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[Johnny_Cakes]

Johnny_Cakes could you post this article please

https://theathletic.com/105646/2017...start-in-their-l-a-home-prompts-big-concerns/

Sorry had a busy day earlier.

Banks: For the relocated Chargers, a poor start in their L.A. home prompts big concerns

Don Banks
Sep 19, 2017

In football as in life, the law of unintended consequences goes pretty much undefeated on an annual basis. Which seems particularly topical these days in Los Angeles, where the reality is sinking in that the league fixed one problem but created another with its decision to allow both the Rams and Chargers to set up shop this season in the nation’s second-largest market.

What if the “Fight for L.A.’’ took place but nobody really noticed? Or cared?

In finding their long-sought solution for Los Angeles, the NFL is living with a situation much more troubling in the short term than any it escaped in fleeing St. Louis and San Diego the past two offseasons. That certainly wasn’t the master plan, but with the Chargers in the midst of a worst-case scenario for their roll-out season in L.A., sources privy to the league’s thinking say the NFL is shocked at how far south things have gone already for the relocated Chargers.

“It just doesn’t feel like we’ve created any forward momentum there, instead we’ve created negative momentum,’’ said the source about the 0-2 Chargers, who lost their home opener 19-17 to Miami, failing to sell out the 27,000-seat, built-for-soccer StubHub Center in Carson. “There should be some novelty to the whole thing, but it doesn’t feel like that. There was never any honeymoon.

“It’s going to take real ownership fortitude and vision and digging in for the long haul to get the Chargers where they need to be, on equal footing [with the Rams]. They need somebody totally bought in to doing what needs to be done, grassroots and all that. It feels like a very, very big hill to climb.’’

An autopsy of the Chargers’ first regular-season game in the Los Angeles market on Sunday revealed death by embarrassment. The Chargers drew just 25,381 fans, with a sizable portion of the crowd rooting for Miami, right down to the final seconds when a roar went up for a missed 44-yard field goal attempt that sealed the narrow win for the Dolphins.

Adding insult to the incongruous setting was the Chargers’ cannon firing after kicker Younghoe Koo missed the potential game-winner, leaving even franchise quarterback Philip Rivers momentarily confused about the outcome. All this after owner Dean Spanos was booed during an on-field halftime ceremony.

Combined with the Rams attendance (56,612) for their 27-20 loss to Washington at the Los Angeles Coliseum, the NFL’s collective draw on the first day that both L.A. teams played at home simultaneously was an underwhelming 81,993—about 3,000 fewer fans than attended USC’s thrilling overtime win against Texas at the Coliseum on Saturday night. In addition, let’s not forget what unfolded that same evening in San Diego, where San Diego State shocked the 19th-ranked Stanford, 20-17, before a healthy Qualcomm Stadium crowd of 43,040.

“The optics are miserable with the Coliseum holding 56,000 for the Rams the day after USC plays to 84,000,’’ the league source said. “That’s never a spot the NFL wants to be in. And the Chargers not being able to sell out a 30,000-seat soccer stadium is about as bad as it gets. But it can be read another way by the league. When we get rid of these two [crappy] stadiums, it shows there’s a base of people there who love football. Long term I think the NFL is beyond thrilled with what is to come. Short term it’s bad optics, and Dean is the big loser.’’

On a conference call with reporters on Monday a league spokesman, according to USA Today, said the NFL and both the Chargers and Rams remain confident Los Angeles can strongly support two teams, even as they await the 2020 opening of the $2.6 billion stadium in Inglewood. That’s called whistling past the graveyard, NFL-style.

“If you can’t sell out a 30,000-seat stadium and half the crowd is visiting fans, the optics are bad,’’ said another league source attuned to the Los Angeles situation. “The key is to evaluate after this year whether it's a short-term issue or whether this will be a problem for three years. It’s one thing to have this problem in StubHub, but what if this continues in the new stadium where the capacity is much greater?’’

While the league remains convinced Los Angeles has tremendous long-term potential once the new stadium is up and running, given how much it will increase the projected value of both teams and the league itself, the short term is painful. At the moment, the benefits of Los Angeles and the stadium project under construction by Rams owner Stan Kroenke—which will host Super Bowls, the Olympics, an NFL Network complex and perhaps the World Cup—feel pretty far down the road. But it’s the game-changer in the market, the league believes.

