Why Raiders’ Matt Flynn is a backup

By Art Spander 

OAKLAND — He’s a backup, and there’s a reason. Matt Flynn has been an NFL quarterback more than five seasons now — this is his sixth — and through a varying set of circumstances, he rarely has been first-string.

Maybe wrong team, wrong place. Green Bay behind Aaron Rodgers, Seattle behind Russell Wilson.

More likely an inability to take control, to win games.

Going from nowhere to stardom is fantasy. If you can do the job in the NFL, you’ll get the job. The GMs and managers know who can play the most important position in football, and if they don’t they learn quickly enough.

What we learned, or relearned, is that Flynn doesn’t have the right stuff, although Raiders management didn’t realize that until acquiring him in a trade from the Seahawks.

Flynn works hard. Flynn is cooperative in interviews, including painful ones such as the one he had to undergo Sunday when, given the opportunity to lead the Raiders to a win, he couldn’t.

It began so well for Flynn and Oakland, a quick 14-0 lead, in part because of a rare blocked punt, in part because of an 18-yard Flynn pass to Mychal Rivera. Then the jolt back to reality, an interception returned 45 yards for a touchdown — the sequence known euphemistically as a “pick six” — and the seven sacks.

Before Sunday was over at the O.co Coliseum, the Washington Redskins had beaten the Raiders, 24-14.

A day and a half earlier, Terrelle Pryor was listed as the Raiders quarterback. Sure, he had incurred a concussion Monday night at Denver. And sure, Flynn, who had started only two other games in five years, had been preparing himself just in case. But as the week progressed so, we were told, had Pryor progressed.

“Pryor will start . . . according to league sources,” said one printed report Sunday morning.

Pryor, whose mobility and speed give the Raiders another dimension, another weapon.

Pryor, who Oakland coach Dennis Allen called upon out of desperation in the last preseason game when it became apparent Flynn could not perform behind a less-than-effective offensive line.

But a man’s health is more important than the result of any game. Saturday night, the Raiders told Flynn he would start. “We didn’t feel good about letting (Pryor) play,” Allen explained. “We were ready to go with him, but the doctors saw him one more time. We felt it wasn’t the right thing to do. ”

Good for the Raiders. Take no chances with concussions. The Raiders’ diligence seemed to have been rewarded, when with fewer than five minutes gone Rashad Jennings blocked a Washington punt and Jeremy Stewart grabbed the ball in the end zone. Not long later, Flynn hit Rivera for another touchdown.

“We were executing,” said Flynn, “doing the things we needed to do. They made some adjustments on defense. After that we just weren’t converting on third downs, and that obviously was the big issue.”

So was the interception, which came in the second quarter with the Raiders in front, 14-3. Flynn fired to Denarius Moore, but David Amerson popped into view — if not Flynn’s view — and after the pick and 45-yard return, it was 14-10.

The Raiders were headed to a 1-3 record. So were the Redskins.

“I thought we had a good play,” Flynn would say later. “They were in man-to-man coverage. We have to clean up the execution of that, all 11 of us.”

It was Flynn who threw the ball.

Flynn didn’t have a great deal of help. Running back Darren McFadden, who’s always getting hurt, pulled a hamstring early on and never returned. Fullback Marcel Reece hurt his knee, also before the half. That meant, with Pryor missing, the entire backfield was substitutes.

“No question,” Flynn said afterward, “those two guys (Reece, McFadden) are the heart and soul of the offense.”

So, we now comprehend, is Terrelle Pryor.

“I don’t think (Flynn) saw the field very well,” said Allen, the coach. “I think he was obviously part of the sacks we gave up in the game. It was a tough situation for him to come into, and obviously with the loss of McFadden and Reece, that didn’t help. Offensively we didn’t get it done, and that’s the bottom line.”

In the fourth quarter, the Raiders gained 28 yards total. In the final three quarters, the Raiders scored zero points total.

“Really it’s about seeing the field,” said Allen when asked about Flynn’s pocket presence, “and what I talk about is seeing coverage and being able to deliver the ball. So some of those sacks are partly on him and partly on protection.”

And about that interception turned into a touchdown?

