FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ M2 D3
FROM NEWS SERVICES
The Baltimore Ravens placed
wide receiver Dez Bryant on the
covid-19 reserve list Thursday, two
days after a positive point-of-care
PCR test made him ineligible for
his highly anticipated reunion
with the Dallas Cowboys, his for-
mer team.
His placement on the list —
designated for players who have
tested positive for the coronavirus
or been exposed to the virus —
came just hours after Bryant
wrote on Twitter that he had test-
ed negative for the coronavirus
twice.
“I tested negative back to back
for covid and I’m not excited about
it,” Bryant said.
Bryant, who was not seen at the
portion of practice open to the
media Thursday, probably will
miss Monday night’s road game
against the Cleveland Browns as
he completes a mandatory 10-day
isolation period. Under NFL pro-
tocols, any player who tests posi-
tive for the coronavirus must iso-
late for at least 10 days. However,
Bryant could return sooner if he is
not showing symptoms and re-
turns two consecutive negative
PCR virus tests at least 24 hours
apart within a five-day period.
Allen Sills, the NFL’s chief medi-
cal official, said Wednesday that
Bryant’s daily molecular PCR test
administered Tuesday morning
returned an inconclusive result
and a r etest of the sample re-
turned another inconclusive re-
sult.
— Baltimore S un
l PANTHERS: Christian Mc-
Caffrey probably will spend an-
other week watching from the
sideline.
The 2019 all-pro running back
did not practice Thursday, and
Panthers Coach Matt Rhule said
“at this point I do not expect him
to play” Sunday against the Den-
ver Broncos.
The fourth-year running back
missed six games earlier this sea-
son with a high ankle sprain. He
has missed the past three games
with a shoulder sprain but wasexpected to return this week.
However, Rhule said McCaffrey
tweaked his thigh while working
out last week and hasn’t been right
since.
l CARDINALS: Veteran Ari-
zona wide receiver Larry Fitzger-
ald described fairly mild physical
symptoms during his 13-day ab-
sence from the Cardinals after he
tested positive for the coronavirus
two weeks ago.
The mental aspect was much
more taxing.
The 37-year-old Fitzgera ld said
there were “a couple days I didn’t
feel great” and that he lost nine
pounds during isolation. He said
he still doesn’t have much of a
sense of taste or smell but feels
fortunate that he’s generally feel-
ing much better and hopes to play
Sunday when the Cardinals visit
the New York Giants.
l JETS: Rookie wide receiver
Denzel Mims is dealing with a
family matter and will miss the
game Sunday at Seattle.
Mims le ft the team Wednesday
to tr avel home to Texas to handle
the situation and was not yet back
Thursday.
l BILLS: Buffalo signed Gener-
al Manager Brandon Beane to a
four-year contract extension, lock-
ing up the architect of a team in
position to secure its third playoff
berth in four years.
l 49ERS: Richard Sherman
said it probably will take a “mira-
cle” for him to return to San Fran-
cisco next season because of the
team’s tight salary cap situation.
Sherman is in the final year of a
three-year contract he negotiated
by himself with the 49ers after
being released by Seattle in 2018.
“If there ’s some miracle that
happens, then sure there’s an
opening,” Sherman said. “But
there ’s 40 free agents, and they’ll
probably have $30 million or less
in cash. They got to bring back
Trent [Williams] who costs over
$20 million. They have to p ay Fred
[Warner], who will cost $18 mil-
lion-plus a year. Anybody who
knows the situation understands
that.”
— Associated P ressNFL NOTESBaltimore places Bryant
on covid-19 reserve list
professional football
investigation — b ut Rivera and
Snyder have maintained a
harmonious, collaborative
relationship that might surprise
many former Washington
coaches.
“I wish people knew the truth
of what’s happening,” Rivera said
in a phone interview early this
season. “He’s given me carte
blanche to run the football team.
He’s been true to his word.
Everything he said he would give
me in January he has given me.”
This week, through a t eam
spokesman, Rivera said he and
Snyder speak regularly about the
team and that Snyder’s only
interest on these calls is to be
informed about what is going on,
leaving the decisions about
players, coaches and plays to
Rivera. As the coach went
through his grueling cancer
treatments over the season’s first
two months, Snyder began each
of their calls by asking Rivera
about his health, Rivera said
through the spokesman, not the
team’s slow start to the season.
Many of those who know
Rivera have said in recent months
that he might be the ideal coach
for Snyder, a man who commands
respect from his players but with
the right, even temperament to
withstand the explosions of an
impulsive owner. So far, th ey have
run from the end of the last
decade together, and if nothing
else, that’s a big change from the
past.
“I think that’s pretty [much]
gone,” Kyle Shanahan said on a
conference call Wednesday when
asked whether he still has the old
feelings of revenge in facing
Snyder’s team.
Those old memories were from
the last decade. He’s a head coach
now, with an NFC championship
on his résumé. He sounded as if
he had moved on, even offering
praise for this new Washington
team: “I can tell they’re being led
very well.”
And as Rivera phoned Snyder
on the way to Washington’s buses,
beaming at the memory of a year-
old phone conversation, it
seemed his football team had
moved on as well.
[email protected]franchise.
It’s a s trange time for
Washington. The team doesn’t
have a name, Snyder’s co-owners
are trying to sell their shares, an
independent investigation into a
longtime culture of harassment
around the organization has
lingered all season, and yet on the
field, the franchise may never
have had a m ore optimistic
5 -7 team. The return of Alex
Smith, a three-game winning
streak, a realistic shot to win a
bad NFC East and the victory over
Pittsburgh have given the team its
first flickers of hope in years.
In a w ay, it ’s fitting that
Washington plays San Francisco
this weekend. The 49ers are filled
with relics of the last calamitous
decade — a death spiral of
dysfunction and double-digit
losing seasons that sent the
Washington franchise slumping
into irrelevance.
There’s 49ers Coach Kyle
Shanahan, the son of Mike
Shanahan, to whom Snyder
bestowed all football power in
- The former Washington
offensive coordinator’s Super
Bowl run last year was a constant
reminder of the young, bright
offensive assistants — including
the Rams’ Sean McVay and
Packers’ Matt LaFleur — who left
the team only to win big as head
coaches elsewhere.
There’s Trent Williams, the star
left tackle and one of the faces of
Washington’s franchise in the
2010s whose refusal to play after a
botched cancer diagnosis
enveloped the team in a fog of
gloom for all of last year.
There’s Jordan Reed, the gifted
tight end whose brilliance was
squelched by constant injuries —
symbolic of a team that ended the
previous three seasons with more
than 20 players on injured reserve.
All of them are unwitting but
glowing tokens of what
Washington football had become
in the second decade of Snyder’s
ownership. But their arrival now
is a milepost that shows just how
far the team has moved away
from the disaster of the past. At
this point last season — j ust as
ON THE NFL FROM D1
game of the magical anomaly that
was the 2012 Robert Griffin III
season.
“You remember what the
conversation was that we had?”
Rivera said Snyder asked him in
that Monday night phone call
when Rivera br ought up the
meeting a year before.
“Yes, it was about culture and
changing the culture of the team,”
Rivera said he replied.
So fa r, it appears Rivera and
Snyder have worked together
better than any coach Snyder has
had, save for Joe Gibbs. Maybe
this is out of necessity — the
restrictions brought by the
coronavirus pandemic as well as
the mountains of litigation andRivera and Snyder first talked —
much of the conversation
surrounding the team was about
how Shanahan and McVay had
gotten away, how hurt and
outrage d Williams felt about the
only team he had ever known and
how the organization couldn’t
keep its be st players healthy.
Now the talk is about belief,
about anticipation, about Smith’s
miraculous return, about the end
of Rivera’s treatments for cancer,
about promising young stars such
as Terry McLaurin and Chase
Young, about a three-game
winning streak and about beating
an undefeated Pittsburgh team in
Washington’s biggest victory
since one over Dallas in the lastON THE NFL
Playing the 49ers brings back memories of failures
JOHN HEFTI/ASSOCIATED PRESSROSS D. FRANKLIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
49ers Coach Kyle Shanahan, top, is a f ormer Washington assistant,
while tight end Jordan Reed also ended up with San Francisco.BY LES CARPENTER
More than a year after his hold-
out and months after his trade to
the San Francisco 49ers, former
Washington star left tackle Trent
Williams smiled during a video
conference Thursday afternoon
and said he has no animosity for
the only NFL team whose uniform
he had worn before last offseason.
“The people who helped insti-
gate that situation are no longer
part of the organization,” he said.
“I’m not going to sit here and carry
a grudge just because people ex-
pect me to carry it.”
From 2010 to 2018, Williams —
who will face his former team Sun-
day when Washington plays the
49ers in Arizona — was a rock at the
end of Washington’s offensive line,
a seven-time Pro Bowl player who
was widely considered one of the
league’s best tackles. But his time
with the team ended awkwardly
when he refused to play in 2019,
upset over a botched cancer diag-
nosis by the team’s medical staff.
Even after ending his holdout
during that season’s trade dead-
line, he was banished from the
team’s practice facility by Bruce
Allen, the team’s president at the
time. After failing to come to an
agreement with Ron Rivera, the
team’s new coach, on a contract
extension, he was dealt on the last
day of the draft to San Francisco
for a f ifth-round pick in 2020 and a
2021 third-round pick.
On Thursday, Williams shook
his head when asked whether the
standoff with Rivera was finan-
cial, saying, “If it was about the
money, I could have took the mon-
ey in Minnesota,” a r eference to
the Vikings, who also wanted to
trade for him.
