Tag: NFL

Will the Raiders ground game help the offense against Giants?

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Raiders Report

by David Zizmor

ALAMEDA– I don’t think you could look at the Raiders and say they’re going to win any particular game I know that the Giants have had a tough season so far they’re only 2-6.The Raiders are just 2-5 this is a long road trip, it’s a cross country game at the Meadowlands for this Sunday it’ll be a tough one.

While New York is not having a good season the Raiders are not in a position to take anyone for granted the Giants might not be the best team in the league but they still have quarterback Eli Manning whose a two time Super Bowl winner. They still have some very good skilled position players most notably Victor Cruz. This is not a team the Raiders can take lightly no matter what their record is.

The Raiders are going to especially feel a little embarrassed by what happened last week by the Eagles at the Oakland Coliseum losing 49-20 you have to feel bad about it. You got to forget about it, you can’t let that carry over to the following week. The Raiders have to take this one as it comes and take their opponents that is in front of them and play those guys.

The Raiders go into this game and try to regroup, they’re perfectly capable of hanging with this Giants team and New York doesn’t have a great offensive line right now. The Raiders on defense have been pretty solid last week not withstanding. So the Raiders can take advantage of the Giants offensive line they could make some headway in this game this coming Sunday.

What got the Giants into trouble all year is Manning was forced into throwing bad passes and giving up interceptions. Last time I looked Manning had ten touchdown passes on the year but 15 interceptions which is just awful especially for a guy of his pedigree. So the Raiders can go into the Meadowlands and make some noise but a win is not guaranteed by any stretch.

The other problem the Raiders have is their offense is sputtering a bit Raider quarterback Terrelle Pryor had that great 93 yard run against the Steelers on October 27th at the Coliseum but the offense is struggling right now they have injuries up and down the offensive line. Running back Darren McFadden is injured, the receiving core has really not come together.

So it’s really Pryor, Running back Rod Streater and occasionally Denarius Moore shows up, that’s about it there’s really been no kind of offense and Rashad Jennings had a decent game last week but that was mostly garbage time. So a running game without McFadden is a question mark as to if Pryor continues to go to the playbook.

David Zizmor covers the NFL for Sportstalk Radio

Foles ties NFL record in blowout win

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By Jeremy Kahn

OAKLAND – Terrelle Pryor set a record on the opening play from scrimmage in his last game, but Nick Foles ties a longstanding record at the end of the game.

Foles threw seven touchdowns, while 22-for-28 with 406 yards passing and seven touchdowns, as the Philadelphia Eagles simply destroyed the Oakland Raiders 49-20 before a crowd of 51,751 at the Coliseum.

“Really, listen, there’s not a whole lot you can tell them. At the end of the day, that was an old-fashioned butt-whopping. We have to move from it. We have to learn from it. We have to be better next week,” said Raiders head coach Dennis Allen.

The seven touchdowns thrown by Foles tied the record that was set by Sid Luckman, former Eagles quarterback Adrian Burk, who threw his seven touchdowns for the Eagles against the Washington Redskins in Washington on October 17, 1954, George Blanda, Joe Kapp, Y.A. Tittle and Peyton Manning, who turned the trick against the defending Super Bowl Champion Baltimore Ravens on September 5, 2013 at Sports Authority Field at Mile High.

Foles found Riley Cooper three times on the afternoon, DeSean Jackson, former Stanford tight end Zach Ertz, LeSean McCoy and Brent Celek each caught one in the 29-point victory for the Eagles.

“He (Nick Foles) had an unreal game. I’m extremely proud of him. He’s a great friend of mine; a great teammate and I’m proud of him,” said Cooper.

Despite the loss, the Raiders gained a whopping 560 yards in offense, their most in a game since 1968, two years before joining the NFL and the third-most in a game since the Raiders were founded in 1960.

“It was big. It was big, and you get back on the winning side of things and everybody’s confidence is high right now. It’s a good feeling going into Green Bay next week,” said Eagles Strong Safety Nate Allen.

