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Archive for September, 2014
The collapse is complete. "Did you miss the entire A's regular season? Tonight's game is an encapsulated version," the San Francisco Chronicle's Susan Slusser tweeted—and she's absolutely right. Baseball's best team over the first four months of the regular season, Oakland was one of the worst over the final two. That the team headed into the bottom of the eighth inning with a four-run lead and lost in extra innings shouldn't really be all that surprising. The baseball gods haven't been smiling down upon the A's for some time. But after a showing like that, you can bet that changes will be coming. They may not be ...
The Oakland Raiders named Tony Sparano as their interim head coach while they search for a full-time replacement following the dismissal of Dennis Allen. Sparano previously served as head coach of the Miami Dolphins.     Jim Trotter of ESPN passed along word of the decision, and the team later announced the move: The Raiders also confirmed the choice on their official site and provided comments from general manager Reggie McKenzie. "Tony Sparano has a strong presence in this organization," he said. "His experience and leadership qualities will serve the team well in helping reach the goal of everyone here, which is to win football ...
Despite a 22-33 record over the past two months as well as injuries and inconsistency, the Oakland Athletics secured the second American League wild-card spot in the season’s final game. With 162 games now in the rear-view mirror, MLB.com's John Schlegel reports the A’s will send Jon Lester to the mound on Tuesday night against Kansas City’s James Shields in the hope of avoiding an early offseason. During the team's stretch-run slide, Oakland’s lineup struggled to hit in the clutch, its defense looked shaky on routine plays and several members of the starting rotation showed signs of fatigue. In recent weeks, fans and ...
Oakland Raiders head coach Dennis Allen was fired by the team after four weeks into the 2014 NFL season and an 8-28 overall record.Sitting at a winless 0-4, the Raiders are in search of a new leader. Per the team via Twitter, Tony Sparano has been appointed as their interim head coach while they decide who will be next in line to officially take over.Who are the current candidates? Is Jon Gruden an option for Oakland? Watch as Stephen Nelson examines the Raiders' head-coaching vacancy with Bleacher Report NFL Insider Jason Cole in the video above.Read more Oakland Raiders news on BleacherReport.com
The Oakland Raiders have been bad this season. Real bad. There's no other way to put it. Fortunately, The Raiders are heading into their bye week, which means they have two weeks to figure out some way to turn things around. Oakland has a lot of work and soul-searching to do during the week off. Every member of the team, both players and coaches, knows that something drastic has to be done, and it needs to be done now. But with pretty much everything going wrong through the first four weeks, the most difficult part of the bye week is going ...
Celebrate A's fans: Oakland is in the playoffs for the third consecutive year. But wait. First, there's that pesky one-game, win-and-your-in AL Wild Card Game to get through. Because of such dire circumstances, the A's will go with their main man Jon Lester. But after that? What will the rotation look like, or what could it look like, rather, with the postseason schedule? Assuming the A's make it past the wild-card game, they're set up with a powerful rotation. Check out the ideal rotation and whether or not bullpen roles will change.Begin Slideshow
The Oakland A's are limping into the playoffs, which makes Josh Donaldson the perfect man to carry them. After tearing through the first half like world-beaters and stockpiling at the trade deadline, Oakland pulled up lame after the All-Star break. The formerly potent offense sputtered. The losses piled up. As Carl Steward of the San Jose Mercury News put it in a scathing (and perhaps premature) postmortem Sept. 20, "The puzzle pieces that made the A's the best team in baseball the first four months of the season just don't seem to fit very well anymore."  And so Oakland found itself, on the ...
Nothing went right for the Oakland Raiders on Sunday, and quarterback Derek Carr's ankle and knee injuries added insult to injury—or injury to insult, as the case may be. Midway through his team's 38-14 loss, Carr went down awkwardly. Those watching saw him hobble off the field in obvious pain, favoring his left leg. CSN Bay Area's Fallon Smith later tweeted that the quarterback himself said he suffered a high-ankle sprain and a medial collateral ligament (MCL) sprain. What's next for the struggling Raiders? To help answer that question, let's look at the best- and worst-case scenarios for their young quarterback and his ...
That was hard to watch. After an inspiring performance in Week 3, the Oakland Raiders seemed primed for their first win of the season against a struggling Miami Dolphins team. But in Week 4, that wasn't the case as Oakland was embarrassed in a 38-14 loss. The Raiders actually began the game on an very impressive 10-play, 74-yard drive that ended with a touchdown pass from Derek Carr to backup tight end Brian Leonhardt. The drive ended 5:22 into the game. That was as far as Oakland's positive day would go. On both sides of the ball, the game was an endless sequence ...
Patience may be a virtue, but only when there is some type of reward or lesson learned. When there is overwhelming evidence there is never going to be a payoff, then only a fool would continue to be patient. That’s why the time has come for Oakland Raiders owner Mark Davis to fire head coach Dennis Allen. There’s nothing left to gain by being patient, and there’s nothing to lose by firing Allen after a 38-14 thrashing in London at the hands of the Miami Dolphins. While the benefit in the short term may be small, firing Allen sends a message to everyone ...