NFL Rookie Blog: Leon Hall

Staying Positive During Rough Times

Leon Hall — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 15:55:22 GMT

Leon Hall is a rookie defensive back for the Cincinnati Bengals. Last season, the University of Michigan senior was a unanimous choice for the All-Big Ten Conference First Team and was a finalist for various national awards. In April, the Bengals drafted him in the first round, 18^th overall. This is the third in a series of blogs that Hall will contribute to SI and SI.com during the 2007 NFL season. Through four games, Hall has 11 tackles, 2 interceptions and a forced fumble for 1-3 Cincinnati.

It's been a pretty crazy first month here in the NFL. There have been plenty of ups and downs, both personally and as a team. Personally, I've had some good highs, as I've gotten my first couple of interceptions. On the other side, I've been beaten a few times for touchdowns. But really, that's just the nature of the position and of the game.

I have high expectations for myself, so if I have any bad plays -- getting beat for a touchdown or even something small -- I get really disappointed in myself. I realize that having a perfect game is not really possible, but that's what I strive for. I've gone against some great receivers the last few weeks (Randy Moss, Braylon Edwards) and learned a lot. You have to play hard all game long. You could play however many snaps, let's say 70 in a game. And if you have 69 good ones but one bad, that bad one is the one that people will remember. So you just have to keep going, forget about it when you get beat, and keep your head up.

Another thing, now that I think about it a little more, is that it was kind of crazy to be out there on the field against Tom Brady. I mean, I can remember watching him win those Super Bowls while I was in high school and college. So just to be out on the field against a great player like that and be able to compete against him -- really try to outsmart him defensively -- was pretty cool. At moments, it was almost surreal. He's definitely the best quarterback I've seen in a long time. Of course, there are some other good ones I haven't faced yet. But he just controls the offense and the game so well. If you aren't proactive on defense, he'll pick you apart.

As a team, while we've been through some early struggles here, we just need to keep it together. We obviously have the talent to do it; it's just staying focused and staying together as a team. Things haven't really gone our way, but we need to stick to the program and keep buying into what the coaches are telling us. We've given up some big plays in the games that we've lost, so that makes a huge difference. Going into camp, the thing we wanted to focus on was eliminating those big plays, but we haven't done that yet. It's good that we have a bye week right now to sort of get away from the game, and hopefully we come back refreshed and ready to go.

We have practice this week, but on Friday I'm hoping to head back to Ann Arbor to catch the Michigan game this weekend, and hang out with a couple of my good friends back there. They have Eastern Michigan on Saturday, who isn't the greatest team. But they do run the spread offense, which the Wolverines have had trouble with so far this year. I said before the season that I thought they could win a national championship. Obviously that's probably a little unlikely now, but I do feel like they can still run through the Big Ten and win that. One of my best friends is Brandent Englemon, a safety on the team. We came in the same year, but he redshirted his freshman year. We talk all the time, via text message and phone, and he was definitely a little down after that rough start. But they're doing better now, so hopefully they can keep it up.

Other than that, I'm enjoying life in Cincinnati. I don't get a lot of free time off the field, so when I do I try to go home and have dinner with my wife and just relax. We'll occasionally watch a movie or go out to eat, but nothing too crazy. I finally got around to watching Snatch this week. Yes, it's old, but I had never seen it. And I liked it a lot. I thought it was a pretty good movie. When I get a chance to relax off the field, that's always a good thing.

Ready for the Real Thing

Leon Hall — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 20:23:30 GMT

Leon Hall is a rookie defensive back for the Cincinnati Bengals. Last season, the University of Michigan senior was a unanimous choice for the All-Big Ten Conference First Team and was a finalist for various national awards. In April, the Bengals drafted him in the first round, 18^th overall. This is the third in a series of blogs that Hall will contribute to SI and SI.com during the 2007 NFL season.

The preseason is winding down, and I'm ready to go for the regular season. I couldn't have asked for a better way to open up my NFL career than on Monday Night Football, at home against one of our division rivals in the Baltimore Ravens. It's going to be a physical game and I know the crowd will be really into it, Every game counts now, and I'm sure the first game will be at an even higher level than I've ever seen, so that's exciting.

My roles on the team have become a bit more defined in the past few weeks. I've been going in pretty much on the nickel package defensively, and filling in for some starters that have been injured. But I've also been working a lot at the gunner position on special teams. I had returned punts in college at Michigan, but when I got here they started teaching me about this role, where it's basically you against two other guys. You have to beat them first, then run down the field and tackle the returner. It's pretty tough to do, but I feel like I'm getting better the more work I put in and hopefully I'll learn from my mistakes.

