The Washington Post - USA (2020-09-14

JOHN MCDONNELL/THE WASHINGTON POST

BY NICKI JHABVALA

For nine months, Ron Rivera has preached

culture change. He was hired to right the ship and

lead the Washington Football Team on a new

course, trying to fix a franchise that had struggled

both on and off the field for much of the past

20 years. He used slogans and four-letter words,

along with a personable approach and military

mind-set, to inspire a team mired in disaster. His

message was simple.

“We’re not going to quit,” Rivera said Thursday

ahead of Sunday’s season opener.

At an empty FedEx Field on Sunday, his players

gave a performance that indicated they have

bought into his process. Washington rallied from

a 17-point deficit, led by a stellar performance

from its remade defense, to defeat the Philadel-

phia Eagles, 27-17, in Rivera’s Washington

SEE WASHINGTON ON D7

Haskins looks like a leader

Ron Rivera trusts his quarterback,

and it pays off in Week 1. D6

Takeaways from an upset win

The defensive line’s dominance

is among the highlights. D8

Washington a t Cardinals

Sunday, 4:05 p.m., Fox

Just call this team 1-0

Rivera debuts with victory

as defense keys comeback

A big change: Washington

finds a way to win

The jokes are so easy they’re

probably best left unsaid. Given

the events of Sunday at FedEx

Field — an impossible-to-see-

coming 27-17 victory for

Washington over Philadelphia —

no one really needs to hear that

the parking lots don’t normally

look as empty at kickoff until at

least December. Or that the prohibition of fans

from the Washington Football Team’s season

opener could only help the home team, given that

all those green-jerseyed Eagles fans who normally

overtake this place couldn’t make the trip down

Interstate 95.

Put all that aside, and here’s what an NFL

season being staged during a pandemic feels like:

In the fourth quarter of a tie game, Washington

running back Peyton Barber burst through the

SEE SVRLUGA ON D7

WASHINGTON 27,

EAGLES 17: Ryan Kerrigan had

two of his team’s eight sacks, and

the Washington Football Team

erased a 17-point deficit to stun

visiting Philadelphia in its first

game with a new name.

Washington’s rally came in an

odd environment at FedEx Field,

where no fans were allowed.

Barry

Svrluga

KLMNO

SPORTS

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 , 2020. WASHINGTONPOST.COM/SPORTS M2 D

NBA PLAYOFFS

Denver survives another

elimination game, pushing

the Clippers to Game 7. D9

BASEBALL

Max Scherzer fades late

in his outing, and the Nats

fall to the Braves, 8-4. D12

Mystics vs. Mercury

Tomorrow, 9 p.m., ESPN2

BY KAREEM COPELAND

The Washington Mystics just

wanted the chance to control

their own ending. After a trying

season that included a stretch of

12 losses in 13 games, the absence

of four projected starters and the

loss of their top remaining scorer

midway through the campaign,

needing a single win in the

regular season finale to reach the

playoffs was a scenario they were

more than fine with.

Ariel Atkins and Myisha

Hines-Allen refused to let the

defending champions go home

Sunday, leading the Mystics to an

85-78 victory over the Atlanta

Dream in Bradenton, Fla., to

clinch the final spot in the WNBA

playoffs. A loss would have sent

the Dallas Wings to the postsea-

son instead after they won earli-

er in the day.

The eighth-seeded Mystics

(9-13), who have won four

straight, will face the No. 5 seed

Phoenix Mercury (13-9) in a

single-elimination showdown

Tuesday at 9 p.m.

“The work we’ve done the last

SEE MYSTICS ON D2

Atkins helps

the Mystics

surge into

postseason

MYSTICS 85,

DREAM 78

BY ADAM KILGORE

AND ERIC ADELSON

baltimore — “Ladies and gen-

tlemen, here come the Ravens!”

the public address announcer

blared at M&T Bank Stadium, de-

spite the fact that there were no

ladies or gentlemen in any of the

71,008 purple seats. Baltimore Ra-

vens players sprinted through two

rows of faux-marble pillars billow-

ing smoke. Metallica’s “For Whom

The Bell Tolls” boomed, unaccom-

panied by the usual cacophony.

When the music stopped, only

players’ shouts and coaches’ ex-

hortations pierced the silence.

Here comes the NFL season, an

autumn of football without cer-

emony and clatter, a year without

tailgates or cheerleaders. The

NFL, an unstoppable and inescap-

able cultural force, manufactured

the on-schedule start of its season

through careful planning and rig-

id adherence to protocols de-

signed to control the novel corona-

virus. The year’s first NFL Sunday

revealed the strange, surreal re-

sults of playing professional foot-

ball during a pandemic.

“It’s just different, man,” Ravens

tight end Mark Andrews said.

NFL games are typically specta-

cles, but Sunday they were violent

chamber pieces. Ravens Coach

John Harbaugh had T-shirts made

that read BYOE: Bring Your Own

Energy, a constant reminder to

players that crowd noise will not

provide it. The field was so quiet,

Baltimore players said, that they

could discern the Cleveland

Browns’ plans by listening.

“You definitely could hear the

defense and hear what they’re call-

ing,” Ravens wide receiver Mar-

quise Brown said. “That was pret-

ty good for us.”

New England Patriots Coach

Bill Belichick, closing in on five

decades in the NFL, was asked

SEE SCENE ON D5

Strange scenes, silent stadiums make for surreal Sunday

At NFL openers across country, widespread protests against injustice precede peculiar games sans fans

JULIO CORTEZ/ASSOCIATED PRESS

A Ravens flag is waved at M&T Bank Stadium, but no fans are there to see it.

BY CHUCK CULPEPPER

new york — Two superb tennis

players spent Sunday evening

with a maiden Grand Slam trophy

gleaming up ahead, so they took

deeply human turns squinting,

flinching and quaking. They

played all the way until it looked

as if they played in mud. They

played until their legs went gelati-

nous and their serves went kaput

and their brains went numb. They

played all the way to the last stage

they could play: a fifth-set tie-

breaker.

Then they played to 6-6 in that.

Then, just as the nerves men-

aced and the muscles tightened

and it seemed they might collapse

in tandem, a U.S. Open title did go

to one of the two. It went to

27-year-old Austrian Dominic

Thiem, the No. 3 player in the

world and a top-five fixture, with

the sympathy to 23-year-old Ger-

man Alexander Zverev, the No. 7

player in the world and a future

No. 1 according to informed spec-

ulation. The tennis-historic rel-

evance of a 322-point slog that

lasted 4 hours 2 minutes briefly

didn’t even matter as Thiem

splayed on the court ahead for-

ever at 2-6, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, 7-6 (8-6).

“It was such a big relief,” Thiem

said.

For a moment, you could forget

that Thiem had just become the

first first-time male Grand Slam

winner since Marin Cilic way, way

SEE U.S. OPEN ON D2

Thiem

rallies

to capture

U.S. Open

Five-set win over Zverev

gives Austrian his first

Grand Slam title

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