The question is, can anything be done to change the equation while the countdown to 2020 continues? Are there any short-term fixes for what looks to be an untenable situation for the Chargers, whose plight risks doing damage to the Rams’ effort to re-introduce the market to NFL football? Three years has never sounded longer for any one predicament endured in the almost-100-year history of the league.

League sources are skeptical of the options, which would range from the Spanos family surprisingly deciding to give up and sell its stake in the Chargers to a buyer in Los Angeles or San Diego, to the possibility of moving the team back to Qualcomm on a short-term basis to work on a new stadium initiative while maintaining their Inglewood option in L. A.

Given the poor relationship between the city of San Diego and Spanos, as part of that potential maneuver Spanos would almost certainly have to step aside and let his sons, John and AG, lead the way in any new stadium effort in their former home, sources said. And nothing short of Spanos selling the team might enable the building of a bridge back to San Diego. That is why outside of a sale, perhaps the only solution is for the league to take over the stadium fight and work out a way to present the Spanos family a nailed down stadium project in San Diego.

The league would also have to entice Spanos with some significant financial incentive to re-engage with San Diego after years of getting nowhere in terms of a replacement for Qualcomm. The $645 million relocation fee the Chargers are scheduled to start paying in 2019 is an obvious starting point. But these are all long-shot scenarios.

“There aren't great choices aside from hoping that it gets better,’’ a league source said. “This is going to be a long-term building project for the NFL and the Chargers. The start is discouraging but the lack of options means the best path forward is hard work and leadership. This is the first quarter, not the fourth quarter.”

Two games into the Chargers’ L.A. experience, the forecast is gloomy, and that’s affecting the sunny hopes and big dreams the NFL had for its return to Southern California.

“I think the league would jump at any option that would lead long-term back to San Diego if it’s credible,’’ another league source said. “The league and the owners didn’t want Dean to move. But short of some miracle in San Diego, I don’t see that happening.

Unintended consequences once again prevail. When the NFL decided to get back into Los Angeles, perhaps it didn’t sufficiently anticipate or consider the implications of the Chargers getting out of San Diego. But to the league’s chagrin, it’s a front-burner topic now.

 

[HNL HI]

thanks man, apparently that article was the source of a bunch of outlets today claiming the Chargers could get sent back to SD

 

[Johnny_Cakes]

GREAT piece on Marshawn and his devotion to Oakland and the people who still make Oakland the Town.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/spor...bfddf6804c2_story.html?utm_term=.1bc94e2300dc

Marshawn Lynch and Oakland are ready for one last ride. And you’re not invited.


By Kent Babb September 22 at 8:49 AM

Lynch, 31, hasn’t been in prison, but he did spend the first 3½ years of his NFL career in Buffalo — before moving on to Seattle and becoming a Super Bowl champion and a crotch-grabbing, Skittles-chomping, profanity-flinging curiosity who’s just ’bout-that-action, boss. “Beast Mode,” as he’s known because of an explosive running style that caused actual seismic activity in 2011, abruptly retired after the 2015 season. Then the Raiders’ announced plans to move to Las Vegas, and that inspired Lynch to return to the NFL and play for the Raiders, or to be entirely accurate about it: to play for Oakland.

“Every home game that I get to come to this motherf-----, I’m probably gonna be riding with the whole town,” he told Bay Area reporters in June.

It was classic Lynch: unburdened by grace, uninterested in acceptance, unwilling to change to make anyone else less uncomfortable. They used to say similar things about the city that created him.

Just in the past few weeks, now that football’s most intriguing reunion is on, Lynch staged a frenetic solo dance party on the Raiders’ sideline; was fined for flipping the double bird at the Tennessee Titans; and answered a reporter’s question about protests by pondering whether “elephants is scared of mouses.”

“He’s not what you typically would see from an athlete,” former Seattle teammate Doug Baldwin says, “or a human being.”

He is authentic, and authentically Oakland, and if there’s any consolation alongside all this change, at least there’s this: Marshawn Lynch never will.

