LenDale White ran for two touchdowns and Chris Hope intercepted Peyton Manning twice as the Tennessee Titans remained the NFL’s only unbeaten team this season with a 31-21 win over the Indianapolis Colts on Monday night.
The Titans (7-0) have won an NFL-best 10 straight regular-season games, matching the second-best streak in the club’s history. More importantly, Tennessee grabbed control of the AFC South away from the team that has dominated this division in winning the past five titles.
Kerry Collins outplayed Manning, throwing for 193 yards with no interceptions.
PHOTO: AFP
Coach Tony Dungy had called this a must-win for Indianapolis to have any chance at winning the division, but now his Colts (3-4) have lost two straight in their worst start since Manning’s rookie season.
The Colts trail Tennessee by four games in the loss column with nine games left and New England visiting on Sunday night.
Manning had the Colts up 14-6 in the third quarter on two touchdown passes to Dallas Clark against a Tennessee defense that came in having allowed only one TD pass through the first six games.
But the Titans rallied after tying it at 14 with 3:21 left in the third.
The NFL’s stingiest scoring defense stopped the Colts on fourth-and-short on consecutive drives at the end of the third and start of the fourth. Linebacker Stephen Tulloch stopped Dominic Rhodes behind the line on fourth-and-1 with less than a minute left in the third. Rob Bironas’ second field goal, a 48-yarder, gave the Titans a 17-14 lead early in the fourth quarter.
On the Colts’ next possession, Manning couldn’t connect first with Reggie Wayne, who failed to pull in a pass one-handed. Then former Colts cornerback Nick Harper helped break up a pass to Marvin Harrison on fourth-and-2.
Tennessee responded by driving 66 yards over 6:51, and White scored his second TD — giving him 10 for the season. Hope picked off Manning again with 3:38 left. Rookie Chris Johnson scored his own TD on a 16-yard run and the sold-out crowd clad in Tennessee light blue began celebrating another win.
Manning scored on a 1-yard run with 1:17 left, but Titans safety Michael Griffin recovered the Colts’ onside kick attempt that didn’t travel 10 yards.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier