Cardinals scorch Seahawks, tighten grip on NFC West

All week, Seattle Seahawks players insisted Sunday night was just another game.

In Arizona, the Cardinals were treating it as anything but.

“We addressed this game as we wanted to show the nation that we’re for real this year,” cornerbackPatrick Peterson said after the Cardinals’ 39-32 triumph. “We thought this was an opportunity for us to come in here and show the world that we are a contender, not a pretender.”

Rallying past the two-time defending NFC champions in prime time might have a little more shine if the Seahawks hadn’t already let four other fourth-quarter leads slip away this season.

But there’s an emotional aspect to sending fans to the exits with two minutes to go at CenturyLink Field, where the Seahawks have been so formidable. And the tangible impact can’t be denied.

Up three games with seven to go, the NFC West is the Cardinals’ to lose.

“Once we beat Cleveland and going into the bye, everything was about ‘take control of the division,’” defensive lineman Calais Campbell said. “It feels really good to do that.”

The Cardinals did it Sunday despite blowing an early 19-0 lead and falling behind early in the fourth quarter, thanks to a pair of strip-sacks on quarterback Carson Palmer as the Seahawks’ pass rush exploited and exacerbated issues with the protection.

“After some disastrous drives, basically giving them 14 points,” coach Bruce Arians said, “to come right back speaks volumes about the character we have in that locker room.”

They did it despite watching left guard Mike Iupati taken off the field in an ambulance with a neck injury that sent him to a local hospital for testing. (An MRI and CT scan came back normal, the team said, and Iupati flew home with the team.)

They did it despite having two of their top receivers, Michael Floyd and John Brown, hobbled by hamstring injuries, leaving little-used Jaron Brown to make a pivotal play: a 10-yard catch on a ball batted into the air by Seahawks star Richard Sherman, extending Arizona’s go-ahead drive.

“All year, we’ve kind of been the team that’s going to blow a team out, or if it’s close, we lose it,” running back Chris Johnson said. “Championship teams – you’ve got to win those type of games when it’s close in the fourth quarter and we got the ball.”

The Cardinals led this division at this stage last season, too. But they lost Palmer in their ninth game – the most damaging blow in a series of them that left Arizona limping into the playoffs with a fourth-string quarterback and backups all over.

The Cardinals were outscored 54-9 in two losses to the Seahawks last season with Drew Stanton and Ryan Lindley at quarterback. On Sunday, Palmer was 29-of-48 for 363 yards with three touchdowns (and one pick early) before Andre Ellington’s 48-yard TD run all but iced it with 1:58 to go.

“I’ve always said I wanted to come back with Carson,” Arians said. “I don’t mind coming here with Carson any day of the week.”

The Arizona defense did its part, too, repeatedly forcing the Seahawks into passing situations on second- and third-and-long. Marshawn Lynch got just eight carries for 42 yards, and Russell Wilson was 14-of-32 passing with a touchdown and a poorly thrown interception to Tyrann Mathieu. The Cardinals ran 84 plays to Seattle’s 52 and had the ball for nearly 39 minutes.

Set aside that awful stretch early in the fourth quarter, and this was a relatively dominant effort on the road against the team that has owned the division and the conference the past two seasons.

“What’s our reward?” receiver Larry Fitzgerald said. “Another game on Sunday Night Football next week against undefeated Cincinnati.”

Another opportunity to show what these Cardinals are about – not that anyone’s opinion changes the fact they’re set up well to finish off one title and keep working toward another.

Marshawn Lynch is truly 50-50 to play

Every week, plenty of players are listed as questionable for their next game, which means there’s a 50-50 chance the player will play. Then comes Sunday morning, when the Twitter version of the Cannonball Run lets everyone know who will be playing and who won’t be playing, despite being 50-50.

Sure, it’s an imperfect process (e.g., T.Y. Hiltonlast week, who per multiple national reports would play but did). It’s nevertheless become one of the Sunday morning rituals as to all players who, as of Friday, were 50-50 to play.

This week, the most important player on the 50-50 list is Seahawks running backMarshawn Lynch. Via multiple entries in the Twitterball Run, Lynch remains 50-50 to play.

Lynch, who last played two weeks ago, was added to the injury report on Friday with an abdominal problem. It would be surprising if he doesn’t play in a key prime-time game against the Cardinals. If he doesn’t play, and if Thomas Rawls comes in and does well on the big stage, it becomes even more likely that, come next year, the Seahawks won’t tiptoe on eggshells to persuade Lynch to return for another season.

In 2016, Lynch is due to earn $9 million, with a cap number of $11.5 million. Rawls, in contrast, has a $525,000 salary — with a cap number of $530,000.