As Cowboys linebacker Anthony Hitchens discovered, Lynch runs with a nearly unequaled ferocity. (Ron Jenkins/AP)

‘Can you fight?’

As a child, Lynch had been a wanderer, moving with his mother from one public housing complex to the next as she worked two jobs and tried to get by. Dinner was cereal some nights, and other times he got by on candy.

Sugar was always among his vices, along with ambition and pride. He didn’t have many outfits, occasionally wearing the same thing all week, but what he owned he’d wash in the sink at night and hope it’d dry by morning. When it wasn’t, the kids teased him about the musty smell that followed him, and Marshawn couldn’t believe his friends would judge him that way.

He became withdrawn and suspicious, adopting a piece of Oakland slang used to defuse trash talk or excuses: “Be about that action,” and that became his code. He collected broken promises, often from his father, and never forgot them. Friends and relatives disappeared inside prison sentences or worse, and over time Marshawn perfected the art of social distance. “You start to expect the worst out of people,” he told ESPN in 2013, though sometimes humanity could surprise him.

Family members took him in during particularly turbulent times, sometimes for a night but occasionally for months. On his birthday one year he was so hungry he wandered across the street to visit a woman who ran a restaurant and catering business. He told her he turned 7 that day, and she made him a hamburger; he’d never forget it.

“He had to get in where he fit in,” says Marshawn’s uncle and Little Virdell’s father, Virdell Larkins Jr. “He is who he is because of this lifestyle, these streets that make us.”

The elder Larkins was a guard at San Quentin State Prison, and Marshawn decided he wanted to be a parole officer. He liked what that kind of job provided his uncle: respect and authority, to say nothing of coming home each day to the same three-bedroom house in the suburbs — something like a dream.

He spent nights at his uncle’s, eventually moving in for about a year, one of a dozen or so stops of varying elegance around the East Bay. He was enchanted by the wonder of laundry machines and steak and onions over rice whenever he wanted it. He and Little Virdell, himself a talented defensive back who would play in college, dreamed of growing up to play for the Raiders — their skull-and-crossbones logo a symbol of unapologetic defiance, perhaps sports’ best match of a team’s identity and its fan base.

Marshawn was dazzling with all he could do on a football field, his vision and athleticism, but back then there was a downside to his game: He was afraid of being hit. That’s right: Before there was “Beast Mode,” some coaches believed Marshawn was soft.

“Can you fight?” Oakland Tech’s running backs coach once asked him, and the boy said he could; he’d been fighting his whole life.

Then be about that action, the coach said: Think of opposing defenses as a revenge apparatus. The cycling from house to house? The hunger and heartbreak? The kids who said he smelled?

The coach pointed toward the players across from him, telling Marshawn he should take it out on them.

Lynch talks with fellow Raiders running back George Atkinson III before a preseason game. (Ben Margot/AP)

About that action

That Wednesday in August, Lynch’s cousin was gathering trash in the weight room, an unexpected part of the head coach’s job description.

“Five cents. We’ll take it,” Larkins said, reading a label and explaining that California refunds a nickel for each recycled bottle; if he cashes in enough, Oakland Tech can afford to play football this season. “Now we get to see something — something out of our trash.”

He appreciates symbolism, even the kind he seems to be fighting: Temescal, the high school’s north side neighborhood for more than a century, seems to belong more to the city’s newcomers these days instead of the kids who attend class here.

Six blocks away from Oakland Tech’s crumbling football building is a restaurant with two Michelin stars; even closer is a duplex listed for sale at more than $1 million.

Meanwhile, the nearby recreation center, where Lynch played as a boy and one of the few constants in his life, burned last November and hasn’t been rebuilt. Oakland Tech provides Larkins with $450 per football season — barely enough for one pregame meal, he said — and mentors can be scarce. But he nonetheless believes sports are a powerful motivating force for poor kids who grow up with few role models.

So he collects garbage, sells popcorn and peddles Bulldogs apparel. And, occasionally, invites his cousin and Oakland Tech’s most famous alumnus to swing by with a few words.

Speaking of, why not just ask Lynch — who reportedly has lived off endorsements, has saved nearly $50 million in playing salary, and whose new contract will pay him at least $9 million over the next two years — for a donation?

