How do you get ahold of a TagModel in a template? I have a route that matches:

/blog/tagged/{tag}


And in my template I would like to pull up all blogs that are related to the tag:

{% if tag is defined %}
    {% set blogTag = craft.tags({ name: tag, group: 'blogTags' }) %}
    {% set filter = filter|merge({ relatedTo: blogTag }) %}
{% endif %}

{% for entry in craft.entries(filter).find() %}


But this doesn't work since craft.tags() gives me an ElementCriteriaModel, but I need a TagModel to work with relatedTo(). 

I can't figure out how to get the TagModel here.
I figured this one out right after I posted it. 

{% set blogTag = craft.tags({ tag: tag, group: 'blogTags' }).first() %}


One mistake was searching for it with "name" instead of "tag". 

The other mistake was that I needed to call first() to get the TagModel. Otherwise, craft.tags() just returns an ElementCriteriaModel.