Pryor threw for 288 yards and gained 94 more on the ground, but they were unable to overcome the vaunted Eagles defense that was coming off a tough loss to the previously winless New York Giants at Lincoln Financial Field on October 27.

The third-year quarterback was forced to leave the game in the fourth quarter due to a knee injury.

“I really don’t know. We were going to go with (Matt) McGloin anyway there in the 4th quarter. I was really unaware that there was even an injury so I don’t know exactly the extent of it. Obviously we’ll take a look at it in more detail tomorrow,” said Allen.

Pryor was not the only Raiders player to be hit by injury in the game, as Darren McFadden left the game in the first half with a hamstring injury, linebacker Kaluka Maiava left the game with rib injuries and Rod Streater suffered a hip injury.

McFadden’s replacement Rashad Jennings carried the ball 15 times and gained 102 yards with a touchdown.

That’s Amaury: Regardless of who wins series both teams battled hard

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Ted Williams
That’s Amaury’s News and Commentary
Regardless of who wins the series with the next two games on Wednesday and Thursday games five and six should be sensational games. This has been a series that has been dominating by pitching and it has been terrific the Cardinals starter on Wednesday Michael Wacha the rookie who took to the mound in game six and he’s 4-0 22 year old and the Cards have seven rookies on that roster.
The Cards have Carlos Martinez, Trevor Rosenthal to name a few who are just rookies and their doing a great job and here’s another thing about the Cardinals of the 25 man roster 20 players are home grown there is no other team in baseball that I have found that has 20 players who are home grown. Let me explain homegrown to those who think I’m joking there are players they have signed through their own farm system and they made it to the big leagues.
Of those 20 seven are rookies, that’s incredible you have a team that basically that’s home grown except Carlos Beltran who came from other teams, Matt Holliday is the other non rookie, most of these players are Cardinal discoveries. That by itself show tremendous organization by the Cards.
Goodell wants NFL team in London:  It’s a lot of travel to go from the mainland to fly to London but it’s intriguing here’s Major League Baseball who as we know that opened their season there’s a difference they have opened the season in Mexico City, the Dodgers and the Diamondbacks are going to open the MLB season in Australia but that’s just opening a game there in the regular season.
To have a team in another country what is the flight time for the 49ers and the Raiders to travel all the way to London. This is serious, I don’t know if the NFL can accomplish this this year or next or the next 20 years but I’ll tell you what the NFL is rich monetarily economically and fiscally sound professional sports league in the world. So if anybody can do it it’s the NFL.
That will be a tremendous undertaking to have a team down in London, I can see them doing it in Canada, Mexico, but to leave the continent and to go across the Atlantic to the other side of the world and consider this we are here in California that would be quite a stress for the teams to get there. They would have to fly three or four days in advance and three or four changes of time zones. It’s going to be tough but they might be able to do it.
Amaury Pi Gonzalez does News and Commentary each week for Sportstalk Radio

Kaepernick better than ever since week two and three

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By David Zizmor

SANTA CLARA–Nobody expected the 49ers to lose last Sunday’s game in London the betting line was 16 points for the 49ers and the Niners covered the spread by double the amount of given points against Jacksonville with something like which was far too low the Niners won this one by 32.

Jacksonville is just an awful team and let’s give credit to the 49ers a game like this is one you could sleepwalk through and make it a lot closer than it should be. Let’s face it look at what the Jaguars did against the Denver Broncos just a few weeks ago they made just a little bit of noise in that one against a very good Denver team.

The 49ers did not let Jacksonville get into this game at all they didn’t let them sniff any smell of success. The 49ers were very focused their systems were shocked after those two loses in week two and three they haven’t really looked back as they’re now on a five game win streak. They’ve been a very different team since those games.

In their two loses to the Seahawks and Colts the 49ers were passing a bit more than they probably wanted to ever since then they focused more on their ground game which was their bread and butter. The last two seasons and when they got away from it they weren’t quite as successful and let’s face it part of the problem is that their wide receiving core has been decimated by injuries.