That, Larkins said, would miss the point. He wants his players to watch him doing this, to hear about Lynch’s sacrifices and see his rewards. What could be a more symbolic way to teach them to be about that action?

“I want to teach these kids to stop waiting for what people are going to hand you,” Larkins said. “Don’t wait for s---. Go get s---.”

During an infamous news conference before Super Bowl XLIX, Lynch had a point, but little to say. (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

‘Born and raised and bred’

Lynch spent offseasons here and heard locals’ stories and saw the changing landscape for himself.

A fledgling civic leader in dreadlocks and sweats, he saw businesses fold and return as something unfamiliar, heard from residents being pushed out, listened as members of Lynch’s innermost circle described feeling like outsiders in the only city they’d known.

The Oakland they knew wasn’t just changing; it was disappearing, and the “honeycomb,” as they called it — hangouts where the bees come to gather — was gone. Now, Larkins said, if he and his friends congregate on a front porch or sidewalk, invariably one of their new neighbors calls the cops.

“We can’t even sit outside the house no more,” Larkins said, “without somebody saying something.”

As he once did during more meager times, Lynch listened and quietly contemplated. At least off the field, he prefers subtlety to grandiosity. One example, friends and former teammates believe, is when he refused to answer reporters’ questions in the traditional sense throughout the 2015 season — “I’m just here so I don’t get fined,” he said, again and again, in a particularly famous episode before Seattle’s second consecutive Super Bowl appearance. Whether Lynch intended it or not, he was — in his own strange way — delivering a message about the absurdity of NFL rules forcing players to say something to the media, and besides: Weren’t his responses, while unusual, a more revealing look into his psyche than typically bland talking points?

“They just think it’s: ‘Oh, Marshawn is just being funny; he’s being different; he’s being anti-authority,’” said Baldwin, Lynch’s friend and former Seattle teammate. “But no, he’s making a serious point: ‘You’re forcing me to come here and talk to the media when I’m an introvert.’ It just went over everybody’s heads.”

Anyway, Lynch retired in February 2016 — following nine seasons, six of which he rushed for at least 1,000 yards, after five of which he was named to the Pro Bowl — and announced it on Twitter in a most Marshawn way: with a “peace out” emoji and a pair of bright green cleats hanging from a power line.

After that, he became something more serious than a mascot and more fun than an activist. He opened a “Beast Mode” store in downtown Oakland, not just running the place but sometimes working the counter and inviting youngsters with at least a B average to sit in the in-store barber chair for a free haircut.

He attended sixth-grade graduations and stopped by Oakland Tech practices and organized group bike rides from Oakland to Berkeley.

He heard about a northside restaurant closing, its owner retiring after more than 50 years, and Lynch called her. He told Cassie Nickelson, 79, she probably wouldn’t remember him, but she made a hamburger for a hungry boy on his seventh birthday. Lynch and Nickelson “got to talking,” Nickelson would later say, and before they hung up Lynch offered to buy Scend’s, keeping it alive, and rename it for a friend who’d been shot to death in Oakland in 2007, and sure enough, Rob Ben’s is expected to open later this year.

Then in March, the Raiders announced they’d be leaving the East Bay, and Lynch again felt a responsibility to his hometown. After a year away, he lobbied the Seahawks to relinquish his NFL rights and trade him to Oakland.

Lynch visited Raiders headquarters in April and tried on a silver and black helmet, and it felt so good he left the facility wearing it. The Seahawks traded Lynch to Oakland for draft picks, and, though he had been living around for more than a year, becoming a Raiders meant he was home.

“Yes Lawd,” Lynch tweeted after agreeing to a two-year contract, which will expire just as the franchise leaves California.

A few weeks later, Lynch appeared at a news conference. Playful at times, difficult at others, Lynch sped through answers until someone asked him about the Raiders’ young players and the team’s chances of finishing this season in the Super Bowl.

“All that [is] good s--- you just said, but I got a whole new Oakland behind me, though,” Lynch said. “And I mean, the way we feel just about where we’re from and why we represent where we’re from so hard is because we know what the struggle is and how we get down.”

He was speaking directly to Oakland, speaking its language, no point in subtlety.

