Two long TD catches give Bryant new life

Little-used Raiders receiver flaunts style

NAPA, Calif. — For a while Wednesday, Martavis Bryant may as well have been a season ticket holder sipping a complimentary water bottle from the bleachers.

He watched.

He watched as Raiders quarterback Derek Carr and the first-team offense executed a two-minute drill. They ran nine plays, all from “11” personnel (one running back, one tight end, three wide

receivers). The drive concluded with a 52-yard field goal that Eddy Pineiro scraped wide left.

Next came the second-team offense. He watched quarterback Connor Cook

RAIDERS

Stick to reporting

Dan Wetzel, a sports columnist at Yahoo, said it hardly seems equitable that a bunch of guys who never played the game should be the ones deciding who gets to wear the yellow blazers. Sports writers should report or comment on the news, Wetzel says. Not make it.

That is why in another lifetime it was decided I should no longer cast a vote in the weekly women’s national college basketball poll.

For starters, I never played women’s basketball, and after watching Brittney Griner reject shots against the Aces at Mandalay Bay, it was a wise career move. I also found that voting in the women’s basketball poll took up a lot of free time on Sunday night.

Once low man on the sports staff totem poll, I wrote about the Lady Rebels a lot. Eventually I was contacted by the guy who conducted the women’s basketball poll — he was with one of the Philadelphia newspapers, if memory serves — and that is how I came to spend most of Sunday night tracking down the score of the Louisiana Tech vs. Centenary game, or whomever Old Dominion had played.

It was nearly impossible to form