“We had the momentum in the game,” Allen insisted, “and they were able to snatch it from us a little bit.”

With Matt Flynn, perennial backup as quarterback, the Raiders unfortunately never could snatch it back.

Sad September song for the Giants

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — A sad September song at AT&T Park. An autumn with nothing but memories, an autumn of dreams as faded as the leaves.

Something new for the San Francisco Giants and their fans, a final week of a season that went so awkwardly wrong that on Tuesday night the Giants again had to face the pitcher who once was their savior.

Brian Wilson out there on the mound in a Dodger uniform, throwing against the Giants the crackling, snapping, unhittable balls he once threw for them. The Dodgers, the division-champion Dodgers, getting a couple of home runs and beating the Giants, 2-1. How mortifying. How depressing.

Two of Matt Cain’s pitches were driven halfway to Oakland, one by Yasiel Puig, a couple of innings after Cain presumably hit Puig intentionally, and another by Matt Kemp. And the way the Giants can’t hit — they scored only three runs in three runs against the Yankees over the weekend — that was enough.

They’re playing for pride now, and nostalgia. Barry Zito, for the last time, was to pitch Wednesday for San Francisco. A reward. A farewell. A what-the-heck, why not?

It was supposed to be Madison Bumgarner’s turn, but Giants manager Bruce Bochy was thinking of the future — and the past. MadBum will sit out the rest of this disappointing year, having pitched one inning short of 200, while Zito gets his final chance before heading into the sunset. Or onto the roster of another team.

A seven-year contract of $127 million, which became bigger than anything Zito did or couldn’t do with a baseball. A contract of hope and controversy. Boos and jibes, but through it all Zito stood tall, acted the gentleman until the end, and in 2012 helped pitched the Giants to their World Series win.

"There were a lot of things I would have liked to go better,” Zito told the San Francisco Chronicle, “but when it's all said and done, I'll always know I helped the team win a World Series. That's huge for me."

And it remains huge for Bochy and the front office. They’re bringing Zito on stage once more, a victory lap if you will in a year when victories have been rare, for Zito (4-11 record, 5.91 ERA) and the Giants (72-85 after Tuesday night).

“I wanted to see him have one more start,” said Bochy, who deals in sentiment as well as anyone in baseball. “This is the best time. He’s done a lot. We know what he did last year for us. He has done everything we asked.”

The days dwindle down to a precious few. Such poignant lyrics. It is up to the Oakland Athletics alone to play October baseball by the bay this year. The A’s came through. The Giants are through.

There was a sequence in the top of the eighth on Tuesday night that was perfectly representative of this imperfect year for the Giants. With Kemp on first for the Dodgers and two out, reliever Jean Machi struck out A.J. Ellis. Buster Posey, the MVP, dropped the ball, which happens, but his routine throw to first for the out was short of Brandon Belt, and Ellis was on first and Kemp on third with the error.        

That rarely happens. Fortunately, for the Giants, Mark Ellis grounded out.

The Giants’ defense has been terrible this season, devastating for a team that has trouble scoring runs. The middle of the order, the big guns offensively, have failed with men on base. In the three games against the Yankees and one against L.A., the Giants got four runs total.

“We’re cold right now,” affirmed Bochy, talking as if San Francisco had a few months remaining rather than only a few games. “The series in New York, we didn’t swing the bats very well either.”

Zito will pitch then depart. That’s a given. What then happens to Tim Lincecum, who has been occasionally brilliant — the no-hitter — and frequently erratic. Do the Giants re-sign him?

What they must do is sign a power hitter, presumably to play left. What they must do is somehow persuade or order Pablo Sandoval to get into shape. He will be in his contract year in 2014. Pablo has only 13 home runs — and three were game in one game.

What they absolutely must do is pick up ground balls and throw them into a glove, not into right field or center field.

Bochy, not unexpectedly, insisted Cain pitched well, and Cain did pitch well. But the slightest mistakes, the two balls hit for home runs, are critical when a team can’t get runners home — and except for a solo homer by Tony Abreu in the fifth, the Giants couldn’t get runners home.

“We couldn’t get much going,” said Bochy.

When have they ever in this 2013 season?

