Blast From The Past: ESPN Asks DeAngelo Hall About His Madden Ranking
Posted by Matt Terl on March 10, 2010 – 4:15 pmWay back in June of last year — when the 2009 season was just a glimmer in Roger Goodell’s eye — the advance ratings for Madden NFL 10 came out. This was a staged media event, as it is every year, and like every other year there were players who were upset by their new rankings. It just so happened that this year, DeAngelo Hall was one of those players.
So he made dramatic angry pronouncements, I transcribed them, the EA Sports guys jumped in on Twitter, much offseason blog content was generated, and a good time was (mostly) had by all. The the season happened and Hall’s Madden rating became the least of the problems the team was having.
But the real prophet of that incident turns out to have been long snapper Ethan Albright, who had previously had some run-ins of his own with video game infamy. “DeAngelo may not realize,” Albright told me at the time, “but he’s going to be fielding questions about this forever.”
Well, it’s a little soon to discuss “forever,” but when Hall went through the ESPN carwash on Monday, sure enough, they brought up the Madden rating incident.
http://espn.go.com/videohub/player/embed.swf
A few choice excerpts from an interview on a nine-month-old story:
Possibly the most amusing part of the interview is the very beginning, where the interviewer starts to talk about a controversy that Hall was involved in last season … and then drops the Madden question on him. “Hah,” Hall says. “No, that ain’t where I thought you were going.”
On the rating drop:
“To have the biggest drop in Madden history is kind of a title that no one wants. To go from 95, 93, to 70-something, that’s a little bit of a slap in the face. It kinda hurt me a little bit, because I know a lot of the kids play Madden, and that’s their impression of athletes: what they see on Madden.”
On ranking himself in some random (and occasionally made up) Madden categories:
Speed: “I’m gonna say about 97.”
Tackling ability: “You know, I think I was a little slighted on the tackling, just compared to other corners…. I think I’m average. About 60, I guess.”
Ability to tweet during the game: “Well, since that’s against league rules, I’m gonna need a zero on that.”
Ability to make a play in the fourth quarter while trailing on the road: “My ability to WANT to make a play in the fourth quarter while trailing on the road would probably be … shoot, 70, 75. I think everybody wants that. I could PICTURE it. But sometimes it doesn’t happen. Sometimes you don’t get the ball thrown your way or you don’t get the opportunity, but I definitely have made some plays to seal some games in my career.”
Tags: DeAngelo Hall, Madden 10
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