Category: Uncategorized

By Jeremy Kahn

After narrowing the Kansas City Chiefs lead down to just four points early in the third quarter, the Oakland Raiders put themselves in position for a possible victory.

Unfortunately, somebody forgot to tell that the Chiefs that the Raiders wanted to pull off another upset over their longtime rivals.

In a four minute 42 second span of the third quarter, the Chiefs lead went from 10-6 to 31-6 and the Chiefs defeated the Raiders 31-13 at Arrowhead Stadium.

DeAnthony Thomas got the Chiefs on the board in the first quarter, as he took a Marquette King punt and returned it 81 yards for a touchdown.

Cairo Santos gave the Chiefs a 10-0 lead, but Sebastian Janikowski cut the lead down to 10-3 at the half, as he nailed a 53-yarder with no time remaining in the second quarter.

After a Janikowski field goal, the Chiefs began to turn it on following the 33-yarder by the 15-year veteran.

Knile Davis scored from three yards out, then Alex Smith found Travis Kelce from 20 yards just 54 seconds later after a Derek Carr fumbled the snap.

Davis pit the finishing touches on the scoring for the Chiefs, as he took a Smith pass and took 70 yards for the touchdown.

James Jones caught a one-yard pass from Carr with 34 seconds left for the final margin in the 18-point defeat.

On the afternoon, Carr ended up going 27-of-56 for 222 yards and a touchdown.

The Raiders have lost 10 straight road games, and have not won back-to-back games since weeks seven and eight of the 2012 season.

In their two games in the State of Missouri this season against the Chiefs and the St. Louis Rams, the Raiders were out scored 83-13.

By Morris Phillips

Among the things the Oregon Ducks couldn’t control coming into Friday’s Pac-12 Championship Game was one pretty big thing: their opponent, No. 7 Arizona was talented, and brimming with confidence thanks to two impressive upset wins over the Pac-12 North champs with an eye on making it three straight.

So head coach Mark Helfrich simply asked his Ducks to trust the process, make sure they were in the right spots defensively, and rely on the fact that they were healthier and better equipped to take down their nemesis from the Pac-12 South than they were the previous two meetings.

And sure enough, just as Helfrich asked, the Ducks trusted, and the Wildcats were cooked.

“Well, they played well, we didn’t,” a downcast Arizona coach Rich Rodriguez said. “Outcoached us, outplayed us, did a nice job,”

“Tonight was a good example of us playing a complete game as a team,” Helfrich said.

What qualified as complete for Helfrich was pretty darn impressive. The Ducks’ place in the four-team national championship picture was assured with the win, but this was even better than that. In blowing away Arizona 51-13, the Ducks played near flawlessly in the first half, leading 23-0 at the break and quickly increasing that advantage to 30-0 at the start of the third quarter. Two statistical numbers were eye-popping in the first 30 minutes.

The Wildcats couldn’t string together even two positive plays and wilted. They finished the half with—take a seat and a deep breath—25 yards total offense.

And the Ducks kept the pressure on, running 57 offensive snaps, none of them eye-popping, but everyone plenty effective.

In a meeting of two teams highly dependent on pace and rhythm, Oregon got their engines revved first this time and took it from there. Arizona’s defense, which initially seemed more than capable, holding Oregon to a pair of first quarter field goals when they threatened to do much more, eventually gave in. Arizona’s offense, unable to hold the ball for any length of time, offered no help.

“The defense had to go back out there,” Rodriguez explained. “We know (Oregon’s) an up-tempo team. So our guys are in pretty good shape. But still when you’re having to go out that many times—57 snaps or whatever it was in the first half—with that type of offense, they’re going to get theirs.”

Helfrich said his guys were “tight offensively” early, which explains the two field goals, a rarity for one the nation’s highest scoring teams. But with Marcus Mariota healthy and patient, the tide turned quickly. Mariota ran for a pair of scores to cap two, lightning-fast scoring drives that were sandwiched by Aidan Schneider’s three field goals. Freshman running back Royce Freeman posted 100 yards rushing before the break, and Charles Nelson, one of the Ducks’ fleet of speedy game breakers, kept the defense on their heels with his 73-yard catch and run. Three plays later, Mariota had the second of his rushing touchdowns in Oregon’s 20-0 lead with 1:35 remaining before halftime.