After meeting with Rivera in
February, he said it was clear he
needed to go elsewhere.
“We were on two different pag-
es,” he said of Rivera. “He was
coming into a team he probably
didn’t know all that well, and I
think he wanted everybody to
show him what they had. And atthe point I w as in my career, I
didn’t think I had to show him
what I had just to stick around. I
knew there would be suitors out
there, so I respectfully wanted to
go my own way. There was no
disrespect.”
Williams said he has not spoken
with team owner Daniel Snyder,
someone for whom he has ex-
pressed affection in the past and
made sure to praise during his
holdout while attacking Allen. He
does speak regularly with former
teammates, many of whom he
considers close friends, and fol-
lows their careers.
“My goal was to be a g ood team-
mate and put a g ood product on
the field, and I think I d id both,” he
said when asked what he wanted
his legacy to be in Washington. “I
played pretty good, productive
football while I was there and
recei ved a l ot of accolades for it.
And that’s all I wanted to do. I
want my legacy, when you think
about me, is as a football player
that does his job pretty well. If
that’s not what they think when
they see me, then they just have a
difference of opinion.”
[email protected]Williams carries no grudge into game against his ex-team
ADAM HUNGER/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Trent Williams was traded to the 49ers d uring the draft after a contentious holdout in the 2019 season.The star left tackle faces
Washington this week for
first time since messy exitBY GREG BEACHAM
inglewood, calif. — Cam Ak-
ers rushed for 171 yards in a break-
out performance, Kenny Young
returned an interception 79 yards
for a touchdown, and the Los
Angeles Rams clinched their
fourth straight winning season
with a 24-3 victory over the New
England Patriots on Thursday
night.
Jared Goff rushed for a touch-
down and threw a touchdown
pass to Cooper Kupp as the Rams
(9-4) rolled to a one-sided victory
in a rematch of their 13-3 Super
Bowl loss in February 2019.
Cam Newton passed for
119 yards before getting replaced
by Jarrett Stidham in the fourth
quarter of another dismal offen-
sive game for New England (6-7).
Five days after the Patriots scored
45 points at SoFi Stadium against
the Chargers, New England en-
dangered its push for a
12th straight playoff berth with
only its second loss in six games.
The Rams got a superb game
from Akers, the second-round
draft pick out of Florida State who
has seized a major role in their
offense over the past three weeks.
Akers’s yards mostly came in big
chunks during the biggest rush-
ing game by an NFL rookie this
season and just the ninth
1 50-yard game against a Bill
Belichick-coached defense since
2000.
Aaron Donald had 1.5 sacks to
move into the overall NFL lead
with 12.5 this season while lead-
ing another strong game from Los
Angeles’s elite defense, which
held New England to 62 yards in
the second half, recorded six sacks
and also scored a touchdown in its
third consecutive game.
New England again struggledto move the ball through the air,
and Newton threw his first pick-
six of the season to Young, who
also had a sack. Newton was 9 for
16 when Belichick replaced him
early in the fourth quarter with
Stidham, who went 5 for 7 on
three ineffective series.
The Patriots have been held
without an offensive touchdown
in multiple games this season for
the first time since 2003.
Despite their strong play in
recent weeks, the Patriots have
seven losses for the first time
since 2002, officially ending their
NFL-record streak of 17 straight
seasons with at least 10 victories.
The Rams will have four con-
secutive winning records under
Coach Sean McVay, something the
franchise hadn’t done since 1983-
86 with Eric Dickerson and coach
John Robinson. Los Angeles still
hasn’t clinched McVay’s third
playoff spot, but his team will sit
atop the NFC West with three
games to play.Los Angeles also improved to
33-0 with a halftime lead under
McVay.
The Rams’ opening 75-yard
touchdown drive at SoFi Stadium
looked better than anything it did
in the Super Bowl. Tyler Higbee
and Akers had long gains before
Goff leaned over the line on
fourth-and-goal for his career-
high fourth rushing touchdown
of the season.
An intentional grounding pen-
alty on Goff and a poorly thrown
pass intercepted by New Eng-
land’s Myles Bryant kept the Pa-
triots’ deficit manageable early.
But Young opened the second
quarter by picking off a poor
throw created by Donald’s disrup-
tion up front and taking it all the
way back for the third-year line-
backer’s first NFL touchdown.
Kupp’s two-yard touchdown
catch late in the third quarter
capped a dominant 16-play,
9 0-yard drive by the Rams.
— Associated PressAkers, relentless defense lead way as Rams cripple Patriots’ playo≠ hopes
RAMS 24,
PATRIOTS 3KEITH BIRMINGHAM/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Los Angeles running back Cam Akers ran for 171 yards — the most
by a rookie this season — in a rematch of S uper Bowl LIII.