[Posted Monday a.m.]
NHL Quiz: 44-year-old Jaromir Jagr just became the second-highest scorer in NHL history and now has 1,889 points. Name the eight with 1,700 points. Answer below.
NFL
–The Raiders suffered a brutal loss heading into the playoffs, as NFL MVP candidate Derek Carr broke his fibula on a fourth-quarter sack by Indianapolis linebacker Trent Cole. The Raiders survived the game behind Matt McGloin, 33-25, to move to 12-3, but without Carr, any hopes of a Super Bowl are drastically diminished.
McGloin has started six games in his career, though none since 2013, but at least he’ll get a final regular-season game under his belt before the playoffs, as the Raiders have a shot at clinching the No. 2 seed (or even No. 1), which would give them a bye and thus another week to prepare McGloin.
–Tennessee Titans quarterback Marcus Mariota will miss the final game of the season after he too suffered a broken right leg in Saturday’s 38-17 loss to Jacksonville that eliminated the Titans from the playoff chase. He was having a miserable day, 8-of-20 for just 99 yards when he was crushed on a sack in the third quarter.
–But with the Titans losing, that left the door open for the Houston Texans, who defeated Cincinnati 12-10 to secure their second straight AFC South title.
Tom Savage threw for 176 yards in his first career start (though he started off with just two completions for 13 yards in the first half), after rallying the Texans (9-6) for a win against Jacksonville the prior week, following the benching of Brock Osweiler.
–In a bizarre affair, the Packers beat the Vikings 38-25 in Green Bay to keep their playoff hopes alive.
What was bizarre is that Minnesota’s defensive backs said afterwards they devised a strategy to cover Green Bay receiver Jordy Nelson independent of what coach Mike Zimmer wanted and Nelson proceeded to torch the secondary with 154 yards, seven catches and 145 yards of which was in the first half, including two touchdowns.
In the second half the secondary for the Vikes did what Zimmer wanted and shut him down.
Zimmer explained after that the Vikings had planned for cornerback Xavier Rhodes to shadow Nelson, but Rhodes said he and the other cornerbacks decided during the week to do something different.
Zimmer said: “In the first half, Terence Newman came over and said something to me like, ‘I can cover this guy; let me have him.’ I said, ‘Do what you’re supposed to do.’”
So Rhodes held Nelson to two catches for nine yards in the second half.
I mean this is outrageous.
[The Vikings didn’t have an easy weekend. Their team plane was stranded on the runway for more than three hours at Appleton International Airport in Wisconsin after it slid off the taxiway in snowy conditions. The plane, an Airbus A330, managed to land safely and was taxiing to its gate when the incident occurred. No one was injured.]
I do have to note that Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers had another outstanding game in the Pack’s fifth straight win, 28/38, 347, 4-0, 136.6, while Minnesota’s Sam Bradford tried mightily, 34/50, 382, 3-0, 110.6, with receiver Adam Thielen catching 12 for 202 yards and 2 touchdowns. As Ronald Reagan would have said of Thielen, ‘Not bad, not bad at all.’
—Washington (8-6-1) stayed in the wild-card hunt with Green Bay (if Green Bay doesn’t win the NFC North outright) with a 41-21 win over the Bears (3-12). For Chicago, quarterback Matt Barkley was 24/40, 323, 2-5, 62.8. Wait, 2-5?! Five interceptions?! That’s Ryan Fitzpatrick-like.
—Playoff bound Miami improved to 10-5 with a 34-31 win over the Bills in Buffalo. Dolphins running back Jay Ajayi rushed for 206 yards and a score, his third 200-yard effort on the ground this year, only the fourth in NFL history to do so.
But 2 of the 3 are against Buffalo, and at 7-8, it’s assumed Rex Ryan, supposed defensive wizard, will be fired.
—The Cleveland Browns did it! They won their first game, thus avoiding the ignominy of joining the 2008 Detroit Lions as the only NFL teams to go 0-16, Cleveland now 1-14 after a 20-17 win against the Chargers. San Diego kicker Josh Lambo missed a 45-yard field goal as time expired, failing to force overtime.
Cleveland, though, had likely given up the No. 1 overall pick, with one-win San Francisco having a weaker strength of schedule, the tie-breaker, only the 49ers picked up win No. 2 by defeating the pitiful Rams, 22-21, (San Fran sweeping them).