Everybody always asks about the whole rookie hazing and what goes on as a rookie. I think they've let me personally off the hook a little bit, but that's only since training camp. I guess it's a tradition on the last day of training camp for all of the rookies to put on a show up on stage in front of the rest of the team and the coaches. Basically, it had to be 45 minutes of comedy, and the guys kept telling me that as a first round pick it all fell on me whether or not it was funny. I thought we did pretty well. I can't get into too many of the specifics on what we did that was so funny, but I will say that I did an impersonation of Coach (Marvin) Lewis in one of our skits. Everybody seemed to like it, or at least they laughed a lot, so that was good. It was a lot of fun though.

People also always ask what your welcome-to-the-NFL moment was. For me, it was when we got to OTAs (NFL lingo for "On the field activities") back in the mini-camps. It was the first time we lined up for one-on-one drills against the receivers. And all of the veterans came out and I was just standing in line waiting for my turn. The first guy up was Chad Johnson, and rather than go against one of the vets, Chad called me out. I'm thinking he's calling me out and he wants to run a deep route, so that's what I'm anticipating. When he comes off the line, and he comes off the line much faster than I ever expected, I start going deep. The next thing I know, he stops on a dime after going full-throttle, and catches the ball on a comeback. I'm just thinking to myself, "Wow, these dudes are good, they're the truth. If he can run that fast and stop that quick."

But all jokes aside with Chad, he's been great to go up against. He's exactly the player that you see on TV and in the games all week long. He's a great receiver that wants the ball, and he works hard to get it. That's how it should be though. But he's more than just a good receiver. He's a good resource for me. He'll help me out at the end of the week and tell me about the opposing receivers we're going up against, because he's obviously studied them in the past. Really, going against him all week will give me a lot more confidence for whomever I'm up against on Sundays or Mondays all season.

And I guess the last thing I can talk about is video games, which is a big hobby of mine as you can see from these past posts. I have the new Madden, and in the last year I purchased an Xbox 360. I had always been a Playstation 2 guy before, so it's been tough getting used to the movements and player controls on the new system. The graphics are great, but I'm not having that much fun with it now because I'm not very good. I've been playing my franchise with the Bengals and I can't seem to win a game. A couple of days ago I was playing, what I guess would be the fourth game of our season, against New England. And I just got killed. I didn't even score a point, and I kept throwing interceptions and turning the ball over. The computer just picks me apart. They seem to know what defense I'm in and what offensive plays I call, because any open spots they hit them right away. I got so frustrated that I even created a player who was all 99's in the ratings to be my running back. I put him in, and I still couldn't do anything right. But give me time, and I'm sure I'll improve.

Game Time: My first real action

Leon Hall — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 18:12:43 GMT

Leon Hall is a rookie defensive back for the Cincinnati Bengals. Last season, the University of Michigan senior was a unanimous choice for the All-Big Ten Conference First Team and was a finalist for various national awards. In April, the Bengals drafted him in the first round, 18^th overall. This is the second in a series of blogs that Hall will contribute to SI and SI.com during the 2007 NFL season.

It's a great feeling to have my first game experience in the NFL under my belt. Obviously it's only one game and it's the preseason, but that's more than I had last week and it's pretty comforting. It's funny how things work out sometimes, though. For my first NFL game to be against the Lions back in Detroit is an odd coincidence. I mean, I played my college ball there, and my wife Jessica's family is from Detroit, so it was great that they were able to come and watch me play and celebrate in my first game experience.

As for the game itself, I just had a lot of fun on the field. The game is a little bit faster compared to practice and team scrimmages, but I expected that. The intensity is high, and Detroit has a lot of good receivers, so that was a good test for me and for our whole defense. One of those guys, (fellow rookie) Calvin Johnson is going to be a good player in this league. He's a really big guy (6-foot-5, 230 lbs.), so you have to put yourself between him and the ball to be successful.

I've been telling people all along that it's going to help me a lot to have guys like Chad (Johnson) and T.J. (Houshmandzadeh) lining up against me every week. I know that if I can perform well against them in practice, I'll be that much more confident in the games. I mean, when you consider that we have some great receivers, along with a quarterback in Carson (Palmer) that puts the ball on the dot every time, I'm up against the best every day.

Other than the great athletes on our team, training camp hasn't been too much different from the camps I went through in college. It's still a grind with two-a-day practices and meetings and my body is certainly sore in the morning. But I've enjoyed it to this point. I'm learning a lot about the defense and the playbook, so it's been valuable experience.

While I've been working out in Georgetown for camp, Jessica has been at our new house back in Cincinnati. I'd like to think that when I get home after camp this Thursday, the place will be totally furnished, but that would be wishful thinking. It's actually pretty crazy trying to furnish a place. I mean, I've never owned a house before, so I was thinking I could just go to the store, pick out some furniture and they'd deliver it the next week. But it takes almost two months to deliver some of this stuff, which means for now we don't have much. Luckily, the first thing we got in there was a bed and dresser and everything for the bedroom. But the funny story with the bed is that first off, it took a while to get there. So it finally arrives-box spring, mattress, everything-and the headboard and footboard are both cracked in half. The store apologized and told us they'd send a new one, but that was like a month ago and we still have nothing. So the bed is just kind of sitting there on the ground. Hopefully that gets fixed soon.