Defenses have figured out how to stop 49ers

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — Jed York gave the straightforward answer. Jed York, who doesn’t draw up game plans or carry the ball, but in effect as 49ers team president carries the responsibility of having everything done properly, explained what would be done about Aldon Smith.
  
Neither head coach Jim Harbaugh nor quarterback Colin Kaepernick could be, or would be, as forthright, about another problem: the way the Niners have been playing football.
    
San Francisco lost another on Sunday, this time at Candlestick Park, where the crowd of 69,732 appeared more bewildered than irate. Maybe the 29-3 defeat at Seattle a week ago could be understood. But not getting beat, 27-7, by the Indianapolis Colts at home.
   
Two losses in a row for the first time in Harbaugh’s two-plus seasons as the Niners' coach. Offensive ineffectiveness for a second consecutive week. An indication that defensive coordinators around the NFL have figured out how to stop the read-option and thus stop Kaepernick, who was sacked three times, fumbled once and was intercepted once.
    
It’s been a rotten few days for the Niners, who last season went to the Super Bowl. First the whipping by Seattle. Then, early Friday morning, around 7 a.m., the arrest of Smith, the defensive end, on charges of DUI and possession of marijuana. Management decided he would play Sunday — a doubtful decision — and he did play.
   
The defense was satisfactory, to a point, although it never really could stop second-year quarterback Andrew Luck, who Harbaugh coached at Stanford. The offense, outgained 336 yards to 254, was unsatisfactory, out of synch, worrisome.
   
Smith is headed to a rehab center after his fourth arrest and maybe a fine and suspension by the NFL. He won’t be in uniform Thursday when in this loony-tunes schedule, the Niners, 1-2, will play at St. Louis. Some thought he shouldn’t have been in uniform Sunday.
  
There was an apology from Smith after the game, with the comment, “I also wanted to let it be known that this is a problem, and it’s something that I will get fixed, and that I’ll do everything in my power to make sure that this never happens again.”
  
York said Niners executives, realizing there could be outrage from beyond, still “decided that sitting someone down and paying him didn’t seem like appropriate punishment.” As if playing him and paying him is?
   
The Niners, players and coaches, contended that they were not distracted by the Smith situation. That wasn’t the reason they lost, said the chorus. This leaves only one accounting. They were outplayed once more.
   
Kaepernick was brilliant most of the time last year as a mid-season starter. The flaws, maybe a failure to call an audible, perhaps a pass flung too hard, were acceptable. He could run. He could throw, and opponents — with the exceptions of Seattle and, in the Super Bowl, Baltimore — didn’t know how to react.
   
Now, after months of scheming, they do. The serve-and-volley game evens out. First, the offense has the advantage. Then, given time, the defensive coaches create their own edge. So the offensive coaches go to the grease board and devise something else.
   
Athletes are only part of the equation, if the major part. When the defense swarms here or drops three men there, the offense may be stymied. The Niner offense certainly has been.
 
“I think they ran a couple of read-options,” said Colts coach Chuck Pagano, “and our guys did an unbelievable job on (those) . . . We talk about plastering so guys don’t come out free on the back end once he starts to scramble. The pass rush was just relentless.”
  
Kaepernick, never very informative, retreated behind the obligatory “it wasn’t them, it was us,” or in his words, “The fact is we didn’t execute.” Why doesn’t anyone ever admit he/they didn’t execute because the other team wouldn’t let them?
  
“They put a spy on me,” Kaepernick said about a defender who follows the quarterback, “so they have one more to account for me. I have to be able to make throws downfield.”
  
Not an easy task when under ferocious pressure.
 
Harbaugh said he didn’t believe there was something technically wrong with Kaepernick.
   
“We didn’t make the plays,” said Harbaugh, sticking to the format.
    
Then a bit of honesty snuck in: “There wasn’t enough opportunity to make plays.”
    
Because of the Indianapolis defense. Because perhaps the Niners were without their best receiver, Vernon Davis, and already had lost another receiving star, Michael Crabtree, on an injury before the season began. Still, every team has injuries. The best overcome them.
 
“We got to be real,” said Harbaugh, “got to look how we can improve. We have no choice but to find our way.”
  
