends our condolences to the Haynesworth family for their loss.

My Magic 8 Ball says the Redskins will win tonight.

UPDATE: SNF All-Access - Haynesworth Woulld've "Loved to Play" Tonight

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Redskins Hog Heaven's preseason guess at the Washington Redskins final record was seven or eight wins. As gratifying as is Washington's 3-2 start, neither that record nor the Redskins middle-of-the-pack performance should cause visions of sugarplums this Christmas. The Redskins will be closer to 4-4 by midpoint of the season than to six or seven wins.

But hey, an eight win season is the benchmark of success for new coaches. Check the list of head coaches who finished 8-8 in their first year:

Joe Gibbs, Washington, 1981
Mike Ditka, Chicago, 1983 (First full season)
Marty Schottenheimer, Cleveland (4-4), 1984
Marty Schottenheimer, Cleveland, 1985
Marty Schottenheimer, Kansas City, 1989
Mike Shanahan, Denver, 1995
Marty Schottenheimer, Washington, 2001
Marty Schottenheimer, San Diego, 2002
Jim Zorn, Washington, 2008

The list is not exhaustive, and yes, you could call it the Marty and those other guys list. An eight-win season would be an accomplishment for Mike Shanahan. A win over defending conference champion Indianapolis Colts would cause everybody to rewrite their season projections to nine-plus wins for Shanny and the 'Skins.

The Redskins are 3.5 underdogs to the Colts Sunday night. That's expected. But beating the Eagles in Philadelphia and Washington's eye-opening win over the Packers last Sunday has the smart guys reassessing.

Stat-master Paul Bessire at Predictionmachine.com upped his assessment of the Skins. After accounting for Mike Shanahan's tendencies and the performance of Redskins players, Bessire has the "Skins winning 44 percent of the 50,000 simulated games of the Colts. That would be unremarkable except that Bessire's simulation had Washington winning 30 percent of those simulations.

Look at this. While the Colts have out-performed the Redskins in passing yards (1586 to 1243), Donovan McNabb's passing yards-per-attempt is slightly higher than Peyton Manning's (7.7 to 7.4). For all of Washington's troubles in the passing game, they, like the Colts, rank in the NFL top 10 in net passing yards (Redskins 7th, Colts 4th).

The Redskins out-performed the Colts in rushing yards (443 to 399). Both, however, are in the bottom half of the league in rushing.

The Redskins are seriously scoring-deficient in comparison to the Colts (136 to 89). Washington overcame that in other games by playing close and running enough big plays to pull out a win. That's the point here. We don't want to see any big leads by the Colts.

Two weeks ago, Washington handled Michael Vick (mostly) by controlling his run to force him to pass. We don't want Manning to pass. We want him to run. Manning is too wily to do that, but he might be pressured to throw the ball away more than he wants. Doing that contains WRs Reggie Wayne and Austin Collie.

Do that and Washington can win this game the old fashion way: run the ball; stop the run; knock the snot out of Peyton Manning.

The Washington Redskins jumped six places to the 14th spot on the Bloguin Week Five NFL Power Poll. Washington's rise comes after their eye-opening win over the Green Bay Packers.

The Redskins face another test when Peyton Manning and the sixth-ranked Indianapolis Colts visit FedEx Field for a Sunday Night Football contest this, um, Sunday night.

Bloguin is a network of citizen journalists running over 100 sports sites. Twenty sites, including Redskins Hog Heaven, cover the NFL. The Bloguin NFL Power Poll is a compilation of rankings by the writers.

The New York Giants are the highest ranked NFC East team at eighth place. The Philadelphia Eagles are ranked 15th and the Dallas Cowboys fell to 19th.

The Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers are ranked one and two. AFC teams hold five of the top six spots.No NFC West team ranks in the top 23. The Arizona Cardinals rank 24th.

Through 5 weeks, the Redskins have won three games against three of the better teams in the NFC.  They have lost to the two softest teams on their schedule, however, which has left fans wondering exactly what it all means.  Well, that's why I titled this article: "Redskins Statistics and What they All Mean."  If there's a player who is playing in games for the Redskins, I have a statistic on them.  Even if I had to create it to have one.

Lineman Yard Average; Game-by-Game Table

I've accepted the reality that the formatting of this post is going to be wonky.  Joomla is pretty good at sorting out cut and paste tables out of spreadsheets, but I have little flexibility to alter the way things look.

You may remember Lineman Yard Average from last year: it's a charting project of lineman involved at the point of attack on running plays (POA runs are subject to the decisions of a running back and tendencies of the playcaller).  Wherever the run hits the first level, I mark up to three lineman at that point, trying to isolate successful lineman from unsuccessful linemen.  Only run blocking ablities are considered here.

Here's a good example of somewhere the Redskins are unquestionably improved from last season.  Last year, the Redskins best large sample lineman was Mike Williams, who scored a 4.18.  Look at my rankings list below.  There are four different starters (or in Heyer's case, a spot starter) over that figure this season.  Our best run blocking game last year was the Denver game, where our average LYA run was 4.6 yards and the median was 4.4 yards.  We've already had a game better than that this year.  The Eagles game was the best rushing game by the Redskins in the past two seasons.

However, we've already had two stinkers against the Texans and the Packers that are well positioned with the worst games of last season: both Giants games and both Cowboys games.  The improvement against the Cowboys to this season is evident in the statistics, as is the improvement made in blocking by both of our tight ends.  Cooley is up .8 yards from last seasons total and Fred Davis is up .3 yards from last year's total.

