(Reuters) - Swede Jonas Blixt birdied six of the last seven holes to regain a share of the lead with Zimbabwean Brendon de Jonge after Saturday's third round of the $4.5 million Las Vegas Open. Co-leader with the burly de Jonge overnight, PGA Tour rookie Blixt took advantage of another near-perfect day for scoring in the Nevada desert as he fired a sizzling five-under-par 66 to post a 19-under total of 194. ...
(Reuters) - American Ryan Moore flirted with golf's magical jackpot, a 59, before he bogeyed his penultimate hole on the way to a sizzling 10-under-par 61 in Thursday's opening round of the Las Vegas Open. Moore, who started out at the par-four 10th, missed the green to the left with his tee shot at the short eighth but was otherwise delighted with his spectacular form in near-perfect scoring conditions in the Nevada desert. "It was one of those days that you just keep putting it in play," said the 29-year-old Las Vegas resident, who has played the TPC Summerlin layout countless times. ...
Each week the Noise highlights 10 bold names who he believes are destined to torpedo your team leave egg on his face. For those playing the Lames home edition, each player must be started in at least 50 percent of Yahoo! leagues to qualify. As an accountability advocate, results, whether genius or moronic, will post the following week using the scoring system shown here. If you're a member of TEAM HUEVOS, post your Week 3 Lames in the comments section below.
Tom Brady, NE, QB (99-percent started)
Matchup: at Bal
This week, Ray Lewis and friends will stain the "toughest metrosexual's" sheepskin UGG boots. Fresh off an earth-shattering home loss to Arizona, the Pats will attempt to regain their composure in one of the NFL's most thankless environments, M&T Bank Stadium. Though his final Week 2 output was quite respectable (316-1-1), Brady was largely uneven against Arizona. Cardinals bookends Calais Campbell and Darnell Docket dominated the line of scrimmage, forcing four sacks. Despite being under duress just 19-percent of the time, Brady looked occasionally bewildered. The increased pocket pressure and loss of Aaron Hernandez in the first half knocked New England off-kilter. Another onslaught should be expected in Baltimore. Over their first two games (vs. CIN and PHI), the Ravens blitzed on 40-percent of the time. In total, they've forced six turnovers and tallied six sacks. If the Pats' pass protection again wanes, it could be another long, frustrating four quarters for the sloth-footed signal caller. It's imperative historical safety blanket Wes Welker, whose sudden decline has been the subject of much discussion, elevates his game. Recall in the conference championship a season ago versus Baltimore Brady salvaged an otherwise lousy day (239-0-2) with a 1-yard TD sneak. In the rematch, the model-faced QB may resemble Medusa.
Fearless Forecast: 24-38, 255 passing yards, 1 passing touchdown, 2 interceptions, 0 rushing yards, 14.8 fantasy points
LeSean McCoy, Phi, RB (99-percent started)
Matchup: at Ari
Many will claim the Noise has officially lost his marbles advertising one of the league's elite rushers in this space, but any player, regardless of clout, isn't completely immune to fantasy failure. Last season, Arian Foster, who bested McCoy in per game average by almost a full point, registered three Lame-worthy performances on the year. The Eagles Pro Bowler, one of the steadiest producers in the virtual game, totaled only four underwhelming efforts. He is arguably the most well-rounded back in the league today. But don't be shocked if Week 3 is his first face-plant of 2012. The Cardinals, as discussed above, are a defense on the rise. Their mind-blowing containment of New England last week was completely unexpected. Still, even given its ups and downs, Arizona has executed well at home in recent years, especially versus the run. In their past nine games at the UPS, the Desert Birds have conceded just 3.7 yards per carry to visiting rushers, including limiting Marshawn Lynch to 97 yards on 23 touches (4.2 ypt) Week 1. McCoy blasted AZ for 93 total yards and a touchdown last season in Philly. However, in the rematch, a pair of aces may not be in the Cards. Replacement refs with fantasy interests be warned.
Fearless Forecast: 21 carries, 73 rushing yards, 4 receptions, 18 receiving yards, 0 touchdowns, 12.1 fantasy points
Adrian Peterson, Min, RB (89-percent started)
Matchup: vs. SF
What Peterson has accomplished roughly nine months removed to annihilating his ACL/MCL is nothing short of extraordinary. His regenerative healing factor is akin to Wolverine's. Through two games, he's splashed six twice and totaled 167 yards, averaging a characteristic 4.4 yards per carry. Impressively 71 of his 144 rushing yards have come after contact. However, despite his miraculous recovery and early season performance, the Purple Jesus likely won't carry his followers to the Promised Land in Week 3. San Francisco's impervious frontline presents a major roadblock. Hole plungers Patrick Willis and NaVorro Bowman currently rank inside the top-7 in run coverage according to Pro Football Focus. The pair have already combined for 10 stops (Plays that result in offensive failure). Equally daunting, since Week 1 of 2010, a span of 34 regular season games, opposing rushers have averaged just 3.4 yards per carry versus the Gold Panners. And only four have eclipsed the century mark in a game during that span. Peterson may be at or near 100-percent, but this week, he'll likely churn out only half his normal output.