No choice except losing games.

These Raiders may have a future

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — The other team is awful. Really awful. That’s not the Raiders' fault. They’ve been there, been the foil, been the butt of jokes, the zingers by Jay Leno on national TV. There’s no sympathy, no apologies — just, for a few hours, satisfaction.

It’s not the Raiders’ fault the Jacksonville Jaguars are so bad. “We won a football game,” said Dennis Allen, the second-year head coach. “That’s all we can do week in and week out, and play the schedule.”

This week, this coming Sunday, it will be the Denver Broncos, who are the polar opposite of the Jaguars, the team the Raiders on Sunday figured to beat, and because of a defense that has improved and a kicker, Sebastian Janikowski, who doesn’t have to improve, defeated Jacksonville, 19-9.

Ninety percent of America didn’t see the Raiders’ first win of the season. At the same hour, starting at 1:25 p.m. Pacific or 4:25 p.m. Eastern, the Broncos were facing the New York Giants at Met Life Stadium in New Jersey, Peyton Manning against younger brother Eli, the so-called Manning bowl.

CBS-TV is in business to draw viewers. You think anyone wanted to watch the 0-1 Raiders against the 0-1 Jags? Even in Orlando, that was an easy answer, “No,” but by regulations, contractual agreements, Orlando — with the local station begging for forgiveness — showed Jacksonville-Oakland.

Showed the so-called hometown team (140 miles away), which scored only 2 points a week ago and this game had just 3 points until the final 2 minutes 53 seconds. You think Dennis Allen cared? Not a chance.

Allen and the Raiders are a socially acceptable 1-1 for the next few days, which is the same as the Green Bay Packers and better than the Washington Redskins.

Nobody around the O.co Coliseum, where the crowd was announced as 49,400, is complaining about that. Or the competent performance of Oakland quarterback Terrelle Pryor.

“I’m excited and happy we won,” said Allen. “I thought we did some good things.”

One of them was controlling the football, 31 minutes 48 seconds out of 60. Another was holding Jacksonville to 34 yards net rushing, a total to which one can add the footnote, “Hey when you’re in a hole, you’re not climbing out on fullback plunge. You’re throwing.”

More touchdowns would have been acceptable for Oakland, which was limited to one. The man known as Seabass was obligated to end drives with field goals, and he hit on fielders of 46, 30, 29 and 29, while missing a 35-yarder. That’s usually not the way to win football games, unless you’re facing the Jaguars.

The Raiders, behind in last week’s opener at Indianapolis and in all the four preseason games, scored early, if not often against Jax. They were playing downhill, as the cliché goes. They were in front at the virtual start, less than five minutes after kickoff, and they stayed there.

“I thought it was huge,” said Allen, a man of few words, about Oakland scoring on its first possession. “I think our defense going out there and stepping up and forcing a three-and-out on the first series of the game, and then we come back and get the punt return (30 yards by Phillip Adams) that set us up in good position.”

The Raiders got the runs from Darren McFadden they hoped to get when they drafted him fourth overall six seasons ago, bursts that gave him a total of 129 yards on 19 carries, one of those runs good for 30 yards. Too often the man called DMC has been injured, but now he is healthy, and now the Raiders are beneficiaries.

McFadden fumbled — “That’s something that can’t happen,” insisted Allen, after it did happen — yet Allen and everyone else knew McFadden was excellent. So was Pryor, the kid at quarterback who in his second start grew into a man.

He didn’t look like a runner who passes. He was a passer, poised, patient, who can run. The coach said he would have to look at the tape to analyze Pryor’s decision making, but the assessment could be determined from the final score. When a team wins, the quarterback is successful.

“Every snap,” reminded Allen of Pryor, “is a learning experience for him.” As it is for every quarterback, whether, as Pryor, he was chosen in the supplementary draft of August 2011 after leaving (fleeing?) Ohio State following accusations of improper benefits.

The man is great athlete, who was as fine a basketball player in high school as a football player. That he has the skills and leadership qualities is understood.

“I feel like I did my job,” Pryor said after doing his job. He was 15 of 24 passing for 126 yards. He carried 9 times for 50 yards. He very well could be the next Russell Wilson, Colin Kaepernick or RGIII. He very well could be better.

