DeAngelo Hall, Mike Smith scuffle on the sidelines

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November 8, 2009

Maybe DeAngelo Hall (notes) just has a thing against all Falcons coaches.

The ex-Atlanta, and current Washington Redskins, cornerback who clashed with old coach Bobby Petrino during the 2007 season mixed it up on the sidelines today with current Falcons coach Mike Smith (notes) after a chippy play on the sidelines.

The Associated Press describes the action:

Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan (notes) was running for a first down and had just stepped out of bounds when LaRon Landry (notes) delivered a blow to the back late in the second quarter of Sunday’s game.

As yellow flags flew, [DeAngelo] Hall jumped into the middle of things and was entirely surrounded by Atlanta players and coach Mike Smith. Hall appeared to be pulled away before any punches were thrown.

Here’s a clip of the incident.

To me, it looks like Hall came over to the sidelines, mixed it up a bit and then got grabbed by the Falcons coach with the shaved head (who appears to be Director of Athletic Performance Jeff Fish — coincidentally, Fish was with Oakland before Hall was signed and left for Atlanta the year after Hall left). The scuffle got a little bigger and Smith, who had been screaming at officials about Landry’s foul, got in the middle and started exchanging words with Hall.

A clown, a punk, a loudmouth; take your pick on the adjective you’d like to use to describe DeAngelo Hall. But this sort of stuff is expected from him. Shouldn’t Mike Smith be above the fray? Yeah, he had every right to be mad about Landry’s dirty hit, but once the flag was thrown, what else did Smith want the officials to do?

A head coach shouldn’t be mixing it up with opponents unless an opponent directly mixes it up with him. It’s not wrong, per se, but it’s also not becoming.

Here’s Halls’ take on it, via Tweets from Washington Post writer Rick Maese (@rickmaese):

"Through the whole time, I’m trying to get guys hands off of me. Later on Coach Smith - Mike - came over, grabbed me, talked [trash to me, saying hed kick my [butt]… I definitely stay in Atlanta in the offseason, so Mike Smith want to see me, he can find me."

From the looks of the clip it looks like Mike Smith would have no reservations about looking up DeAngelo Hall.