GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) — Wide receivers for the Green Bay Packers are trained to handle any position so that anyone can easily slide into a new slot because of an injury, or if coach Mike McCarthy likes a matchup. More
A skirmish broke out on the Dolphins’ sideline during Sunday’s game against the Bills, and a Miami coach took a shot that some Dolphins say was cheap.
It’s hard to tell…
BALTIMORE (AP) All that has transpired for the Baltimore Ravens this month has put them in position for, as safety Eric Weddle put it, ”A December to Remember.”
The Ravens followed a winless October with a 3-1 November, capped by a 19-14 win over the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday.
Baltimore (6-5) climbed back into a tie with Pittsburgh atop the AFC North with five games to go.
”We have to win every game, we feel, this last stretch,” Weddle said.
The Bengals (3-7-1) feel the same way. The difference is, that might not be good enough to get them into the postseason for the sixth consecutive year.
”We have been able to control it ourselves. Now we need help,” coach Marvin Lewis said.
After spending five straight Decembers fighting for playoff position, Cincinnati is now in a situation where one more loss may end its postseason hopes.
”It starts to wear on you,” cornerback Dre Kirkpatrick said. ”I’m a winner. I’ve never been in this situation. But at the end of the day, when you’re a competitor you keep competing, especially when your back is against the wall.”
Some things we learned about the Ravens and Bengals on Sunday:
PERFECT AND IMPERFECT: Ravens kicker Justin Tucker has been perfect in 11 games this year. After connecting from 52, 57 , 54 and 36 yards, Tucker is 27 for 27 and has made all 15 of his conversion attempts.
It was the 11th time Tucker has kicked at least four field goals in a game. Baltimore is 10-1 when that happens.
”To be on this kind of roll is good, but it doesn’t end today,” Tucker said. ”Hopefully this is something that would help carry…
BATON ROUGE – Close your eyes and imagine it is a year ago when then-LSU coach Les Miles was about to be fired, and someone tells you that the next coach is going to be LSU defensive line coach Ed Orgeron.
Now, open your eyes.
Orgeron – a career journeyman coach, a failed head coach and a somewhat successful short term head coach at USC and LSU – is LSU’s next football coach.
“I’m the search,” LSU athletic director Joe Alleva said two months ago after firing Miles.
“I’m worried,” I said.
Well, I’m still worried.
Alleva first started looking for a new head football coach more than a year ago and started thinking about looking for a new head football coach when he came here in 2008. And this is it?
This is an embarrassment.
Texas’ search and hire lasted a few days, and it’s going to get the coach LSU has been thinking about maybe hiring for two months – Houston’s Tom Herman, a bright rising star at 41.
Herman could have been LSU’s first true offensive head coach hire in history. Instead, it hired a defensive line coach whose new offense got shut out against Alabama, which allowed an average of 36 points to Ole Miss and Arkansas this season, and managed three points through more than a dozen goal-line plays in a 16-10 loss to Florida two weeks ago.
According to Kirk Bohls, an extremely credible reporter who covers Texas for the Austin American-Statesman, Herman’s agent Trace Armstrong told LSU it could hire Herman for $6 million. “And LSU said no,” Armstrong said, according to Bohls.
Maybe, that’s not true. Herman, who coached at four Texas colleges (Texas as a graduate assistant, Sam Houston State, Texas State and Rice) before becoming Houston’s head coach two years ago, was probably going to Texas no matter what LSU offered. But LSU should have offered the $6 million or $7 million.
And LSU should have offered Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher $8 million. He may still have stayed, but you have to get the money out there. You have to try.
But LSU did not max out. Instead, in the end, it took a Black Friday approach to this search and ended up with a bargain, but this could be a nightmare in the long run.
Orgeron’s yearly salary will be about $3.5 million, which means LSU will save $1 million the coaching swap between Orgeron and Miles. And Orgeron can throw a large salary at Alabama offensive coordinator and old USC buddy Lane Kiffin, who makes $1.4 million at Alabama. LSU now has a lot of money left over. It does not owe Orgeron a…
LOS ANGELES — The end is here. And it looked, for the most part, like the rest of it.
Notre Dame’s 45-27 loss shared all too many similarities with their other seven defeats. Special teams blunders. A devastating stretch before halftime that altered the game’s outcome. And a mostly gutty effort that ended with the Irish losing because they gave away much more than they took.
The Irish showed plenty of fight on Saturday. Unfortunately, they showed just as much charity. Two special teams touchdowns for Adoree Jackson. A DeShone Kizer gift-wrapped pick six. Add them together and three scores were just too many to spot the hottest football team in the country.
The Irish end their season with four wins. They leave behind many more unanswered questions. Let’s find out what we learned.
Adoree Jackson against Notre Dame’s special teams was an unfair fight.
Notre Dame knew Adoree Jackson was one of the country’s most dangerous return men. They kicked to him anyway.
Jackson’s 55-yard punt return and 97-yard kickoff return were two more touchdowns given up by Scott Booker’s special teams, a fitting end to a nightmarish season where the five return scores allowed only covered a fraction of the damage done.
On a day where the Irish special teams needed to be clean, they were anything but. And when Jackson picked up a bouncing punt and sprinted to the end zone, he turned a field goal-game into a 10-pointer. And when Jackson answered his coverage blunder with a hurdling, highlight reel return touchdown, he all but ended the game.
“Unfortunately today, special teams was a huge deciding factor in the game and we gave up two touchdowns there to a very talented player,” Kelly said postgame. “But we knew how talented he was going into the game.”
That talent presented omnipresent problems, the Irish unwilling to kick away from Jackson when they knew playmakers like Ronald Jones and JuJu Smith-Schuster awaited. And with Jackson’s lone catch going 52-yards for a touchdown, the All-American candidate left Irish defenders grasping at air as the all-purpose weapon scored three times—with Irish fans hoping they’ve seen Jackson for the last time with a stay-or-go decision coming soon.
(Speaking of those…)
DeShone Kizer may well be a high first-round draft pick. But before he makes his final decision, he’d be wise to look at all the information on hand.
DeShone Kizer hasn’t made any decisions. That was the message from the quarterback after he faced a swarm of tape recorders, all hoping to get something from a football player far too smart to offer anything.
But if this is indeed it for Kizer, he’ll leave a resume far less convincing than the one he had entering the season. As NFL teams looks for a quarterback to change the future of their franchise, Kizer will need to prove that the player showing up on tape is the real deal, not a signal-caller who regressed in his second season as a starter.
Kizer’s final Saturday of the season was another mixed bag. His 17 completions included some throws that’ll make football men nod with approval. But his 15 misses included some head-shakers, none more confounding than Ajene Harris‘s interception, the throw into coverage breaking Notre Dame’s back.
Kizer’s receiving corps was undermanned, with Corey Holmes struggling in a featured role and Chris Finke supplying most of the playmaking. Add in challenging weather conditions, and it was difficult to tell if Kizer struggled or merely fought an uphill fight.
“There were…