–What an unbelievable finish to the Seahawks-Cardinals contest in Seattle. Seattle rallied with two touchdowns in the final three minutes to forge a 31-31 tie with 1:06 to play. All the Seahawks needed was for kicker Steven Hauschka to make the extra point and then hold Arizona the final minute.
But Hauschka missed it, and the Cardinals went 50 yards in the final minute and won on a 43-yard field goal by Chandler Catanzaro on the final play.
The loss dropped Seattle to 9-5-1 and may have cost them a bye in the playoffs.
However, the Seahawks lost receiver Tyler Lockett to a gruesome knee injury on a late play he scored on.
–So do I have to talk about the Jets? It’s become Christmas tradition for me to wear Vinny Testaverde’s jersey, just because it’s Christmassy, and they are my team, after all…plus this year the family celebrated Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day. But we sure as heck weren’t celebrating the Jets’ performance against New England, another pathetic, embarrassing loss, 41-3, as coach Todd Bowles now seems certain to be fired.
And this was after Bowles flew up to Foxborough the day of the game, having gotten out of the hospital that morning, fighting off kidney and gall stones. The Jets played so awful, that with about six minutes left, Bowles opted for a field goal rather than go for it on fourth-and-9 to avoid a 41-0 shutout.
While Tom Brady was his usual excellent self, 17/27, 214, 3-0, 124.6, the combination of Bryce Petty and Ryan Fitzpatrick was 8/24, 136, 0-3, 13.9…13.9! Petty left early with a shoulder injury.
It’s so bad in Jetsland that after the game, defensive lineman Sheldon Richardson, one of the true jerks on the planet, said of his teammate, receiver Brandon Marshall, “He should be embarrassed.” What?!
As Steve Serby of the New York Post wrote, “Bowles should have stayed in bed.”
—The Giants are in the playoffs, even after a poor performance Thursday night, 24-19, as Eli Manning was picked off three times. The Giants got in because the Saints beat the Buccaneers, 31-24, thus eliminating Tampa Bay.
The thing is Manning just isn’t having a very good season and the Giants offense has consisted of Odell Beckham Jr. and, err, err…that’s it…just him. [Beckham had 11 receptions for 150 yards Thursday, bringing his season totals to 96-1,323-10 TDs.]
But give rookie coach Ben McAdoo credit for getting the Giants to the playoffs for the first time since winning the Super Bowl in 2011, and after three straight losing seasons.
–Christmas Day, what a terrific game in Pittsburgh as the Steelers (10-5) staged a spectacular fourth-quarter rally against the Ravens (8-7), racking up 240 yards of total offense and three touchdowns to turn a 20-10 deficit into a 31-27 win that ended Baltimore’s season, while the Steelers clinched the AFC North and the 3-seed in the playoffs.
Le’Veon Bell had 122 yards on the ground and two touchdowns (one rushing, one receiving), while Antonio Brown had 10 receptions for 96 yards and the deciding score on a 4-yard reception with 0:09 left in the game that they’ll be talking about for a long time as he reached across the goal line in an unbelievable effort.
Ben Roethlisberger overcame early troubles and two interceptions to throw for 279 yards and three TDs. Just a great contest.
[Brown now has over 100 receptions for a fourth straight season, matching Marvin Harrison’s record.]
–In the nightcap, Kansas City (11-4) clinched a playoff spot with a 33-10 win over Denver (8-7), thus ending the defending Super Bowl champions’ season. K.C. still has a shot at the AFC West crown with a win San Diego and an Oakland loss in Denver next weekend.
College Football
–OK, most of us are just waiting for next weekend and the real bowl games, the national semifinals on New Year’s Eve, which should be great fun.
Plus, aside from looking forward to Wake Forest-Temple (for highly-selfish reasons), Pitt-Northwestern at Yankee Stadium and Miami-West Virginia in Orlando, both on Wednesday, could be kind of entertaining, especially the latter.
As for the last ten days or so, I said I wouldn’t care and I haven’t. As in I didn’t even know Louisiana Tech was beating Navy, 48-45, in the Armed Forces Bowl on Friday (then again, I was kind of busy writing something else that day). But the game marked a disappointing ending to what had been a super season for Navy, as they ended up losing their last three to finish 9-5, including the first loss to Army since 2001.
—Oklahoma running back Joe Mixon made a tearful apology at a news conference Friday in Norman, OK, taking full responsibility for punching a woman in the face nearly 2 ½ years ago. The incident has blown up now because surveillance video that had been under wraps was released.
With coach Bob Stoops looking on, Mixon said he wanted to address the issue earlier, but his legal team advised him not to. Stoops has been on the defensive for allowing Mixon to come back after a one-year suspension.