Fearless Forecast: 17 carries, 58 rushing yards, 3 receptions, 11 receiving yards, 0 touchdowns, 9.2 fantasy points
Vincent Jackson, TB, WR (68-percent started)
Matchup: at Dal
Though Mike Williams flashed playmaker skills in his rookie season, most agree, big-play ability the upside of Jackson's hasn't been seen in Tampa since the days of Joey Galloway. And that was an eternity ago. But for fantasy's rollercoaster ride, it's one week up, one week down. Coming off a monstrous game in New York (10-5-128-1), it would only seem appropriate for Jackson to pull a Houdini in Big D. Dallas defensive backs Brandon Carr and rookie Morris Claiborne have played marvelously thus far. Versus the rival Giants Week 1 and the Seahawks last Sunday, no wideout surpassed 60 yards against them. Most outstandingly, Carr has surrendered a mere 37.5-percent catch rate. In other words, the man has blanketed his assignments. Jackson's height and supreme athleticism are tough to contain, but last year in games where he topped the 100-yard mark the week before, he averaged just 36 yards in the followup. Again, the man is the essence of inconsistency. Take the odds. He disappears in Dallas.
Fearless Forecast: 3 receptions, 47 receiving yards, 0 touchdowns, 6.9 fantasy points
Demaryius Thomas, Den, WR (90-percent started)
Matchup: vs. Hou
When Thomas was separated at birth from twin Brandon Marshall, he apparently took both of their hands with him. The wideout, whose muscular frame and excellent athleticism are eerily similar to the ex-Bronco's, has become the apple of Peyton Manning's eye, particularly inside the red-zone. In the early going, he's out-targeted teammate Eric Decker 18-to-15, hauling in 13 receptions for 188 yards and two touchdowns. His resulting 15.4 fantasy points per mark sits atop the pole position among wide receivers. His breakout season, which many projected once elder Manning came aboard, is well underway. However, even the studliest pass catchers take the occasional siesta, an unfortunate outcome that could impact Thomas this week. Houston, one of the league's finest defenses top-to-bottom, has grounded the pass. Of the 21 balls thrown Kareem Jackson and Jonathan Joseph's direction only 42.8 percent reached their destinations unobstructed. No surprise, both DBs rank inside Pro Football Focus' pass coverage top-20. And don't automatically assume their soft early schedule has greatly inflated the pair's prowess. Joseph was especially spectacular last year. Thomas is a strong, physical receiver who wins most one-on-one battles, but Joseph, though giving up three inches, is equally tenacious. If Manning's downfield throws flutter again, it could be a quiet day in Denver for DT.
Fearless Forecast: 4 receptions, 58 receiving yards, 0 touchdowns, 8.8 fantasy points
BONUS WEEK 3 LAMES
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Each week one fortunate guest prognosticator will have a chance to silence the Noise. Following the rules stated above, participants are asked to submit their "Flames" (1 QB, 2 RBs, 2 WRs, 1 TE, 1 D/ST) by midnight PT Mondays via Twitter @YahooNoise. How large are your stones?
Reader Record: 2-12, (14.3%)
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Trending Topics is a column that looks at the week in hockey, occasionally according to Twitter. If you're only going to comment to say how stupid Twitter is, why not just go have a good cry for the slow, sad death of your dear internet instead?
Remember like three or four weeks ago when Greg Jamison finally put enough money together to go out and actually buy the Coyotes and re-sign Shane Doan and keep hockey in the desert and vindicate Gary Bettman and everyone would be happy forever?
Yeah, that was like three or four weeks ago.
Nothing has happened with it since, not really, because of course all this stuff moves at a glacial pace unless the league swoops in and basically sneaks a team out of the country overnight because it's a lost cause. Such was the case with Atlanta, and it should be the case with Arizona.
The latest bit of news in this seemingly never-ending saga is that the City of Glendale, broke and limitlessly daft, has asked Jamison to rework the deal they agreed to earlier in the summer to give the team a lease for Jobing.com Arena for the next 20 years. The deal as originally structured would have given Jamison's group, or whoever ends up buying the team, $324 million over that time. That's more than two Shane-Doan-To-Buffalo contracts a year!