Did we mention Mariota was workman-like and spectacular occasionally, befitting his stature as one of the nation’s best player?

Helfrich did afterwards, causing the quarterback to blush a bit. “If this guy isn’t what the Heisman’s about, I’m in the wrong profession,” Helfrich said while sitting next to Mariota at the post-game interview table. “If you want your son or daughter to emulate someone, pick this guy.”

Or pick this team.

AP Photo/Ben Margot

 

By Jeremy Harness

SANTA CLARA – Midway through the third quarter, an exasperated Rich Rodriguez was shown letting out an emphatic sigh as his team continued to struggle on both sides of the ball.

Two plays later, the coach had to watch as quarterback Jesse Scroggins III’s deep pass was picked off by Erick Dargan. To add to the misery, senior lineman Steven Gurrola was flagged for fighting and was promptly kicked out of the game.

That gave Oregon the ball on Arizona’s 23-yard line, and quarterback Marcus Mariota punched it in six plays later to give Oregon a commanding 37-point lead.

That pretty much summed up the night for Arizona, as second-ranked Oregon cemented its spot in the inaugural BCS playoff with a dominant 51-13 win over the Wildcats to take the Pac-12 title Friday night at Levi’s Stadium.

In the process, Mariota, already the front-runner for this year’s Heisman trophy, likely put his name on the award with his performance on Friday by throwing for 303 yards and a pair of scores while running for three more.

He did that against an Arizona team that had beaten Oregon each of the previous two head-to-head meetings and ruined the Ducks’ chances of reaching this game last year.

The No. 7 Wildcats entered Saturday with a chance to again thwart Oregon’s title run while crashing the College Football Playoff party themselves.

However, those visions, just like the field at Levi’s Stadium, got soggy very quickly and only got worse as the offense couldn’t make a dent while a tough, resilient but increasingly-fatigued Arizona defense developed cracks that Oregon used to blow the game open in a hurry.

Missed opportunities also handicapped Arizona, as Wildcat defenders had a pair of potential first-half interceptions squirt through their fingers while missing out on a fumble recovery early in the third quarter, all of which had the potential of swinging the momentum in its favor.

Rodriguez said that the key to the Wildcats’ 31-24 win over Oregon in Eugene on Oct. 2 was that they were more physical than the Ducks in all three phases of the game. The physicality was certainly there for Arizona.

The execution, on the other hand, was another story altogether.

“From my vantage point, it was a lack of execution and them playing a little better than us,” Rodriguez said. “It seemed like it was a different reason every time (as to why) this play didn’t work or that play didn’t work.

“We’ll examine it, get better and get ready for the bowl game.”

The four-team playoff bracket will be released Sunday morning, with Oregon fully expected to be one of those teams competing for the national title. Arizona, meanwhile, will have to wait a while longer but are still considered to have an outside shot at getting into one of the BCS bowls, including the Fiesta Bowl.

The Wildcats displayed a bend-but-don’t-break defense in the first quarter. Although Oregon gained yards and benefited from a short field resulting from an early Arizona turnover, the defense did not permit the Ducks to get into the end zone – the Ducks had to settle for field goals on each of their first two trips into the red zone – and even stopped Oregon on a fourth-and-3 at the Arizona 25.

However, the Wildcats could not get anything going on offense, gaining only 25 total yards in the first half and increasing the amount of strain on their defense. Arizona finished with only 224 yards of offense while collecting only 10 first downs, only two of those coming in an opening half that proved to be decisive.

Redshirt freshman quarterback Anu Solomon struggled especially, throwing for only 34 yards on 6-of-12 passing. He was also sacked three times and just could not generate any momentum that carried the Wildcats to this title game.

“I just didn’t execute,” Solomon said. “If we’re not doing well, it all starts with me, and that’s just what happened.”

The field goals were only going to last for so long, and if you give the Ducks enough chances, they will eventually get their rhythm and cash in. That’s what happened midway through the second quarter, as the Arizona defense finally gave way.

Starting yet another drive in Arizona territory, the Ducks took the ball to the Wildcats’ 7 before Mariota beat an Arizona defender to the corner of the end zone to give Oregon a 13-0 lead.

