[GTripp0012]

I love, love, love, when defenses score touchdowns. That was my big criticism of Blache's defense. When Hall ran in the TD to end the first half against Dallas, I was crazy-excited. We hadn't seen that play since 2007, when big-play Carlos Rogers picked off Jon Kitna and ran it back for the TD. When Hall did it again in Week 7 and totally changed the game, that was really cool. When he did it to Flacco on Thursday, that was also really cool. No one can possibly complain about Hall when he's running back an INT: he's probably going to score.

I agree with what Smoot wrote on Thursday night about the secondary being the team's biggest weakness. That was mostly true in 2009 and 2010 as well, with the only exception being that our offense was so weak during those seasons that as bad as our secondary was, we had worse units on the other side of the ball.

It's been weak back there ever since we cut Springs to give Hall a monster deal. Would Springs still be a major contributor on our 2011 team had we not cut him for Hall? No, of course not. We had to get younger sometime. But now that the other shoe (Rogers) has dropped, and we brought in a player stylistically similar (though, IMO, better) than Hall in Josh Wilson, I think we've completed a large downgrade on the outside that took three years to complete: we took our corners from a team strength under Grilliams to a team weakness under Haslett. And we're actually paying out more at the position now than we were before.

And I just don't think you can scheme around having a bottom ten pass defense with creative blitz packages. At some point, the secondary just has to get better.