Remembering how the little things made Tamba Hali great

Looking back on a player who was never supposed to be great, but did it anyways.

Tamba Hali doesn’t fit the profile of a great pass rusher.

If you look at his Relative Athletic Score profile, you see a mediocre (for the NFL) athlete. No blazing 40-yard dash. A broad and vertical jump that lacks explosion. Doesn’t have great size. If you look at his college stats, you only see one year of good production (a red flag in the draft process). And if one were to ask what it is exactly Hali does at an elite level, it’s hard to describe.

But apparently no one bothered to tell Tamba Hali he’s not supposed to be great, because he went ahead and managed to do it anyways, making 5 straight Pro Bowls from 2011 through 2015 (and quite frankly getting robbed in 2010, a season in which he collected 14.5 sacks) and managing to fight, scratch, and claw his way to 53rd all-time in sacks collected over the course of a 12-year career.

The Chiefs signed Hali on Monday to a 1-day contract so that he could retire a Chief, a testament to how much he meant to the franchise during one of its tougher time periods.

Kansas City Chiefs @Chiefs

We have signed Tamba Hali to a one-day contract. The six-time Pro Bowler will officially retire as a member of the Kansas City Chiefs 🙌

Hali is the incredibly rare player to end his career having played for only one team, something that almost never happens in the modern NFL for even the greats. And it’s a good thing, because for multiple years Tamba Hali was the embodiment of what it meant to be a Kansas City Chief; Fighting like mad in a tough spot.

It seems fitting, then, to talk briefly about what made a player who wasn’t supposed to be great, great. And with Hali, it came down to the little things because he didn’t have the same advantages in the big things (size, raw power, freakish athleticism) that so many other great pass rushers have. He had to do the little things right every single time, and over 12 years that’s exactly what he did. Snap after snap, Hali always did those little things perfectly.

The first thing to watch about Hali when he rushed was his hands, the second was his feet. That’s true of most rushers, but Hali could have taught a class on how to utilize both in a way to gain an advantage.

Watch the way Hali uses his feet to set this move up, with a quick feint inside to the tackle to shuffle his feet rather than just sliding outside and create doubt as to what direction he goes. The moment he gets the tackle to not commit outside, Hali then jab steps his way back outside.

Note how there are literally zero wasted steps here. Step 1 gets him moving, step 2 takes him on that inside fake, and step 3 takes him back outside. Doing it this way creates almost no time for the lineman to react and instead he needs to try and control Hali with an attempted grab/punch.

And then there’s the hands. It happens so fast that it’s tough to see, but Hali takes his inside (left) hand and swats down at the left arm of the tackle’s attempted punch, swiping it cleanly out of the way with perfect timing and placement. He then uses his right hand to help slap the lineman aside (an easier task given Hali now has him off balance) and propel him towards the quarterback. It all happens in a split second because everything is done with maximum efficiency and perfect movement.

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Hali had plays like this every single game, and could execute these moves perfectly from either side of the line. Snap after snap, Hali would win the handfighting battle and set himself up perfectly with his feet.

Hali made himself a great pass rusher by winning all the little battles at the line of scrimmage this way and through his relentless demeanor, never quitting on a rush and somehow managing to drag down quarterbacks who thought they’d run away from this “subpar” athlete. If the whistle hadn’t blown, opponents knew that Hali was still coming for them regardless of what had happened in the play to that point.

Hali’s mastery of technique allowed him to pull off moves that he wasn’t supposed to be able to utilize, like powering through much bigger offensive linemen.

Here, Hali is facing off against Donald Penn, an exceptionally strong tackle that one might imagine requires elite strength to bull rush or long arm back into the quarterback. Hali is able to do just that by threatening the edge and then exploding into Penn, once again with no wasted steps and with his hands right into Penn’s pads. It’s not the sort of snap Hali was supposed to win, but that never seemed to matter with Hali.

The little thing (that wasn’t so little, honestly) that most endeared Hali to fans, though, was the effort. The absolute, unrelenting effort that never changed. It didn’t matter if the Chiefs were a terrible team. It didn’t matter what was on the scoreboard. It didn’t matter how many snaps he’d already played. It didn’t matter if the opponent was able to wrap up Hali’s entire neck. He would never, ever cease his untiring effort to bring down opposing quarterbacks.

Tamba Hali was never supposed to be great. But he did exactly that by outworking and outhustling everyone around him on a daily basis, and by mastering every little nuance of his craft. The result was a player who, at his peak, was consistently one of the best pass rusher's in the league. The result was also a player who deserves to have his name remembered by Chiefs fans, despite the fact that he was cursed to play most of his heyday on teams that were doomed to fall short of achieving excellence (or even close to that in many cases).

I guess what I’m saying is that, at the end of the day, Tamba Hali was great.