The only action at the NFL’s trade deadline on Tuesday came in Denver, where tight end Vernon Davis arrived to take his physical and begin learning the language of Peyton Manning’s suddenly revved-up offense.
Joe Thomas will not be joining them.
Switching teams in pro football is not as easy as it is in other sports, so there is usually a scarcity of midseason moves, and even Sunday’s rash of injuries to key players served to quash talks rather than ignite talks.
After filling a void at tight end, Broncos GM John Elway explored an even bigger splash, but the Broncos and Browns could not reach agreement on a blockbuster deal for Thomas, Cleveland’s eight-time Pro Bowl left tackle.
“The trading deadline creates a lot of controversy and a lot scuttlebutt that generally results in nothing,” Browns general manager Ray Farmer told reporters after the deadline passed quietly. “We had some conversations and, at the end of the day, they all resulted in the same thing — nothing.”
After acquiring Davis and a late-round draft pick Monday for a pair of sixth-round picks, Elway said his philosophy was to make a deal if it made both organizational and financial sense.
“I think that we’re always trying to get better,” Elway said. “We’re not going to mortgage the future to do it, but if we can add to our football team now and feel like it makes us better, we’re going to look at opportunities like that.”
Denver will stick with a platoon of left tackles Ryan Harris and Tyler Polumbus protecting Manning’s blindside. Both players were jettisoned by the Broncos several years ago, only to be brought back this season when injuries riddled the O-line.
Ryan Clady tore an ACL in May and his replacement, rookie Ty Sambrailo, is headed for surgery to repair a torn labrum in his left shoulder that has sidelined him since September.
Although there were no deadline deals, there were plenty of moves across the league on Tuesday: The Chargers placed star receiver Keenan Allen on season-ending injured reserve with a lacerated kidney.
The Cowboys released embattled running back Joseph Randle.
The 49ers signed running back Pierre Thomas.
And the Titans fired coach Ken Whisenhunt after a 1-6 start and hired Mike Mularkey interim coach.
The Broncos are one of the league’s four 7-0 teams, but had two big concerns: tight end and left tackle after losing third-round pick Jeff Heuerman and Clady to knee injuries during off-season workouts this spring.
The Broncos have long had their eye on Davis, the sixth overall draft pick in 2006 and the 49ers’ franchise leader at his position in catches and touchdowns. However, they wanted to make sure he had overcome a recent knee injury. With 10 catches for 85 yards over San Francisco’s past two games, they were satisfied and signed off on the deal on Monday.
Elway figures Davis can help clear out the middle of the field where opponents have bunched their defenders, throttling Denver’s ground game and crowding Manning’s passing lanes.
“Obviously it’s going to take him a little bit of time to get used to what we’re doing,” Elway said. “We’d like to get him in there as soon as we can.”
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