When all your options are gone and your left with a couple of guys it makes that much easier for defenses to take away those options and take the passing game out entirely. You saw against Indianapolis and Seattle the Niners were just stuck they couldn’t move the ball through the air and once the defenses realized they couldn’t move the ball in the air they were able to shut them down.

The 49ers have done a great job in the last five wins of establishing the running game early and working off of it and in the last two or three weeks we’ve really seen the passing game start to blossom again. Not a lot was made of it but Kaepernick did hurt his foot several weeks ago early in the season and while he was out of the game that foot injury kept him out and it might have kept him from being as mobile as he had been.

It might have kept him from making a number of passes that he was capable of. The last two or three weeks we’ve seen him really step up his game. Kaepernick is running a lot more, his passes are right on target, he’s doing a much better job finding his guys open and just making plays and we didn’t see that earlier on and I suspect this because that foot was bothering him a bit.

David Zizmor covers the NFL for Sportstalk Radio

Pryor further proving himself with 93 yard keeper

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by David Zizmor

ALAMEDA–Every win is kind of kind of unexpected the way the Raiders started this season nobody thought the Raiders were going to be any good in fact a lot of us including myself thought the Raiders were going to be among the worst teams in the league and while their not amongst the best teams in the league they are not among the worst either.

We were wrong on that this is actually a pretty feisty squad it’s actually the Pittsburgh Steelers who are among the worst teams in the NFL their not the worst that honor goes to the Jacksonville Jaguars. This game between the Raiders and the Steelers was not a battle of titans, it certainly has a lot of history locked up in it the Raiders and the Steelers were among the two best teams in the 1970s and battled each other on a regular basis in the some of the most famous games in NFL history.

This game last Sunday was not necessarily one those all time memorable games although it did have a historic play involved the Steelers are just in a down cycle it’s pretty rare for Pittsburgh to be in such a rare situation but they have had a couple of lousy drafts and suffered through some bad injuries and had some misfires and now their sitting with a lousy team record at 2-5.

The Steelers have had some misfires and it all means their all bottoming out right now, the Raiders already bottomed out that was already that kind of last season with the Carson Palmer deal and just everything going on in the off season when they cleaned house and they got rid of everybody the Raiders while their not a great team they have a lot of young feisty players and their in that rebuild process.

So what ends up happening is you get all these young players who are really fighting and clawing and scratching and trying to get themselves into the league and try to get themselves on the roster and get a job and it makes for desperate play and sometimes these guys are playing some desperate football end up playing decent football and that’s what the Raiders have done they have found a decent mix of players who really want to be there who are really receptive to coaching and learning.

Then the Raiders have found a quarterback who knew that former owner Al Davis’ last draft pick quarterback Terrelle Pryor would end up being such a solid player. He has a deficiency and you don’t look on this guy the same way you look at 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick when he broke on the scene last year and Pryor can play.

That 93 yard touchdown run by Pryor last Sunday shows why you want this guy on the field that threat of a guy who can make that kind of a play is something defenses have to respect and it makes you play the game differently if your a defensive coordinator you just have to prepare differently. You see it now with the 49ers now that Colin Kaepernick is 100 percent healthy.

It’s the same thing when you have a quarterback who can run in such a way that he can break a long run just as easily as any running back you have to devote extra resources to cover that guy. You have to have a spy on him and simply having that one guy on him and follow the quarterback around can open things up elsewhere.

David Zizmor covers the NFL for Sportstalk Radio

Niners take on the Jaguars in London

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By Pearl Allison Lo

London – The San Francisco 49ers will be playing their third international game, second at historic Wembley Stadium, while the host Jacksonville Jaguars will be playing their first, when the two teams meet on the field Sunday, October 27th at 5pm London Time. This is a part of the NFL’s International Series with the help of the Mayor of London.

Re the scene before the game for the public, I haven’t seen much besides the Fan Rally, but there were glimpses. I’ve seen ads in the subway, on street vehicles and banners hanging between buildings. There were multiple going-ones during the week though.