Before paying Lynch 18 times more than Rawls, the Seahawks have to ask themselves whether Lynch is 18 times better than Rawls.

So far this year, Lynch has 375 yards rushing in six games, with an average of 3.6 yards per carry. Rawls, who has played in every game and started three, has 376 yards — and an average of 5.4 yards per attempt.

Already, Rawls is more productive. If Rawls is both more productive and more available than Lynch, whether to keep the guy who’ll make 5.8 percent of what Lynch is due to make in 2016 becomes a no-brainer.

Vincent Margera, 'Don Vito' From 'Viva La Bam,' Dead at 59

Vincent Margera, who appeared as Bam Margera's crazy uncle "Don Vito" on the MTV series Viva La Bam and an episode of Jackass, passed away Sunday morning after years of declining health. He was 59. Bam Margera's mother April Margera confirmed the death to TMZ, who added that Margera had been suffering from liver and kidney failure in recent years and eventually slipped into a coma in October. Although he woke up from the coma, Margera remained in critical condition as his health continued to deteriorate in recent weeks.


Margera became a fan favorite on Viva La Bam, which ran from 2003 to 2006 on MTV, thanks to his inscrutable form of talking – often mocked with faux subtitles – as well as being the hapless victim of his nephew's frequent pranks. "Don Vito" also featured in Bam Margera's many CKY videos as well as other appearances under the Jackass umbrella.

Following the end of Viva La Bam in 2006, Margera faced legal issues stemming from an incident at a Colorado autograph session in August 2006 where he was charged with groping two 12-year-old girls. At trial in December 2007, Margera was ultimately found guilty of two counts of sexual assault on a minor and sentenced to 10 years of "serious" probation, which banned him from further portraying "Don Vito" in any capacity. He was also sentenced to register as a sex offender in Colorado and his native Pennsylvania. Since then, Margera remained largely out of the spotlight.

One of Don Vito's final appearances was Vito and Dunn's Rock Tour. That 2006 video co-starred Jackass member Ryan Dunn, who died in an alcohol-related car accident in June 2011.

Snap judgments from Week 11 of college football

College football's biggest story lines can build up or get knocked down in one snap. After a Saturday full of action and overreaction, we're here to help you figure out what's hot, what's not and what's true as the season enters the home stretch.

Here are five story lines to know (and, in some cases, debunk).

This week's Snap Judgments:


1. The Pac-12's Playoff chances are kaput.


Stanford missed a two-point conversion in the final minute Saturday and lost at home to Oregon, its second loss of the season and likely the nail in the coffin of its College Football Playoff chances. Stanford could have a shot if it wins out and every team left in the Big 12 round robin loses between now and Dec. 5, but that's unlikely.

In the wake of Stanford's loss, Utah stood as last remaining one-loss team in the league, with that one loss coming on an improving USC team's field. Nothing to be ashamed of, actually.

Well, that lasted for about two hours, until Arizona knocked off the Utes in double overtime. The Pac-12 was the first Power Five league to have no unbeaten teams, and now it's the first to have no one-loss teams. Almost makes you want to re-think that nine-game schedule.
2. TCU is a shell of itself without Trevone Boykin.

Boykin, arguably the best quarterback in college football, left Saturday's game against Kansas with an ankle injury, and the Horned Frogs barely escaped with a win over the Big 12 bottom-dweller. TCU has been hit badly by injuries since before the season began, but none is as important Boykin's. He is perhaps the most integral piece of any major college football program this season.

Good news: TCU seems optimistic Boykin can play next week. But if he's not 100% healthy, the remainder of the Horned Frogs' season could be dicey.
3. The ACC has two Playoff contenders.

Clemson, No. 1 in the committee's top 25, is a given. North Carolina is looking more and more like one every week. The Tar Heels haven't clinched the ACC Coastaldivision, but that seems but just a formality at this point. So let's look ahead to an intriguing ACC title game matchup.

Clemson, which skated past Syracuse on Saturday, looked a little more beatable than it has in recent weeks. UNC, on the other hand, continued its offensive assault, with a 59-21 win against Miami to follow a 66-31 demolition of Duke. Those who thought Florida State would give Clemson its greatest test before the College Football Playoff might have been wrong. It's actually UNC — in the ACC championship game.
4. Leonard Fournette won't win the Heisman.

It wasn't as bad as his performance against the stout Alabama front seven, but Fournette struggled for a second consecutive weekend — accumulating just 91 yards on 19 carries in LSU's home loss to Arkansas on Saturday night. It's unclear whether opponents now seem to have a blueprint to stop Fournette or if he's hit a wall at this point in the season, but the presumed Heisman Trophy favorite has likely lost his grip on the award.