College Basketball
–So almost immediately after posting last time, Duke suspended Grayson Allen following his third tripping incident in a year.
Barry Svrluga / Washington Post
“The first thing that comes to mind regarding serial tripper Grayson Allen: What makes a person keep doing this? The second, after Coach Mike Krzyzewski announced that Duke had suspended Allen indefinitely following his egregious trip of an Elon player Wednesday night: Would a team-imposed suspension 10 months ago have stopped Allen’s reckless on-court behavior?
“And, in what might seem ancillary but is far from it for those who care about college basketball: Does anyone remember that Louisville beat Kentucky on Wednesday night? [Ed. I did.]
“That tense and taut in-state affair – which should have put a focus on college basketball that the sport yearns for in every month not named March – was kicked to the side by Allen’s right foot, which intentionally and inexplicably found the back side of the left leg of Elon guard Steven Santa Ana in what became a 72-61 victory for the heavily favored Blue Devils….
“ ‘What Grayson did was unacceptable,’ (Coach K) told reporters afterward, which is akin to pointing out that the sun rises in the east.
“So before we trip over ourselves (sorry) in lauding Krzyzewski for taking this step, it’s worth pointing out that he should have taken it Feb. 26. That’s the day after Allen tripped Florida State’s Xavier Rathan-Mayes, which came all of 17 days after he had tripped Louisville’s Ray Spalding….
“ ‘No more gifts,’ Jay Williams said on ESPN. ‘We’re done with that. He deserves to sit.’
“That there is Duke-on-Duke crime, because Williams played for Krzyzewski’s 2001 national champs. And it’s a measure of how obvious Krzyzewski’s choice was Wednesday.
“ ‘As a program, we needed to take further steps regarding his actions that do not meet the standards of Duke basketball,’ Krzyzewski said in a statement.
“Have the standards of Duke basketball changed since February?….
“ ‘The first time, you call the kid in and say, ‘What the hell’s wrong with you?’’ said former Maryland coach Gary Williams who, like Krzyzewski, is a Hall of Famer. ‘If you take the temperature around the game, the second time, you suspend him.’
“Krzyzewski didn’t. And now? Another season and a new version of the same cheap shot from Allen….
“This matter isn’t over, for two reasons. One, we don’t yet know how long Allen will sit out from competition. Duke’s next game is its conference opener Dec. 31 at Virginia Tech. The subsequent two are both at home against beatable ACC opponents, Georgia Tech and Boston College.
“The test will be after that: Will Krzyzewski hold Allen out of the Blue Devils’ Jan. 10 matchup with dangerous Florida State (12-1) in Tallahassee? What about the next game – at Louisville….
“But secondly, whenever the suspension ends, the matter won’t be over because Allen will be publicly monitored like few players in his sport ever have been. This entire incident is seen through the prism of Duke’s public persona, which is a generation in the making and predates Allen’s birth.”
Laettner, Wojciechowki, Redick, Paulus, Battier (the king of the flop) and many others….
Nancy Armour / USA TODAY Sports
“At some point, Allen will no longer be one of the best basketball players in the country. He will be an Ordinary Joe who has to get along with his family, his co-workers and his neighbors, and losing his temper and lashing out when things aren’t going his way won’t get him very far. There are better, more appropriate ways to handle his anger, and he needs to learn them when he’s young enough to still change his behavior.
“Allen is, by all accounts, a nice and even-tempered young man off the court. But real life is filled with the kind of challenges he faces on the court, and how he responds will ultimately come to define him. Krzyzewski needed to suspend Allen the player, but he needed to suspend Allen the person even more.”
Meanwhile, Allen’s suspension certainly doesn’t help his draft stock. There seems to be a consensus he is probably a late first-rounder, but in no way a top-10 pick. If he was the latter, teams wouldn’t care, so the theory goes. But late first-rounder is different. That’s when you get GMs musing, ‘Is he worth the bother?’
–Big game in New Jersey the other night, with Seton Hall (10-2) defeating Rutgers (11-2) 72-61, behind the Hall’s Angel Delgado, who backed up his pregame trash talk with 19 points and 16 rebounds. Rutgers had a nine-point halftime lead before Delgado took charge.
–I can’t help but note Wake Forest’s effort on Thursday against LSU. Recall, the game before the Deacs shot 5 of 25 from three in a tough 69-65 loss at Xavier which would have been a major stepping-stone for the program to pull that one out. Just needed to hit two more threes, you’re thinking.