Yet to be back in San Francisco, after arriving in London Monday, the team got together with the famed Tottenham Hotspurs for a community event encouraging young ones to be more active. Both sporting teams got to indulge in each others’ respective sport.

NikeTown hosted an evening on Tuesday that centered around Jacksonville Jaguars’ players.

After 49ers practice on Friday, re the yet to win Jaguars, coach Jim Harbaugh said his players “respect the team…They play with great effort, very physical, so I’ll just say that. I haven’t had to say anything along those lines. They’ve seen it on the tape.” Re his own 5-2 team, Harbaugh expressed, “hopefully we play our best football. That’s what we’re looking for. We’ve played good football, but I think we could do better…”

When asked about plans for London, Harbaugh pulled out a list that included Marble Arch, Park Lane, Buckingham Palace and Parliament Square to received laughter. He grinned while inquiring afterward; “think we’re hitting the right spots?”

NFL jerseys started popping up Saturday on the day of the fan rally on the train, before the Commisioner’s Fan Forum and after the rally elsewhere. They were most prominent, however, with the 49ers heavily supported, decorating the invited fans at the forum who were to be bused to the rally after Q&A. Commissioner Roger Goodell, 49er quarterback legend Joe Montana and former Jacksonville Jaguars’ offensive Tony Boselli, who sat in a circle in the middle of the fans, were the other components of the equation.

Eager questions surrounded the possibilities of Monday and Thursday night games, 2015, women in the NFL and the Super Bowl to a collective intake of inhaled breaths and gasps. When asked if a Los Angeles franchise or a U.K. franchise would be first, Goodell stated, “it doesn’t matter to me. I would like to be able to continue to expand our game,” but moreover, emphasized “success” and “doing things right…Ultimately, I would love to see us doing both.” Goodell also mentioned the possibility of women in the NFL as referees.

Bare chested young men sported painted letters, numbers and symbols during the off part of off and on rain at the rally, with a message that read, ‘U.K. Franchise in 5 years? Odds 8/1.’

We’ll see Sunday if the game can help with the “success” Goodell emphasized during the forum, thereby improving the odds and the possibility of more burgeoning American football fans not only in the U.K., but Europe.

NOTES: My experience being in London so far is that people are pretty nice, friendly and helpful. The roads being reversed and other oddities like the light switches being the opposite way, cell phone stores being called car phone warehouses, a lot of hookah bars, the European smoke and free wifi in telephone booths provide additional interest. The UK accents are quintessential.

49ers travel to London to take on the hapless Jaguars

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By Gabe Schapiro

This Sunday at 10:00 AM the San Francisco 49ers (5-2) will be coming to you from across the pond in London, England where they will be facing off with the Jacksonville Jaguars (0-7) at Wembley Stadium. The 49ers are on a roll having won four straight contests. They sit in second place in the NFC West behind the Seattle Seahawks. The Jaguars are a team still trying to find their way, and have yet to win a game this season. They are in last place in the AFC South.

Last week the San Diego Chargers beat Jacksonville with relative ease, 24-6. The Chargers grabbed a lead in the first quarter and never looked back. All the Jaguars offense could muster was two field goals. That has been Jacksonville’s season in a nutshell, as they have struggled in every facet of the game in what is clearly a rebuilding year.

San Francisco had slightly better luck with the Tennessee Titans, running away with a 31-17 victory in a game that wasn’t as close as the score makes it appear. The 49ers were pitching a 24-0 shutout heading into the fourth quarter before the Titans found the scoreboard for 17 points during garbage time. Frank Gore continued his strong production, running for 70 yards and two scores on 24 carries. In addition, Colin Kaepernick had possibly his best game since week 1, finding some success through the air and with his feet. He completed 13-of-21 passes for 199 yards, and ran for another 68 yards and a touchdown on 11 carries. Most importantly he didn’t turn the ball over once. On the defensive side Justin Smith recorded two sacks and Tramaine Brock grabbed his third interception of the season.

