Footage Doesn’t Fail Hall Now

Not so long ago, the chance of the NFL’s returning to the Los Angeles Coliseum was about as likely as Dante Hall showing up at midfield with tweezed eyebrows and wearing makeup.

This week, both those things happened.

Hall, the star return man for the Kansas City Chiefs, was in town Tuesday shooting an NFL commercial on the Coliseum field with actor Don Cheadle, who had a series of popular spots touting the league last season. I visited the set to get a glimpse of the new Cheadle ads, which will run during the last two weeks of the regular season.

No one was more excited about being there than Hall, who had done a few local commercials in Kansas City but never anything of a national scale. He didn’t even know if he’d be fed on the shoot, so he stopped by McDonald’s on the way over and ate breakfast. When he got to the Coliseum and saw the elaborate spread of food, he couldn’t believe it.

“It’s snowing in Kansas City,” he said, lifting a glass of mango juice from a tray brought by an assistant. “It’s 50 degrees one day and snowing the next. You go to the mall and you don’t know whether to buy a tank top or an overcoat.”

Hall would have flown to Siberia for a chance to hang with Cheadle, one of his movie idols. The two laughed and chatted like old friends all morning. It was Hall’s day off, and he came up directly from San Diego, where the Chiefs beat the Chargers on Sunday.

“Two years ago, I could never even have imagined I’d be here,” he said, recalling the time when Chief Coach Dick Vermeil pulled him into his office and advised him to learn to be a wide receiver -- a position Hall had never played -- or find another line of work.

Hall was so discouraged, he called his longtime friend, Wayne Edwards, who owns a car detailing business in Houston, and told him he soon might be needing a job.

“He was down,” said Edwards, who joined Hall for the commercial shoot. “He thought that was it. I told him, ‘Well, man, if that’s the way it is, you can come work with me. We’ll figure this thing out.’ ”

Things didn’t get to that point. Hall, a fifth-round pick in 2000 as a running back and returner out of Texas A&M;, played receiver for the Scottish Claymores in spring 2001. Anything to keep his football dream alive. He returned to the Chiefs last season and made the Pro Bowl as a return man.

Another trip to Honolulu is essentially guaranteed for Hall, who set an NFL record this season by scoring a touchdown on a return in four consecutive games. He averages 18.3 yards per punt return, best in the league by more than three yards, and he’s the only player to run back two kickoffs for touchdowns.

All of which landed him in L.A. this week, sipping mango juice and living large.

“They put makeup on me, touched up my lips,” he said, laughing like a kid. “For the first time, I was looking in the mirror [thinking], ‘I’ve got sexy lips.’ I’m loving this.”

*

The commercial opens with Cheadle walking through a tunnel onto the field. He’s wearing Kansas City practice pants and a red Chief jersey bearing Hall’s No. 82. Hall is dressed the same way and already standing on the field.

Cheadle lines up next to Hall on the goal line and announces: “Dante Hall: 5 feet 8 inches. 187 pounds. Don Cheadle: 5 feet 8 1/2 inches. Not quite 187 pounds.”

The two then field punts and take off running. The camera cuts to a side shot of the two. Cheadle is athletic and fast, but can’t come close to keeping pace with Hall.

Hall glides across the finish line barely breaking a sweat. Cheadle huffs and puffs his way across a couple seconds later, rests his hands on his knees, looks into the lens and gasps: “And I’m kind of fast.”

Hall can be seen in the background rolling his eyes and chuckling.

“Civilian fast,” snaps Cheadle, annoyed by the laughing.

*

Some players might have too much pride to play for an NFL Europe team. Not Hall. Once he resigned himself to the idea, he decided to have fun abroad.

“I met some guys in the [Glasgow] community,” he said. “They took me golfing. I wore a kilt to a boxing match ... “

He didn’t even need to hear the next question.

“Oh, yeah, I went commando,” he said. “Felt good too. All those Scottish guys go commando. Little breeze comes through the slit in your kilt. Wooo-hooo.”

*

After the shoot finished, Hall said his goodbyes, signed a jersey and a pair of shoes for Cheadle -- and collected the actor’s autographs in return -- and hopped in a limousine headed for the airport. A few minutes later, Seattle linebacker Chad Brown showed up for his commercial.

In that one, Cheadle is walking across the field in Brown’s No. 94 Seahawk jersey along with a helmet, shoulder pads, full gear.

“Who’s Chad Brown?” Cheadle asks. “He’s a three-time Pro Bowler who brings it like a wildebeest. So you gotta ask yourself, what’s it like to get hit by a 6-foot-2, 245-pound stick of dynamite?”

The camera cuts to Brown running full speed and stopping just short of hitting Cheadle, who cringes as he braces for the collision.

“Real funny, Chad,” says Cheadle.

*

Cheadle shot six other NFL commercials this week, most of them soliloquies similar to last season’s spots. One is called “Seven,” an ode to John Elway, who stopped by the Coliseum on Thursday for the shoot.

The others were called “Diamond Ring,” something to do with Cheadle doing the wedding march and thrusting a Super Bowl ring in the camera; “The Guarantee,” a reference to Joe Namath’s Super Bowl prediction; “The Kick,” the field goal by New England’s Adam Vinatieri in a snowy playoff victory over the Raiders; “The Block,” Troy Brown’s key block against Pittsburgh in the AFC title game; and “The Catch,” the Joe Montana-to-Dwight Clark touchdown that beat the Dallas Cowboys. Tracy Perlman, the NFL’s director of entertainment marketing, said the marriage of the league and Hollywood is a natural one.

“We’re trying to reach as big an audience as we can,” she said. “We’re not trying to be trendy. We’re trying to enhance the game.”

*

I had planned to cover the game between the Indianapolis Colts and Tennessee Titans in Nashville on Sunday, but I got a call from my boss asking me to switch to the Bengals’ game at Baltimore. Just another reminder of how strange the league has gotten. How long has it been since anyone cared about the Bengals this late in the season?

*

This will be Showdown Sunday as six games feature matchups between first- and second-place teams. But what about the next two weeks? There are only two such games in Week 15: Seattle at St. Louis, and Philadelphia at Miami; and three in Week 16: Kansas City at Minnesota, Cincinnati at St. Louis and Denver at Indianapolis.

*

Three running backs are on pace for at least 1,800 yards rushing -- Baltimore’s Jamal Lewis, New Orleans’ Deuce McAllister and Green Bay’s Ahman Green. Only once have two backs rushed for at least 1,800 in the same season. That was in 1998, when Denver’s Terrell Davis had 2,008 and Atlanta’s Jamal Anderson had 1,846.

*

Bill Walsh says radio headsets have revolutionized the process of coaching a quarterback, enabling first-year players to make an impact when in the past it might have taken them a full season to learn all the hand signals. One of those earpieces also came in handy for defensive tackle La’Roi Glover when he was playing for New Orleans.

“I actually took one of them out and put it in my helmet as a joke,” said Glover, who now plays for Dallas. “Nobody knew what was going on. I knew all the plays they were going to run. It was kind of funny. Best practice I ever had.”