So against LSU (8-3), the Deacs (now 9-3) blitzed the Tigers 110-76, with Wake hitting 16 of 26 from behind the arc. Phenomenal. Dinos Mitoglou, a 6’10” forward, had a career-high 28 points on 8 of 11 from three.
Great first test in ACC play for the Deacs coming up, Wednesday at Florida State.
NBA
–The Knicks have been entertaining this season in part because backup center Kyle O’Quinn is playing some outstanding ball, like his performance in a 106-95 win Thursday over Orlando…14 points, 16 rebounds and 5 blocks in 24 minutes!
But New York lost an exciting game at the Garden on Christmas Day, 119-114 to Boston as Carmelo Anthony committed a key late turnover, the Knicks falling to 16-14, while the Celtics are 18-13.
—Cleveland beat Golden State 109-108 in another grudge match as LeBron had 31 points and 13 rebounds, while Kevin Durant scored 36 to go with his 15 ‘boards.
But once again it was Kyrie Irving with the clutch shot, just like in June, as he scored on a short, turnaround jumper with 3.4 seconds left to cap a fourth-quarter comeback from 14 down.
Golden State falls to 27-5, while Cleveland is now 23-6.
MLB
–The Cleveland Indians pulled off a real coup in signing free-agent slugger Edwin Encarnacion to a three-year deal for $60 million, with a fourth-year club option of $20 million or a $5 million buyout.
So they add a guy who tied for the A.L. lead with 127 RBIs for Toronto last year and equaled his career best with 42 homers.
Encarnacion, 33, has 193 homers over the past five seasons, second only to Baltimore’s Chris Davis (197). He is also the only player with at least 30 homers in each of the past five seasons.
I mean this is a super move by the Indians, who are clearly making a statement that just playing in the World Series isn’t good enough. They plan on winning it.
–The Braves agreed to a five-year, $30,525,000 contract with Gold Glove outfielder Ender Inciarte, avoiding salary arbitration in the process. Inciarte, 26, hit .291 with 85 runs and 16 stolen bases, though little pop. But he’s a very nice player and a building block.
–The Pirates signed pitcher Ivan Nova to a three-year, $26 million deal after Pittsburgh had acquired Nova from the Yankees at last season’s trade deadline. He was 5-2 with a 3.06 ERA for the Pirates. For his career, he is 58-41, 4.30.
Stuff
–The Premier League has a flurry of contests this holiday week, beginning with a traditional slate, Monday, Boxing Day in the U.K. (and Canada).
But league-leading Chelsea has worked out a deal (transfer) with Shanghai SIPG, whereby Brazil international star Oscar is heading to China, after joining Chelsea in 2012, scoring 38 times in 203 appearances for the club. But the midfielder has struggled this year so off to China he goes for an estimated $75 million. Oscar will earn a reported $500,000 a week and the transfer fee will rank as the seventh-highest of all time, as China continues to try to build up the quality of not just its national team, but the scope of the sport throughout the country.
Manchester City forward Carlos Tevez is another reportedly headed to Shanghai (a different club).
–The world of track and field mourns the passing of Ethiopian running legend Miruts Yifter, who died in Canada at the age of 72. Yifter won two gold medals at the 1980 Moscow Olympics at age 40 and a bronze at the 1972 Munich Games, inspiring the likes of Haile Gebrselassie.
Yifter, though, was the subject of criticism back home for not winning gold at the Munich Games, and he was thrown in jail upon his return home. While he was soon released, he eventually settled in Canada in 2000. But his body is returning for burial in Addis Ababa next week and Ethiopians are calling for him to receive a heroic welcome.
–I have to admit, I really don’t have a memory of Vesna Vulovic, a Serbian air stewardess who miraculously survived a plunge from 33,000 feet after her plane exploded in mid-air in 1972. Vulovic died the other day at 66 of an unknown cause.
As reported in the Irish Independent:
“Ms. Vulovic was 23 and working as a Yugoslav Airlines hostess on January 26, 1972, when the Douglas DC-9 airliner she was aboard blew up high above the snowy mountain ranges of Czechoslovakia. All 27 other passengers and crew aboard died.
“She entered the Guinness Book of Records in 1985 for ‘the highest fall survived without a parachute.”
“It was suspected that a bomb was planted inside the jet during a scheduled stopover in Copenhagen, Denmark, but no arrests were ever made.