Despite the Jaguars problems, they do have some talented players that San Francisco will have to account for. They have a good receiving corps headlined by the young duo of Cecil Shorts and Justin Blackmon. Unfortunately for them, and fortunately for the 49ers, they haven’t had a quarterback who can reliably get the ball to them. Running back Maurice Jones-Drew isn’t the player he once was, and doesn’t have much of an offensive line to run behind, but still presents a threat. On the defensive side of the ball things don’t look much better for them, but Paul Posluszny is a very good linebacker to try and build around.

As a whole Jacksonville is the worst team that the NFL has to offer. They have scored the least amount of points in the league, and they’ve given up the most. While playing in London is a bit of an X-factor, this still isn’t a game that the 49ers should have any trouble with. Expect them to lean on the running game as they have been over their last four victories, but look for Kaepernick to find more openings to air it out as well.

On the injury front there is no bad news to report this week. Wideout Mario Manningham, who resumed practicing with the team last week, is nearing his return. Coach Jim Harbaugh has yet to rule him out for Sunday’s contest. It may take him some time to be a real contributor again, however. Michael Crabtree’s rehab is going according to plan, and is expected back in about a month.

On a similar note, Aldon Smith, who had to leave the team in Week 3 because of the much-reported on personal issues, could re-join the team within the next couple of weeks.

Raiders coming off bye could give tired Steelers a fight

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by David Zizmor

ALAMEDA–The Raiders have a chance against the Pittsburgh Steelers in their next game on Sunday there is really no games where the Raiders can sit back and claim it to be a sure thing to win it’s not like the 49ers playing Jacksonville where it’s a 99 percent chance the Niners will beat Jacksonville in London. The Raiders won’t have that this year their just not a good enough team.

On the other hand they are playing Pittsburgh and the Steelers have been struggling as well they are coming off a victory from the defending champions the Baltimore Ravens. So the Steelers definitely have a feather in their cap right now and their feeling good about themselves. The Steel curtain is having a lot of similar problems to the Raiders.

The Raiders are a team that’s going through a big rebuilding process, Pittsburgh kind of are on the other side of that they are a team that’s probably about to go through a big rebuilding process. They’re just aging at a number of positions and probably need to revamp this squad. On the other hand the Steelers have quarterback Ben Roethlisberger whose one of the better quarterbacks.

Roethlisberger has won a couple of Super Bowls you can trust him but their biggest problem is the Steelers offensive line has just been terrible. They don’t have much of a running game this season and it means their passing game is suffering because Roethlisberger simply didn’t have time to throw the ball. There’s just a lot of age on the Steelers defense.

If the Steelers have a lot of different problems the Raiders can’t take advantage of that the fact their coming off a bye week and had two weeks to prepare for this game should definitely helped them out as well for the fact the Steelers have to travel cross country for this one after playing a very physical game against Baltimore. Those Steelers-Ravens games are always tough and physical and they take a lot of energy out of you and you throw in a cross country trip for Pittsburgh their going to be in a tough spot.

It’s going to be tough for them to recover in that game against Baltimore, You wonder if their going to have the energy to really fight the rested Raiders team. Of course the Raiders have their own issues their still a very inexperienced team and as you watch them in that game against Kansas City you notice they have a lot of injuries especially along with their own offensive line.

Not all those problems have been rectified the players on the offensive line have not fully recovered from their injuries so it’s anybody’s guess as to how healthy they will be this coming Sunday and if that’s the case all bets are off.

David Zizmor covers the NFL for Sportstalk Radio

Receiving game the weak link in 49ers offensive scheme of things

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by David Zizmor

SANTA CLARA–The big difference right now from last 49ers season is in the receiving core, the 49ers just don’t have the wide receivers who can make plays at the moment. Until Michael Crabtree and Mario Manningham get back their going to have to focus a little bit more on the run game and that’s what they’ve been doing in the last couple of weeks and that’s been to their advantage.