“I got us a W,” he affirmed.

He, McFadden and the defense. Maybe these Raiders have a future.

Giants’ frustration turns into victory

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — The manager felt exactly like the fans. Frustrated, disappointed, maybe if he would confide, defeated. The Giants, the World Series Champion Giants, had spent four hours Tuesday night “squandering a 6-0 lead,” as Bruce Bochy so accurately phrased it.

Now a bit before noon Wednesday, a weary Bochy was meeting his obligations and the media. “That,” he said to the journalists about the night before, “was one of our worst games.”

One of their worst games in one of their worst recent seasons. It’s one thing not to repeat. It’s another to plummet, to bumble in the field, to fail at the plate, to be embarrassed.

Baseball, it’s been said, is designed to test a man, to find how he can react when times are going poorly, because as we’ve seen from the celebrations and the acclaim, we know how he will react when everything’s going well.

How does he play the mental game, often the most difficult of all? Does he solider on? Does he start contemplating the end of the schedule?

What we found out a few hours after Bochy’s remarks was what Bochy said he already knew. The Giants still have their pride, and their professionalism.

The Giants loaded the bases in the seventh on three walks with nobody out. Only one of those runners scored. The Giants trailed, 3-2, and you surmised they would lose another. They didn’t, getting two runs in the bottom of the eighth to beat the Colorado Rockies, 4-3.

The feeling in the clubhouse was more of relief than elation. More of reassurance than satisfaction.

“If we had lost this game,” conceded Bochy, “after the way we did (Tuesday) night it would have been really bad, really frustrating. This would have been a hard game to take.”

Especially with a 10-game road trip against the Dodgers, Mets and Yankees starting Thursday. Especially with a home crowd, one of those empty-seat sellouts, the 240th in a row, screaming as if the Giants were in first place, not in last.

“The fans are still behind us,” said Brandon Belt.

The Giants on Wednesday at AT&T Park got what they had been missing, effective pitching and timely hitting in the same game. The mark of a lousy team is to lose a game 9-8 and then the next day lose one, say, 3-2. Which, after a seventh inning when they had the bases loaded and scored only one run — on a sacrifice fly — appeared likely.

But not only did San Francisco win, it also won a home stand (2-2 against Arizona, 2-1 against Colorado) for the first time since May. The Giants also received fine pitching again from Yusmeiro Petit. On Friday, he was one out from a perfect game. On Wednesday, he retired the first nine batters he faced in order — meaning only one base runner in 13 innings — but then he wobbled in the sixth and came out.

Still, three runs allowed in 14 2/3 innings is the stuff of a guy who might very well be a starter next season. He’s hoping as much, as he explained through a translator. So is management.

“He’s a really smart pitcher,” said Bochy.

Petit is 29, and it took him a long while to get to the bigs, but perhaps his time has come. In 5 2/3 innings Wednesday, Petit struck out seven.

“We’re playing hard,” said Bochy. “I never doubted that. We don’t have a choice. This is what we’re paid to do.”

They just haven’t done it very well much of the year. Only two statistics are truly important: runs scored and runs allowed. The Giants for weeks now haven’t been able to get people around the bases and across home plate. They did Wednesday because Marco Scutaro, six weeks from his 38th birthday, refused to rest, and because Belt drove a pitch to the opposite field, left.

With the bases loaded in the eighth — in part due to a perfect sacrifice bunt by pinch hitter Eire Adrianza — and one out, Scutaro singled home the run that tied the game, 3-3. Belt followed with a single that would prove to win the game.

“Marco doesn’t like days off,” said Bochy. “He wanted to win this game.”

And so he and Belt, along with Angel Pagan and Brandon Crawford, won it.

“This could take us into next year,” said Belt.

Where it takes them immediately is to Los Angeles, where the Dodgers, supplanting the Giants as the best team in National League West, are waiting.

“There will be a lot of people down there,” Bochy said, referring to expected sellout crowds. “It will be good for our young players to be on a stage like that. We’re going to go down there and try to win some ballgames.”

Something they haven’t done very often — Wednesday being a fine exception.