“Trapped in the plane’s tail cone, she plummeted to earth in sub-freezing temperatures and landed on a steep, heavily wooded slope near a village.
“The fuselage tumbled through pine branches and into a thick coating of snow, softening the impact and cushioning its descent down the hill, crash investigators said at the time.
“Ms. Vulovic was rescued by a woodsman who followed her screams in the dark forest. She was rushed to a hospital, where she fell into a coma for 10 days. She had a fractured skull, two crushed vertebrae and a broken pelvis, ribs and legs
“Initially paralyzed from the waist down, Ms. Vulovic eventually made a near-full recovery and even returned to work for the airline in a desk job.
“She never regained memory of the accident or her rescue. She told the AP in an interview in 2008 that she could only recall greeting passengers before take-off from the airport in Denmark and then waking up in the hospital with her mother at her side.
“An instant national heroine, she went on to put her celebrity at the service of political causes, protesting against Slobodan Milosevic’s rule in the 1990s and later campaigning for liberal forces in elections.”
Remarkable.
—California officials and townsfolk on the outskirts of Sequoia National Park are debating about what to do with the bears. The state has more than 25,000 black bears, but the issue is the grizzly, which hasn’t been seen in almost 100 years.
As noted in a piece in the Los Angeles Times by Louis Sahagun, there are about 1,600 grizzlies isolated in high-mountain pockets of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. “But a Los Angeles fruit farmer shot Southern California’s last known grizzly in Big Tujunga Canyon in 1916, and in Northern California, the last credible sighting of the iconic creature that adorns the state flag and a staggering array of merchandise was in 1924.”
While the black bears in the state generally top off at about 350 pounds, the California grizzly weighed up to 2,000 pounds! But they ended up being no match for Man, who poisoned them to protect livestock, or shot them for sport, or, get this, were roped “and then dragged into public fights with bulls” by Spanish caballeros. I never knew that, unless I killed that brain cell in Reno back in the ‘80s.
As to plans in some circles to reintroduce grizzlies, it seems doubtful. There are too many residents and ranchers that would kill them, as it’s rumored happened to 40-50 black bears last year in the Sequoia National Park area, killed illegally.
–John Cherwa of the Los Angeles Times had a piece on the ‘show bet’ at race tracks. Cherwa, via horse racing expert Jon White, the morning-line oddsmaker at Santa Anita, cites a 1975 episode of TV’s “The Odd Couple, where sportswriter/gambler Oscar takes his lifelong friend Felix to the races,” White recalls, “And Oscar tells Felix he can make a show bet and his horse only has to finish in the top three.”
“So Felix says, ‘You mean you can bet on a horse and he can lose the race and you can still win money? And you’ve been losing money all these years?’”
Ah, the magic of the show bet. But as John Cherwa points out, at Santa Anita last year, only 4.5% of the total handle was bet to show. Compare that to 6.7% for place and 21.0% for win. Single race exotics (exactas, trifectas) account for 40.1% of the wagers and multi-race bets (doubles, pick-three) are good for 27.7%.
Anyway, tracks are attempting to come up with ways to attract new fans through show betting, such as free entries via web sites for prize money, including prizes for the longest show streak, that kind of thing. [Santa Anita’s winter meeting opens this week and they are sponsoring “ShowVivor.”]
The track hopes show bets are gateway wagers.
One of the major reasons show wagering has diminished is short fields, like five-horse races, which severely limits payouts.
–I’ll cover the passing of George Michael, 53, next time.
Top 3 songs for the week 12/24/66: #1 “Winchester Cathedral” (The New Vaudeville Band) #2 “Mellow Yellow” (Donovan) #3 “I’m A Believer” (The Monkees)…and…#4 “That’s Life” (Frank Sinatra) #5 “Devil With A Blue Dress On & Good Golly Miss Molly” (Mitch Ryder and The Detroit Wheels) #6 “Sugar Town” (Nancy Sinatra) #7 “Snoopy vs. The Red Baron” (The Royal Guardsmen) #8 “Good Vibrations” (The Beach Boys) #9 “A Place In The Sun” (Stevie Wonder) #10 “(I Know) I’m Losing You” (The Temptations)
NHL Quiz Answer: Top 8 scorers all time….
Wayne Gretzky 2,857
Jaromir Jagr 1,889
Mark Messier 1,887
Gordie Howe 1,850
Ron Francis 1,798
Marcel Dionne 1,771
Steve Yzerman 1,755
Mario Lemieux 1,723
Next Bar Chat, Thursday…our yearend awards show!