It definitely doesn't help that Alabama running back Derrick Henry seems to be hitting his stride at the same time as Fournette's struggles. Or that Oklahoma quarterbackBaker Mayfield is a late entrant to the Heisman race.
5. Houston is in the driver's seat for a New Year's Six bowl — for now.

How about that comeback against Memphis? Houston rallied to win, 35-34, and advance to 10-0. The Cougars have two wins vs. Power Five opponents thanks to their games vs. Louisville and Vanderbilt, but Houston proved plenty in beating the Tigers on Saturday. But don't overlook that visit from 8-1 Navy the day after Thanksgiving.

Have Dog, Will Travel

I think I knew Fallout 4 had wormed its way into my brain when I started talking to my imaginary dog. About 20 hours into the staggeringly ambitious, post-apocalyptic video game, which Bethesda Games releases on Tuesday, my character’s loyal German Shepherd ran ahead of me to sniff at something. I’d met the dog early on and adopted him as a loyal companion, one who helped alert me to nearby threats and dug around for buried treasure. As he sniffed, I said aloud, to an empty room, “You got something, boy?”

Playing video games is often an embarrassingly involving experience. In the past, I’ve struggled to explain an emotional moment in a game to others, before realizing that it might be difficult for them to relate when they haven’t played. Fallout 4 throws this disconnect into even sharper relief—even for players of the exact same game. That’s because it operates on an even grander, more open-ended scale than 2008’s legendaryFallout 3. Set some 200 years after a nuclear apocalypse devastates the world, players assume the role of a wanderer who’s just emerged back on the surface. The rest is up to them. For some, that might mean unraveling vast conspiracies. For others, it might just be tending a garden with a dog at your side. The result is an experience that’s deeply intimate and immersive, despite the dizzying array of possibilities.

Video games used to fit into neat categories—role-playing games, strategy games, shooter games. But as consoles have become more powerful, and gaming has become less of a niche activity, everything has begun to merge together into blockbuster powerhouses like Fallout 4. Do you want to run around shooting monsters while wearing a mechanized suit of armor? Do you want to stealthily slip behind locked doors, or charm and connive your way through a complex story? Or do you want to eschew the story entirely and simply walk the blasted landscape of Boston (rendered in impressive detail, as Fallout 3 did for Washington, D.C.) and see what kind of trouble you get into? This is the intoxicating power of the open-world game. Having played Fallout 4 for days, pouring hours and hours into exploring its nooks and crannies, it was still clear it’d be months before I’d experienced anything close to its entire scope.

But back to the dog. If there’s a criticism to be made of Fallout 4 (beyond its buggy programming, which will likely be smoothed out over the next few weeks), it’s that on a surface level, it doesn’t feel that different from the seven-year-oldFallout 3, which also had players emerge from a fallout shelter and explore a giant post-apocalyptic wasteland. To be fair, that game was one of the most successful and acclaimed of all time, and often the rule of video-game sequels is to provide more of the same, but better.

And yet Fallout 3 could sometimes be a merciless slog, marching the player across dull, rubble-strewn landscapes or through D.C.’s labyrinthine Metro tunnels for hours before you reached your goal. Fallout 4 is more interested in giving those journeys some personality, and starting with the dog, you can travel with companions. Playing video games can be a lonely experience, and it’s amazing what a difference even a pretend dog makes.

Beyond that, another new addition to Fallout 4 is communities that you can build from the ground up. The world is littered with debris, both of the traditional and human variety: spoons and tin cans waiting to be recycled for a better purpose, lost souls traveling the world looking for meaning. You can gather people into small towns and start building houses, shops, and farms for them. The result is a sort of small-scale SimCity (or larger-scale Minecraft) that seems to have no particular bearing on the game’s main story (where you hunt your baby’s kidnapper).

When I first realized the scale of this new feature, I was nonplussed: Why insert what feels like a whole other game into a game that’s already so dauntingly massive? But after several hours scavenging around on various missions, I returned to my home base and built a few beds for my meager citizenry. It was when they started thanking me that I realized the game had simply snuck in another emotional hook.

As such, Fallout 4 may not feel like the future of gaming because it resembles so much of its past, cobbled together into a mighty behemoth that requires 10 hours to even begin to understand the scope. But that’s just part of the technological arms race that’s emerged as games get bigger and consoles get more powerful—the successful franchise is one that finds a way to do it all without scaring the customer off at minute one.

