MILE HIGH LOW
Networks ignore Denver WR costing team TD in close loss
IGUESS it was easy to miss — if you’re inclined to ignore what’s impossible to miss.
Last Sunday, had the then 5-0 Rams lost to the then 3-3 Broncos, it would have been a bigger story than the one that went widely ignored, the one about how the Broncos lost.
Late in the first quarter, the Rams led, 6-0, when Denver receiver Emmanuel Sanders thought he’d caught a touchdown pass.
Not good enough, he rose in the end zone and immediately headed toward the defensive back he had beaten, Troy Hill, to shake a finger in his face. Hill angrily slapped at the ball.
Sanders was called for taunting, 15 yards applied to the kickoff. Denver would first kick the PAT for what could have been a 7-6 lead.
Ah, but then a replay showed that Sanders was down on contact at the 1-yard line. The penalty still ap- plied, making it first-andgoal from the 16.
Instead of first-and-goal from the 1.
The Broncos eventually had to kick a field goal, cutting the deficit to 6-3 in a game won by the Rams, 23-20.
The fellows calling the game on Fox, Dick Stockton and Mark Schlereth, didn’t seize the moment to hammer Sanders for his selfish idiocy. They just added the one-size-fits-all bromide, “You never want to beat yourselves” — as if Sanders had dropped a pass.
So once again, better that the audience be left insulted than the professional fool on the field who just left a mess.
Afterward, Sanders weakly explained it was all the NFL’s fault for “getting soft.”
This should have been a front-and-center play all week on the countless NFL footage, discussions and strained debates shows. Then again, why contradict what TV emphasizes as what it feels that we love about football: the demonstrably selfish.
NBC purports to show pertinent earlier-day NFL video at halftime of its Sunday night telecasts. This episode of Sanders submarining his own team would’ve been a good one, no? Give it 20 seconds, in and out, no? No. But NBC included plenty of post-play medancing.
Sanders, who recently signed a $33 million extension, likely cost his team four points in a three-point loss because the nine-year pro couldn’t behave like one. And it barely made a peep.
And Sunday the chances are excellent another NFL game or two will be determined by players stuck in stupid, those with no awareness outside of self-awareness, and coaches who demand no better.