Once they focus more on running they’ll do a lot better actually in the first couple of weeks they obviously had that great game against the Packers where 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick threw for over 400 yards but since then Kaepernick hasn’t thrown much more than 200 yards per game. He’s been kind of quite and part of that is that the Niners have no one to throw to.

They have Anquan Boldin who let’s face it the guy’s really good but Boldin is really the only wide receiver they have whose produced anything if you combine all the rest of the 49ers receivers catches over the course of the season if you added them up they won’t come out to what Boldin has on his own.

Vernon Davis has been great he had that fantastic first half against Arizona where he just dominated like seven catches for 170 yards and a couple of touchdowns. Those are the only two guys making catches and making plays and it’s not going to cut it for the 49ers you need more than two players to succeed in this game. You can’t have a dynamic passing attack where there is only two guys for the defense to stop.

Most defenses can figure out how to stop two guys, obviously Arizona has a pretty good defense especially in their secondary and they couldn’t stop Davis. So the 49ers can find their way in the passing game and they can make plays but over the course over four quarters Davis had they had a great first half and he was pretty quiet in the second half and the 49ers decided their running game was the way to go.

Arizona is also a pretty good running defense and the Niners wore them down, they just kept running and running and running then they eventually busted through to have an amazing 9.5 minute 18 play drive. That really sealed the game for them late and if they can do that they can beat anybody.

You have a nine and half minute long drive your going to win almost every time that means your just dominating the line of scrimmage and if you do that you win that’s usually how it works. As far as the passing game is concerned we know that Kaepernick has the ability but the 49ers problem right now is it’s Boldin and Davis and nobody else.

David Zizmor covers the NFL for Sportstalk radio

Pryor needs to avoid the blitz and a collapsing pocket

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by David Zizmor

ALAMEDA–The Raiders have had some problems with the offensive line with injuries and that really came to bear in this game against the Chiefs and let’s not give credit to Kansas City their one of the top defenses in the league this season they’ve done a great job pressuring the quarterback. The Raiders probably should have been a little bit more diligent in their blocking.

For Kansas City to do this and have the game they did against the Raiders is not a big surprise. They’ve been one of the best teams in the league at pressuring the quarterback all season long. So the Raiders knew it was going to be a tough day going into Arrowhead. It’s a bit of a surprise because Raiders quarterback Terrelle Pryor is mobile.

He’s typically at least to this point in the season been able to escape serious pressure by his legs and his running ability to get outside the pocket. However Kansas City made a very specific point of collapsing the pocket around Pryor and he didn’t have anywhere to escape. That’s a lesson that he’s going to have to learn because teams are going to have to take that to heart in the coming weeks and follow the Chiefs example.

Pryor is going to have to face a lot more defensive fronts and face the exact same thing, the good thing is most teams don’t have a good front seven they can do what KC did and they’re going to have a lot more trouble doing it than the Chiefs. Nevertheless their going to have to worry about that. One of the things with any quarterback is growing developing and adjusting to the different things that defenses throw at you.

This is a league where if your successful people are going to keep book on you and they figure out what your weaknesses are. If they look at Pryor’s stats his weakness once he’s trapped in the pocket he can’t make a throw their going to do their best to trap him in the pocket each and every play. So he’s got to adjust and the Raiders know that and part of the problem is the blocking.

If the Raiders blocked a little bit better than giving up sacks it wouldn’t be an issue. The Raiders need to get a little bit healthy fortunately for the Raiders they have a bye week so they have a chance to rest up to heal, to get those injuries off the books and to get the players back on the field. If the Raiders do their job and watch tape and find out what went wrong and if they get their players healthy the can recover.

The Raiders can be competitive again but obviously when you get sacked ten times your not going to win, they’re playing well and they were in this game until fairly late when the Chiefs pulled away but their not going to be playing the Chiefs every week their only going to be playing them one more time. The Raiders have shown some improvement, so as long as they can keep Pryor from getting sacked that many times each week they’ll have a better chance at winning some of these games.

David Zizmor covers the NFL for Sportstalk radio