And the problem seems to be a rather vicious cycle. While the city is allowed to approve the deal even if Jamison doesn't yet own the team, it's not comfortable doing so. Meanwhile, Jamison doesn't really want to buy the team without the deal being in place, and of course there's that whole business with the lockout. If the league is asking for $170 million to buy the team — and maybe Jamison and his buddies actually have that money on hand these days — he wants assurances that he'll be able to collect on that with a team that actually plays and generates revenues and things of this nature.
All of this has, of course, been complicated by referendums and potential work stoppages and all that, so who can blame anyone for wanting to stay out of it? But at the same time, how much more of this stupid garbage are we going to have to sit through before someone just says enough already?
Coyote fans exist. They care about this team. But as with Atlanta, there aren't enough to justify keeping them in a market that doesn't really want them all that badly. But look, I wrote about this same issue almost exactly a year ago: Jamison's name has been kicking around for more than 12 months now, and apart from him actually getting some cash together, very little indeed has been accomplished.
Shouldn't that, on top of all the other failed bids, be enough to convince everyone involved that really, this team and this city aren't worth the effort any more? You couldn't blame any party for wanting to walk away. The league has been dumping money into a hole in the desert like a pre-retirement Mike Ehrmantraut for four years. The City of Glendale has been pumping dollar after fruitless dollar into trying to make something work, and now that it almost might, they want to renegotiate. Jamison has been dangling from the line with a hook in his mouth for a year, and no matter how nice it must be to own a hockey team, no one can want to own this hockey team this badly.
Just move the team. It almost doesn't matter where at this point. I hear they're building an arena in Quebec City, and I know it's not ready yet, but the city's junior team plays in a rink that holds more than 15,000. That's more than the MTS Centre. Of course that's complicated by the fact that you might not have a buyer yet, and certainly moving the team to Canada would increase the price tag to the point where it's too rich for Jamison's blood.
But if this many people are willing to pony up hundreds of millions of dollars to keep a team that routinely loses money in Phoenix, there have to be more than a few willing to keep it in a tiny rink for a few years before moving into a brand new building, especially in a market so deliriously desirous of an NHL team that they're literally breaking their own laws to get it there.
No one involved in this doesn't know why the Coyotes are still in Glendale. The city sure isn't kicking and screaming to keep the team. The fans don't seem to care either; the team moved to Glendale in 2003, and have had two seasons with average attendance of more than 15,000 exactly once since the lockout ended (and that was in 2005-06, so maybe it is the fans' fault for welcoming the team back with open arms after all). Nope, it's because Gary Bettman wants a team in Glendale.
Losing another team north of the border would look bad for him personally, and thus it doesn't happen. We can all rest assured that everyone involved tried really hard to make this work, but it just didn't. This is past the point of being a farce.
Given how much he's getting puppeteered by ownership in the current CBA negotiations, how much longer can he justify these losses to the guys who cut his checks? If these latest CBA negotiations are all about profit certainty, rather than cost certainty, then one way to shore everything up in a big, big way — and stop losing millions of dollars a year — is to get the Coyotes the hell out of Arizona.
Am I actually turning optimistic about hockey being played on time?
I'm not naïve enough to think that we're anywhere near either the NHL or the Players' Association reaching any kind of accord in this CBA war but I'm starting to feel like they're at least trying to do it, which is encouraging.
Today, maybe by the time you read this, the PA will have submitted it's counter-proposal to the league's latest offer, which itself came down later this week. You'll recall that the initial, rather discourteous salvo came in late July, and the Fehr brothers took more than two weeks to respond with their own, rather saner but still unacceptable answer.
At least now, we're progressing at a much faster clip. It was another two weeks before the league answered, and at least this was an offer that could be viewed — if you squinted real hard and closed one eye and kind of let your eyes unfocus like a Magic Eye image — as a reasonable one. It was a non-starter as well, but hey, the NHLPA took only three days to turn around an offer this time.
That's improvement, and shows that maybe the league isn't intent on simply locking everyone out when training camps are set to open. Might they be trying to keep up appearances and still plotting to proceed as it seemed they would a month ago? Sure. But — and I don't know why I'm going glass-half-full here — everything I've read makes it seem like they're trying in earnest, and that's kind of encouraging.
My default answer whenever someone asks me, "Will there be a lockout?" is "At least until Thanksgiving," but now I'm at least less sure of that answer. And given where we were a week ago, I'll take it happily.
Pearls of Biz-dom
We all know that there isn't a better Twitter account out there than that of Paul Bissonnette. So why not find his best bit of advice on love, life and lappers from the last week?
BizNasty on the worst thing ever: "Finally found something worse than the people who post food pics on Instagram and Twitter. The people who comment on them."
If you've got something for Trending Topics, holla at Lambert on Twitter or . He'll even credit you so you get a thousand followers in one day and you'll become the most popular person on the Internet! You can also visit his blog if you're so in
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Trending Topics is a column that looks at the week in hockey, occasionally according to Twitter. If you're only going to comment to say how stupid Twitter is, why not just go have a good cry for the slow, sad death of your dear internet instead?