The other guy making a major improvement is Casey Rabach. He had a classic stinker against the Rams (Fred Robbins still owns him), but his showing against Jay Ratliff was much more respectable than in the past and on the whole, Rabach is up .8 yards from last season.  Trent Williams has not been a useful player in run blocking thus far.

Lineman Yard Average Rankings (minimum 10 attempts)

1. Will Montgomery 4.98 (sample size: 10)
   
2. Casey Rabach 4.59 (sample size: 41)
   
3. Stephon Heyer 4.49 (sample size: 27)
4. Jammal Brown 4.31 (sample size: 22)
5. Artis Hicks 4.28 (sample size: 33)
6. Chris Cooley 4.05 (sample size: 33)
7. Kory Lichtensteiger 3.94 (sample size: 35)
8. Mike Sellers 3.70 (sample size: 22)
9. Fred Davis 3.55 (sample size: 15)
10. Trent Williams 3.00 (sample size: 14)
11. Derrick Dockery 2.40 (sample size: 10)

I think that it's a good thing that with the exception of Montgomery, all of our small sample linemen populate the lower end of this list.

Redskins QB Pressure Statistics

The Estimated Sacks formula I am using takes simple hurries, hits, and holdings drawn, adds them together and divides by six to project how many sacks a player has based on the idea that the players with the most sacks are the players who spend most of their time around the quarterback.

All of these statistics are heavily dependant on usage as a rusher.  Players who rush more often will score better.

Pass Coverage

If you've read Hog Heaven for any substancial amount of time, you are familiar with this chart, but the color coding is something new this year.  I added in NFL baselines for the statistics so you can get a feel for how the Redskins are doing at a glance.

What stands out is that all of our most targeted players (the three corners) are giving up more yards per throw than the league average.  A lot of those throws are unconstested throws made by the quarterback while the Redskins are trying to pass someone off in the secondary.  In five games, Rogers, Hall, and Buchanon have combined to give up 700 passing yards just between them.  That's most in league for a CB trio, but the main issue is the insane number of targets they have. 95 between them, also most in the league.

You see, the Redskins are giving up a mere 6.3 net yards per pass (including yardage lost to sacks), which is a better figure than that of 14 teams in the NFL.  The fact, then, that the Redskins rank 30th in passing yards against is a function of the fact that pass-heavy teams have thrown up to 50 times a game against them.  There's no reason to overrate this fact: the three corners give up around a league average number of yards per throw, but the Redskins rank well above the league average at nearly every other position.  This, considering that the Packers and the Texans have both thrown more than 50 times against the Redskins in overtime thrillers.

The inside linebackers have very different coverage roles.  London Fletcher lines up to the tight end side and is primarly responsible for the Tight Ends in this defense.  Lorenzo Alexander has the same coverage responsibility when not pass rushing.  On the other side, the weakside linebackers are primarily responsible for running backs out of the backfield.  That's why Fletcher and McIntosh's coverage numbers look so violently different.  McIntosh has little control to defense passes, but instead holds the ability to go make the tackle before successful yardage is reached.  Same with Orakpo on the rare chance he isn't rushing the QB.  But Fletcher's passes defended are thrown down the field over five yards, and so he needs to prevent the completion to be successful.  So far: less than half of passes charted for Fletcher have been caught, and he's having another great coverage year.  Like the corners, his YPT total is being hurt by completions made behind him in holes in the zone.

There are two weaknesses in our defense, personnel-wise: DeAngelo Hall and Andre Carter (and Chris Horton, whenever he plays).  Carter has been largely replaced by the far superior Lorenzo Alexander in coverage.  Hall is going to play as long as he doesn't get beat deep.  That 86.1% completion figure is not a misprint, he's really allowing charted completions at that rate.  However, it's an inflated number.  Our opponents target Hall in "smoke" concepts based on the principle that you want to make Hall come up and tackle a receiver.  That's more or less an automatic completion for the quarterback.  As long as Hall makes the tackle quickly, it won't be a "successful" completion.

Of course, teams have targeted Hall successfully 64% of the 36 times they have tried and he's given up more yards against than anyone on the team.  Stats don't know that Hall won us a game with an intelligent strip of Tashard Choice before the half ended, but they do see that play as one of the 36% of the time that QBs have completed a pass against Hall that was stopped short of the target line.

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Deion Sanders is livid that he was named the NFL's 34th Greatest Player.

"This is preposterous," said Sanders in an interview on The NFL Network today. Sanders was incensed that he was not among the top 10.

I can relate. I'm still outraged that the Washington Redskins' Darrell Green is listed at No. 75 of the 100 Greatest NFL Players. The list is compiled by a list of experts and revealed by The NFL Network.

As bad as that was, it pales in comparison to rage burgundy-bleeding fans felt when Dan Snyder signed Sanders out of retirement to the 2000 Redskins while Green was still on the roster.

Sanders, then age 33, averaged 7.4 yards per punt return as a Redskin. He averaged 11.5 yards per return in 1999 for the Dallas Cowboys. On defense, he snagged four interceptions for 91 yards.

The Redskins finished third in the division at 8-8 that season.

OK, so Green was 40 that year. He picked off three INTs in 1999 and might have matched Sanders' punt-return performance if given that role.

Yeah, still bothers me. Of all people to add the NFL's first team with a $100 million payroll, Snyder had to go all Neon on us.