DeAngelo Hall Signing Needs To Be a Priority for Patriots

(Writer note: this was written Thursday night before news of Hall's resigning with Washington broke. You see how accurate I was, right? Enjoy anyway!)

The Boston Globe speculated today that based on their interest from last season, the New England Patriots might be interested in bringing in impending free agent cornerback DeAngelo Hall if Washington doesn't sign him by Friday's free agency deadline.

It may be a panic move on my part, but all I can think is "God yes, please do it."

As a whole, Pats fans are pretty confident in the team's personnel decisions, forged by years of quality decisions by the Bill Belichick/Scott Pioli brain trust.

But when defensive backfield presences like Asante Samuel, Eugene Wilson, and Randall Gay got up and left after the '07 season, there didn't seem to be a big push to replace them with anyone of name or high value—surprising for such an important position.

Combined with the rest of the club getting older in key positions, there had to be a point at which the levy broke. This past season, it did.

The Globe mentioned that out of 32 teams, the Patriots ranked 26th in third down conversion percentage against and 31st in red zone defense. And I'd venture to say that if you asked fans what they thought the team's main weakness was, they would say the secondary.

The signing of Hall would be a big step toward helping fix that problem.

Currently, Ellis Hobbs sits atop the depth chart at corner, but the 25-year-old is entering his fifth season and has only nine career picks. Personally, I think of Hobbs for one of three things: celebrating after nearly every play, getting burned, or being checked out by trainers on the field. He is not meant to be a No. 1 corner, but the 5'10" Hall is.

The 25-year-old Hall will begin his sixth pro season after four years with Atlanta and a split '08 with Oakland and Washington. The former first round pick has 22 career interceptions in 72 career games.

He is also durable, as he's only once played fewer than 15 games (his rookie season). And like so many others, there are concerns about his attitude. But let's face it, he was in Atlanta and Oakland, which weren't exactly bastions for fostering goodwill toward fellow men.

But we're talking about the New England Patriots, the organization that is seemingly the halfway house for turning bad attitude players like Corey Dillon and Randy Moss into team guys that simply play and perform.

If Belichick were to give his approval on Hall, that's fine by me. It seems every season that the Patriots add one impact player on defense (Adalius Thomas, Jerod Mayo), but they have taken a few seasons off from adding to the defensive backfield.

Here's hoping they don't make that mistake again.

Josh Nason founded the New England and media centric sports blog Small White Ball in 2007. He can be reached at josh [at] smallwhiteball [dot-com].