By Art Spander
“Like throwing a little swing pass to the running back.” That was Phil Mickelson, coach Phil, giving advice to partner Tom Brady, before Brady had a little chip shot only a few people not named Phil Mickelson could hope to execute.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner
“The best laid plans …” You know the rest, words from a poem by Bobby Burns, the Scot who more than a century ago wrote words of warning, words telling us that our hopes and dreams more often do not work out. Or as Burns wrote, “ ..gang oft a-gley,” or as we would say, go often astray.
But not the plans of John Elway. Or the hopes of Peyton Manning. Or the long-ago dreams of the family of Pat Bowlen.
©2016 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner
It’s as if the game already has been played. As if the Carolina Panthers won the Super Bowl. When, in fact, the Denver Broncos will win it. Win it ugly, the way underdogs usually do. Win it by keeping the Panthers from winning it, with defense, with ball control, with the sort of breaks teams like Denver inevitably get in games like this, and thus are described as lucky rather than good.
But in football, luck is not so much bestowed as created.
©2016 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner
A year ago it was Deflategate. This time it’s what, Peytongate? The NFL’s biggest stage, the Super Bowl. The NFL’s biggest nightmare, an intruding, negative story, a distraction, a question about a man who has been the sport’s ambassador, and until now without a hint of scandal.
It seems so perfect, Peyton Manning, 39, about to head through that one-way door toward retirement, receiving the chance of which every athlete dreams, to go out at the top. And yet, as the Broncos quarterback prepares for Super Bowl 50 next week at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, where he’ll be under siege by the Carolina Panthers, Manning also is facing an investigation by the NFL and U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.
©2016 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
Special to the Examiner
Two seasons ago, Gary Kubiak collapsed while walking off a field at halftime. He was hospitalized with “a mini-stroke” yet was so dedicated to his craft that he resumed coaching the Houston Texans shortly afterward, only to be fired weeks later.
So he could handle any challenge, including the one presented this season by his good friend in Denver, John Elway.
©2016 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
OAKLAND — This is what happens to teams that aren’t quite there, teams that show progress but often don’t show results, teams that are difficult to embrace but even more difficult to criticize.
You want terrible? Look at the Detroit Lions, getting booed at home, benching first-rounders for bench-warmers. The Lions are terrible and readily identified as much. In contrast to the Oakland Raiders, who as young teams with new coaches do so frequently, entice and tease and then trip over themselves. Clunk.
Not many boo. Instead, they gasp.
The Raiders on Sunday played arguably their best defensive game in years. They controlled the ball — having it for 34 minutes of the 60. For the most part they controlled the great Peyton Manning, who threw two interceptions and no touchdowns passes for a mediocre passer rating of 62.3, compared to the appreciably better rating of 82.1 by Raiders second-year quarterback Derek Carr.
But as we’ve been told forever and a day, the only number that matters is the final score. The rest is eyewash, material for talk shows and feature stories. At an O.Co Coliseum filled with passion and hope, the final score was Broncos 16, Raiders 10.
That’s the fewest points the Broncos scored this season. No less importantly, after two missed field goals, a lost fumble and a killer interception, a pass returned 74 yards in the fourth quarter when the Broncos were in front only 9-7, that’s the fewest the Raiders scored this season.
Yes, could have, perhaps should have. But didn’t.
The Raiders, with mistakes small and large, so encouraging and then, wham, so disappointing, are not yet capable. “They were supposed to win,” said Carr. “We expected to win.” But they were not yet ready to win.
Sebastian Janikowski set a team record for the number of games played as a Raider, 241. But he had one field goal blocked and another go wide from 40 yards. “Sometimes it happens,” said Seabass.
And Carr lost a fumbled snap on Oakland’s first play from scrimmage in the second half, and then on a misread — “We didn’t execute,” Carr said in a statement that indicted nobody — with the ball on Denver 31, Carr’s throw was picked by Cliff Harris Jr. and returned 74 yards for a TD.
“I always take full accountability,” said Carr, who in his words and actions seems more mature than someone in only his second year as a pro — but in his football occasionally plays exactly like someone in only his second year as a pro.
The game is one of overcoming errors. The best, the veterans, have their problems but not very many when matched against others. In Green Bay on Sunday, Aaron Rodgers even threw an interception. But it was his first in a home game in three years. The longer you go the fewer mistakes you make, and so, the longer you go.
Manning has gone longer than most. He’s 39, the same age as Raiders safety Charles Woodson, who after seasons of facing him finally had his first interception off Manning. But Peyton wasn’t unnerved. Upset, yes, but not unnerved. He’s in his 16th season. He learned long ago to soldier on. Learned how to win, or more directly learned how to enable his team to win.
Raiders coach Jack Del Rio knows about both losing and winning and, as the former Broncos defensive coordinator, knows all about Manning. Del Rio particularly coveted a victory over his former team yet understood why the Raiders couldn’t get it.
“I thought we gave ourselves a chance,” said Del Rio, which only sounds good. Oakland, after consecutive defeats, now is 2-3. The Broncos are 5-0, and that stat far outdoes Manning’s interceptions and lack of TD passes.
Woodson was asked in a game when the opposing offense, Denver, was held to three field goals — the touchdown, remember, was a pick six, or interception return — if he would expect a win.
“Yeah, I suppose,” he said, trying to be elusive. “Defensively, we came out. We felt like were prepared and could do some things against them. We were able to, limiting those guys, but we just weren’t able to do enough.”
That’s the inevitable summation from a team that falls short, a team that competes, that excites, that tempts and then, because for one reason or another, ends up losing.
A team like the Oakland Raiders.
By Art Spander
The Sports Xchange
JERSEY CITY, N.J. — The over-under is 27 1/2. That's not the points scored by one team or the other in Sunday's Super Bowl XLVIII, but the number of times Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning will yell "Omaha," a signal to get the ball snapped.
Yes, it is too much over a small part of the game, and Broncos coach John Fox on Monday at the team's Hyatt Regency hotel more than implied he was as worn out explaining "Omaha" as perhaps the national television audience was in listening to Manning shout it.
COPYRIGHT © 2014 The Sports Xchange
By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com
"Go ahead and say it,'' advised the commissioner of the NBA, David Stern. "Conspiracy theory."
But why? We already believe it, so we'd be preaching to the choir, ourselves, the biggest group of skeptics this side of the Facebook IPO underwriters.
© RealClearSports 2012
By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com
It all makes sense in a nonsensical sort of way, Peyton Manning deciding to join the Denver Broncos, the only team run by a man who as a quarterback won more Super Bowls than has Manning.
If you get recruited by John Elway, you have an offer you almost can't refuse, and Manning didn't refuse it. Tough luck, Mr. Tebow.
At last the Peyton saga has reached its conclusion...
© RealClearSports 2012
By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com
Was it always this way, American sports and the 10-second attention span? Did we ever stay focused on anyone or anything before the next news cycle? Another Tweet, another change of subjects.
The end of last football season someone discovered Denver had a quarterback who threw like a man tossing melons but because Tim Tebow could run, Tebowmania was upon us like an elephant crashing through a jungle, unstoppable.
© RealClearSports 2012