We've heard a lot this summer about how Shane Doan's re-signing with the Phoenix Coyotes was contingent upon the security of the team and its finances, which was apparently where Greg Jamison came in.
You remember Jamison. Former president and CEO of the San Jose Sharks who, in 2002, swooped in with a bunch of investors and saved them from hemorrhaging money and made them a successful franchise, who has, of late, been the most recent in a line of interested parties for these Coyotes.
It all seemed very strange from the start. Jamison is the face of a rather shadowy group of which zero members have been unveiled, nor where their or his money is coming from. Don't worry though, during the Coyotes' run to the Western Conference Final, we were told this was because they didn't want to overshadow the team's somewhat surprising postseason success. And yet, here we are in early August, with the Coyotes' Western Conference Final opponents having lifted the Stanley Cup, and yet, we continue to hear nothing.
Doan, the face of this struggling, bankrupt, league-run franchise, is actively and rather publically taking meetings with the various teams who have expressed an interest in his 35-year-old services. This despite twice extending his deadline to receive assurances from Jamison's group that the sale is moving along and could be resolved in the near future, petitions, threatened lawsuits from conservative thinktanks, and blah blah blah.
It's all becoming very, very easy to get bogged down in the details of a pending deal that Gary Bettman said could be resolved in "weeks as opposed to months" on May 7. And still we have no answers.
The reason for this, it turns out, is that Jamison, as many suspected all along, doesn't quite seem to have the scratch together right now. The league wants $170 million for the Coyotes (meanwhile someone just bought the Cleveland Browns for a whopping $1 billion which seems crazy to me but then I don't care about football), and Jamison apparently only has $150 million shored up. Which creates a terribly interesting problem: He needs the money to buy the team, and not only that, but to then pay Doan whatever ransom the captain demands. But he needs Doan to instill confidence in potential investors, and he can't get Doan without moving toward finalizing the sale, except that… well, you get the picture.
A mess in the desert? An uncertain ownership situation despite a multitude of assurances from the league that this time, the guy they're pushing as the new owner of the Coyotes is really and truly going to actually be able to buy the team? Gosh, where have we heard that before?
It's enough to make one wonder exactly how much of a stomach anyone besides Gary Bettman has for this? The grandiose dream of a team succeeding in Phoenix despite not actually being in Phoenix has turned out to be an even grander illusion, as the league props up a cavalcade of unsuitable suitors as saviors to an ineffible end.
Of course, it remains to be seen where this missing $20 million — a pretty sizable portion of a $170 million bid — comes from, if it comes at all, and whether it'll be too late to keep Doan in brick red and desert sand. And it's still unclear whether, if Jamison can even get that money to complete the sale, where he'll get the money to actually operate the hockey team. The league is apparently so willing to sell the team to Jamison, even at a loss, that it might be willing to "help Jamison's bid with some creative financing" and hope he can raise operating costs after locking up the team, presumably because investors would then find it more attractive.
What a disaster. So many hurdles cleared in the last few months alone to get this done and the latest liberator still needs help getting the financing. We're told he has had the money in the past but had investors back out at the last minute. We're told Jamison himself has lost some money in the process. Basically, we're told a lot of things, all of which are designed to assuage concerns. This guy who doesn't have the money at least has a good reason for not having the money. Great. Very encouraging.
I just don't understand why any of this is a surprise. So many times we've now seen owners who don't have the cash or the interest or the wherewithal to buy this team propped up as a sign of hope, an oasis in this desert largely devoid of hockey interest.
Fans of the team, what few there are, are constantly being given hope only to have it snatched back from them by the fact that no one who wants to buy this team and keep it in Glendale is actually capable of doing so. And even if they are, as Matthew Hulsizer seemed to be, the amount of political crap they had to deal with proved to be too much to make buying a monetary black-hole worth the trouble.
Gary Bettman isn't one to admit defeat, that much we know. We can also, at this point, rest pretty safely in the knowledge that the team has nowhere to go any time soon unless someone wants to swoop in and move them to Kansas City about a month and a half before training camps are scheduled to convene. And so everyone — fans, players, coaches, management, owners, everyone — is stuck with the Coyotes, waiting for someone who might never come.
Pearls of Biz-dom
We all know that there isn't a better Twitter account out there than that of Paul Bissonnette. So why not find his best bit of advice on love, life and lappers from the last week?
BizNasty on big surprises: "August? WTF?"
If you've got something for Trending Topics, holla at Lambert on Twitter or . He'll even credit you so you get a thousand followers in one day and you'll become the most popular person on the Internet! You can also visit his blog if you're so inclined.
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