“It ain’t like, you know, I’m coming to y’all’s city and I’m riding with y’all,” he said. “This is actually born and raised and bred, pissing in them hallways and running down them alleyways.

“And I really did that.”

Lynch speaks with Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett before a preseason game. (Eric Risberg/AP)

A place of his own

The Tesla’s motor is still running, its door still open, its driver still angry a few minutes after slamming on the brakes outside Oakland Tech. One way or another, Lynch knows how to make a point.

“This is me being protective over my family,” he tells me, though by now I realize he’s standing up for more than just his cousin. Oakland isn’t just a city to Lynch; it is — particularly away from the tapas and wine bar district — his castle. An outsider entering his space to talk to his guy about his town? That’s trespassing.

I tell him I’m here to write about his life and a changing Oakland, to see the places meaningful to him, to understand why the city matters so much to him.

He ignores me.

“When’s y’all’s first scrimmage?” Lynch asks Larkins.

“The 11th.”

“Of August? I might not be able to make it, bruh,” he says, genuinely bothered by the prospect of disappointing Oakland Tech’s players. He and Larkins go on talking about the neighborhood, the increased “surveillance” around here and a “big-*** water hose thing” Lynch hasn’t seen before.

Finally he orders Larkins into the Tesla before turning toward me.

“But yeah, man, they got tours and s--- like that,” he says. “You can get on a bus and they’ll take you around and s---.”

Larkins climbs into the passenger side, nonetheless shouting out places I should visit: the burned-down rec center, the old neighborhood, the downtown area. Lynch, in his way, also says farewell.

“You have a nice day, boss,” he says, and I tell him it wasn’t my intention to overstep. “It’s all good, pimp. Don’t even worry about it.”

He drives away, his exit less dramatic than his entrance, and after a while I head downtown. The Beast Mode store is there, between a coffee shop and a specialty beer cafe, and when I arrive, I see Lynch’s Model X parked out front on Broadway.

Relatives are among the staffers, and I watch as friends park in front of Lynch’s Tesla, presumably at his invitation, and some stay for a few minutes and others are inside for much longer. One visitor brings his lunch, and another stops by with his family.

As I walk toward the storefront, it occurs to me that Lynch opened more than just another retail place. This, in the heart of Oakland, is the new honeycomb — a gathering spot for the people who matter to Lynch; a space that’s theirs and will remain that way, no matter the changes surrounding them.

I want to see this place, to fully understand its importance to Lynch. But some places are protective of their culture and don’t care if outsiders understand them, and the same goes for some people, and so I reach the door and hear their chatter and just keep walking.

 

[sohi 23]

Nice article.

Raiders are 4-1 in primetime games during the Carr era.

 

[HNL HI]

I'm hyped

 

[notoriousmj23]

Aldon Smith pleaded no contest to Hit and Run
DUI charges were dropped

 

[raider5]

Aldon Smith pleaded no contest to Hit and Run
DUI charges were dropped

Those the old charges or are those new? Hard to keep up

 

[sohi 23]

Its gameday boys. Lets get it.

Jordan Reed & Fat Rob are probably out. Vernon Davis + Perine/Thompson are the replacements for Washington.

The entire Raiders offensive line will be kneeling before the game.

 

[raider5]

 

[albooboo]

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co...-protest-in-uniform-but-wont-do-that-anymore/

 

[Johnny_Cakes]

I would love to see the entire team, including staff, kneel together. This franchise has been at the forefront of progressive action in the NFL, it should be us leading this wave.

 

[kayzeezay]

Buffalo

 

[laker4lifeman]

Almost time

 

[village1600]

Let's show the World we here

 

[village1600]

Copper cant even jump smh

 

[raider5]

Carr hung that **** up way too much.

 

[willie mcfly22]

Carr put too much air under it...

 

[kayzeezay]

Nice defense out there Norton

 

[village1600]

That's the Defense we all know

 

[village1600]

Lmao this team ain't ready

 

[willie mcfly22]

Really hope we don't poop the bed on primetime

 

[raider5]

We'll be aiight...just gotta get settled in...

 

[kayzeezay]

I see the bright lights to much for these boys

 

[laker4lifeman]

Keep it close and hope our guys show uo

 

[willie mcfly22]

Offense need to wake up right now!