Manning brothers could be future of ‘MNF’
Peyton and Eli make game a blast on simulcast show
I have seen the future of “Monday Night Football,” and it is Manning.
If you didn’t check your local listings for the NFL’s Week 1 capstone between the Ravens and Raiders in Las Vegas – tuning into ESPN by rote – then you missed the alternate simulcast on ESPN2, “Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli.”
Amazing – especially since the Silver and Black’s dramatic 33-27 overtime win didn’t require bells and whistles.
The retired quarterbacking legends and princes of the league’s royal family weren’t exactly on their basement couches, mainlining nachos or drinking the Bud Lights Peyton admittedly craved after Broncos victories.
What they were doing was breathing new life into a staid medium.
Humor? Check – Eli repeatedly giving his older brother the business, even asking if Peyton had sprayed Pam onto his shiny, prominent forehead.
Peyton predicted a 6-11 season for the Raiders based purely on their gameopening incompletion. Sarcasm and self-deprecation were on display in roughly equal measure.
Football vignettes? Yup – Peyton gleefully recounting a story of then-49ers coach Jim Harbaugh asking the wife of Manning confidant (and then-Duke coach) David Cutcliffe to make him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich – to the apparent horror of everyone else in attendance that day – after Manning worked out for San Francisco during the 2012 offseason as he
thinking that the Raiders had won in OT on a 33-yard touchdown catch by Bryan Edwards.
Not so fast. Clear the field. The replay showed that Edwards landed about a yard shy of the goal line.
Now this is the place, with the stadium situated in the shadows of the famous Las Vegas Strip, where you can get odds on anything.
The odds of a team throwing an end zone interception after having it firstand-goal from the 1-yard line? I’m guessing that’s like some 1-in-955,000 action.
It’s no wonder that Raiders coach Jon Gruden, pondering the swing in fortune, declared that he “almost died.”
Somewhere, Al Davis, the late Raiders owner and NFL nemesis, might be laughing at all of us.
I mean, it’s just so fitting that something wacky would happen when the Raiders marked the occasion of some fresh milestone. After all, this is the franchise that has The Holy Roller, The Immaculate Reception and The Tuck Rule in its annals. So, new stadium, new episode of weirdness makes perfect sense.
Then again, there was some fundamental football at work, too.
Carr passed 56 times for 435 yards and except for the pick in OT that wasn’t his fault, he didn’t throw an interception. He found his amazing tight end, Darren Waller, 10 times for 105 yards. And Hunter Renfrow (six catches, 70 yards) deserves mention for his 27yard tiptoe job down the sideline that got the juices flowing early in overtime. The kicker, Daniel Carlson, forced overtime by nailing a 55-yarder with two seconds on the clock in regulation. The defense pummeled Jackson into the two fumbles that led to touchdowns. First, in the fourth quarter, it was defensive tackle Quinton Jefferson poking the ball loose, which led to a 15-yard TD run by Jacobs. In overtime, Carl Nassib barreled around the corner and jarred the ball loose, which gave the Raiders the ball at the Ravens 27-yard line.
That the Raiders defense, which gave up 189 rushing yards, came up big in the clutch says something about the growth that is needed if this team is to ultimately blossom – as promised – under Gruden. There’s another new defensive coordinator in the mix in Gus Bradley and he’s supplemented by Rod Marinelli, whose NFL track record is built on productive defensive lines. There’s still much work to do with the defense. But the unit sure didn’t fold up in crunchtime.
It all added up to the Raiders winning the type of game that they probably would have lost last year, when they faded down the stretch and finished 8-8.
No, this team won’t go far if it has to repeatedly climb out of 14-0 holes. Yet there’s also something to be said for the grit that the Raiders demonstrated as some sort of first impression for the home fans.
“Who cares how we do it?” Carr maintained. “Let’s just win.”
They played with fire. No, they played with the “Al Flame” towering on the plaza behind one of the end zones, and didn’t get burned.
But at this point, the Raiders are still playing with house money.