As I said before, I'm a big video game guy, and there isn't a week all year long that's like the release of Madden 08. My copy has been pre-ordered, and when I get back home after camp breaks Thursday, I'm looking forward to lying up in my bedroom and playing Madden on my Xbox 360. I'll probably try playing with the Bengals at first, but I like to just randomly pick my teams. I enjoy taking a team that might not be rated that high and just make them better. But I know that playing online against some old friends and teammates from Michigan, there will be a lot of trash talking. I know that I'm going to play with the Bengals one time and they're just going to keep throwing at my side and yelling about how I didn't make a play or whatnot. But that's the fun of video games, playing with your buddies and giving each other a hard time. I don't know if Jessica will like me playing in our bedroom though, so we'll see how that goes.

Lastly, one of the really cool things that I've experienced so far as an NFL player is being able to help out in the community with different charities. I'm doing a campaign alongside former Bengals star Anthony Munoz for National City Bank, an organization that honors breast cancer survivors. When I got into the league, my agents asked me what charitable causes I'd like to get involved in. Growing up with my mother and three sisters, it was an easy choice. Breast cancer is something that affects all women, so I just want to do what I can to help. Anthony and I did a photo shoot at the stadium in Cincinnati last Friday, and we'll be honoring thirty survivors (there are over two million in the U.S.) in a pre-game ceremony Oct. 28. Check out Bengals.com for more information and to nominate a survivor for the honor.

Enjoying My Free Time

Leon Hall — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 19:55:54 GMT

Leon Hall is a defensive back for the Cincinnati Bengals. Last season, the University of Michigan senior was a unanimous choice for the All-Big Ten Conference First Team and was a finalist for several national awards. In April, the Bengals drafted him in the first round, 18^th overall. This is the first in a series of blogs that Hall will contribute to SI and SI.com during the 2007 NFL season.

It's been a little over two months since the draft, and I'm ready to get out on the field and play. Our training camp kicks off on July 26, which is coming up really quickly. But I've got a lot going on before then, and I'm just trying to enjoy my last couple of free days before we kick into gear for the season. It's been a good summer, and it's going to end in style.

This last week has been crazy, for sure. Last Saturday, I was married in Detroit to my fiancée Jessica. We had a lot of stuff planned and a lot of friends and family in town, so it's good that it's all over now and we can just relax at our place in Cincinnati. The whole engagement and wedding experience was great. The one nerve-wracking part was asking Jessica's father for permission to marry his daughter. My plan originally was to propose to her on Valentine's Day, so I planned on taking her parents to dinner a month or so before then. But I kept postponing it, probably because I was nervous. Next thing I knew, it was a few days before Valentine's Day, and I still hadn't asked her parents the question. So I decided to just call them on the phone, and I basically said, "Hey, how's it going? So I want to marry your daughter." And luckily, there was no hesitation and they said yes. After that, I was all set. The rest is history.

I'm really happy with where I ended up in the draft. I've spent a good amount of time out in Cincinnati for the rookie minicamps and other team functions, and I really like the city a lot. The whole town is very excited for the season, which is a good feeling. I'll go to dinner with Jessica or just somewhere around town, and people will notice me and say "congratulations" or "we're glad you're here." People will come up to me and say a lot of different stuff, but it's really just a good feeling knowing that I'm in a place where the fans love their football and love their players. I'm excited.

Jessica and I also found a house downtown that we love, so that's been an experience as well. It was crazy going through the whole process, signing all the papers and doing the closing. But in the end, when they hand you the keys to your own place (my first), it's a great feeling. Jessica is going to do most of the furnishing of the place, as that's kind of her thing. I have a little input here and there, but basically I just told her no foofy stuff in the place. Other than that, she'll take care of it. She's also the cook of the house. I mean, I can throw something together if I have to eat, but she's the one who's good at it. She's actually been talking about taking a culinary class at the University of Cincinnati lately. And I've told her I'd be all for that. She's a great cook already, but if she wants to learn more, that's great news to me.

Lastly, I've just been working out in the mornings and relaxing during the day. I'm a big video gamer, which gets on Jessica's nerves sometimes. But I'm into everything, from tactical war games like Gears of War, Rainbow Six, and Halo on the Xbox, to all of the sports games like Madden, Fight Night and College Football. I really enjoy going online and playing other people from all over the world, so maybe you'll run up against me one of these days. My friends and I are very relaxed and spontaneous, so one day we might go-kart, and the next play some basketball and laser tag. Really just keeping it loose and having fun, enjoying these last few days before training camp.

I'm excited to be doing this blog all season, and the next time we talk I'll be in the thick of training camp. Our first preseason game is in Detroit against the Lions, so that's pretty cool as well. I'm ready to go.