Oregon scored twice more and went into the locker room with a 23-0 halftime lead, while Arizona searched for answers.

Rodriguez attempted to solve one issue by putting the more mobile Scroggins in place of Solomon and threw a 69-yard touchdown to receiver Cayleb Jones early in the third quarter to momentarily stop the bleeding.

That momentum was squashed in a hurry by Mariota and the Ducks, who picked up right where they left off in the first half and left Arizona in their wake.

“Oregon’s the best in our league this year, and I think they have a chance to prove they’re the best in the country,” Rodriguez said. “But any team that makes the four-team playoffs has to be really good.

“I just haven’t seen the other ones on film like I’ve seen Oregon.”

by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

As I watch the unfortunate events in Ferguson, Missouri, right after the Grand Jury rendered its verdict, it is sad to see the many minority businesses in Ferguson that were burned to the ground by vandals,”mom and pop”stores that depend on day-to-day business for their survival. The people causing the problems are not demonstrators, they are criminals, people that take advantage of these situations to commit crimes, we see them in every city, anarchist, communist, plain thieves and thugs.They only know one thing, to steal and destroy, they do not respect anybody.

But the media is portraying what’s happening today as a Civil Rights issue, and granted there is still racism in this country,(USA 340 million people of all races, only an imbecile would believe there is no racism) but this is not the 1960’s(after all this country elected its first black President not only once, but twice) and I am old enough to remember the 60’s.

As a teenager in Miami, I used to ride the Miami-Dade County buses, and I saw the signs at the door of the bus that said “colored must seat in back”. As a young teen many times I sat in the back with the black people, in a way as a silent protest. I detest racism, just as much as communism and fascism.

But watching the US media, it is so obvious, that the majority of the media, is very dishonest. Yes, we should care about the loss of Mike Brown’s life in Ferguson, at the hand of Officer Darren Wilson. I was not there as a witness, so I can only go by the decision of the Grand Jury. We are a country of laws, and we must abide by those laws.

I might not like the Stop sign one block from my house, and there is little traffic there, but I stop there all the time. Many young black men are dying victims of crimes in this country. However, the media seldom reports on the dozens and dozens of black kids that are killed by other black kids every day in cities like Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, or the 72% of African-American kids that are born to wedlock. We never see Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson addressing those growing problems. What, they do not count?

Ratings (especially on TV) are paramount for these networks, without ratings there is no sponsors, and no sponsors means no broadcast.

So it is more “sexy”to cover black vs white and white vs black crime, and television in particular, exploit this to the maximum. These shows, in my opinion, are a tremendous dishonesty on the part of the media. Back in the 1970’s I was already doing Sports, but I also covered hard news. I remember in 1974 or 1975 traveling to Salinas, California to interview César Chávez of the United Farm Workers, in one of his famous marches; by the way he was against illegal immigration, he wanted his people/workers to raise their living standard as part of the UFW and I remember he told me illegal immigration was not good, he was running an organization of braceros/migrant workers. I covered many hard news stories like the San Francisco Supervisor Dan White assassination of the Mayor of San Francisco George Moscone, I covered Patti Davis and the SLA, and many other stories during that time.

I am glad I do not cover hard news anymore. Sports offers a different point of view it is pure entertainment, somebody wins, somebody loses every day,(except Fútbol-Soccer and thank God I do not cover that) no controversy there. Politicians “spin”everything, but if the 49ers lose 45-10 nobody can spin that. So, Sports will always have much more integrity.

As I watch this chaos in Ferguson develop I have nothing but dislike for the way most of the media is running this “show”; and I hate to say it, it is only a show for them, the more people are killed the more fires are lit, the more businesses are destroyed, the better television it makes, and the better ratings, sick but nothing but the truth.

CNN goes into “Breaking News” if a cat is on top of a tree in Atlanta, and doesn’t know how to get down. One old saying in television newsrooms I remember as I worked there, has not changed: “if it bleeds it leads”.

I am also old enough to remember when The New York Times was a newspaper of value, of integrity, worthwhile of reading everyday. Today’s NYT is not even a shadow of the NYT of 30 or 40 years ago.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez does News and Commentary for http://www.sportsradioservice.com