For a game so mammoth, Fallout 4 is deceptively simple in its opening: You emerge from your shelter, pistol in hand, a singular mission in mind. Then it does everything it can to derail you from your original goal by offering you distraction upon distraction. The joy is discovering that each distraction offers its own thrills and achievements; the pain is realizing the amount of time it would take to accomplish everything of interest in a world this large. But that’s something about video games that has never changed since their invention: In the best of them, joy and pain always go hand in hand.

Buffalo Bills throttle Miami Dolphins 33-17 to sweep season series

They might be in the same division, but the Dolphins simply aren't in the same league as the Bills.

Buffalo throttled Miami for the second time in three months Sunday. The only difference this time is it happened on the road.

The Bills were simply too fast for the Dolphins on both sides of the ball, roasting the visiting team 33-17 to put Miami's playoff hopes on life support.

That's not to say Buffalo didn't run the ball. The Bills had two 100-yard rushers -- LeSean McCoy and Karlos Williams.

For the second straight game, Mike Pouncey cost his team points with an errant snap. On the Dolphins' first play from scrimmage, he snapped the ball over Tannehill's head and through the back of the end zone for a safety.

The Bills, meanwhile, had little problem with anything offensively on their ensuing drive. A play after Ndamukong Suh whiffed on what would have a been a drive-ending tackle, McCoy busted loose for a 48-yard touchdown run.

The Dolphins finally got their offensive act together in the second quarter, traveling 85 yards to the end zone on nine plays, the last of which a powerful 1-yard touchdown run by Lamar Miller.

A 43-yard field goal by Dan Carpenter late put the Bills up 5, and then a Karlos Williams 11-yard touchdown run put them up double figures. The play was controversial: Williams fumbled the ball near the goal line, but CBS did not have the proper angle to give a definitive replay.

Then, Dolphins interim coach Dan Campbell's inexperience emerged. The Fins had a timeout yet wasted some 10 seconds in their two-minute drive, leaving them just one shot from the 1 yard line. Campbell went for it, but Tannehill's pass sailed incomplete. The Dolphins went to the break down 12.

They cut the deficit to 5 points on the second half's first drive, as Miller again scored from a yard out.

And the Dolphins had the ball with a chance to take the lead when the Bills finally picked on fill-in Jason Fox. Jerry Hughes beat Fox on third down, stripped Tannehill and recovered the ball.

A few minutes later, Campbell's game management again negatively affected his team. The Dolphins forced a Tyrod Taylor incompletion on a third-down play in which the Bills held. Instead of forcing the Bills to attempt a long field goal, Campbell accepted and backed Buffalo up 10 yards.

On the next play, Sammy Watkins roasted Brent Grimes for a 44-yard touchdown.

The Bills later put the game away when Williams raced 38 yards for a back-breaking touchdown.







Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/sports/nfl/miami-dolphins/article43685373.html#storylink=cpy

Redskins at Patriots game-day thread: New England coasts to 27-10 victory

As defeats go, the 27-10 loss that resulted was a team effort, the product of shortcomings in all three facets: dropped passes; poor tackling; and a failure to defend an onside kick. The upshot was a triple dose of humility for Redskins team that clawed back from a 24-point deficit against Tampa Bay in its last outing.

Scott Allen’s best and worst
Best symbolism: LeGarrette Blount bulldozed through the line for a five-yard touchdown on the Patriots’ ensuing drive. The Redskins were flagged for having 12 men on the field on the play. Outside of an impressive stop on third and goal to force a field goal attempt in the third quarter, 13 Redskins wouldn’t have been enough to stop the Patriots’ bruising back for much of the game.

Final: 27-10
New England jumped all over Washington early and slowly salted it away from there. Washington’s only touchdown came in the final minute to make the final look a tad more respectable at 27-10.

Washington faces the Saints at home next week, before going on the road to Carolina. Home games against the NFC East-rival Giants and Cowboys complete the third quarter of the season. Even though the bye week feels like the halfway point, today’s loss put Washington at 3-5 halfway through the 16-game slate.

Early fourth quarter:
Our more frequent updates and insights are on the live blog. But if you’re missing it, well, it’s hard to say how much you’ve missed. This second half lacks drama, especially after Tom Brady threw a touchdown pass to Brandon Bolden to make it 27-3.

Halftime:
The Patriots ran 24 of the first 25 plays in the game, and Washington performed a bit better in the second quarter and got on the board just before the half. The score is 17-3, but some of the first-half stats are still lopsided:

Total yards: New England, 245-89.
Plays: New England, 40-26.
Rushing: New England, 79-33.
Turnovers forced: Washington, 2-1.