The Cincinnati Bengals parlayed six Baltimore turnovers into 24 points and held on to beat the Ravens 27-20 on Monday in the National Football League season opener for both teams.
The game ended, appropriately enough, with a turnover by the Ravens.
Facing a 3rd-and-goal at the 2-yard line, backup quarterback Kyle Boller drilled a pass into the stomach of tight end Todd Heap.
PHOTO: EPA
The ball caromed off Heap's arms and into the air, from where Bengals defensive end Mike Myers made a diving interception in the end zone to seal the outcome.
Two huge penalties -- one to each side -- were integral in the final two minutes.
The Ravens seemingly had tied it when Boller hit Heap in the back of the end zone on fourth down with 1:54 to play, but Heap was whistled for offensive interference on a questionable call.
On the ensuing play, Cincinnati's Madieu Williams was flagged for holding, giving the Ravens a first down at the 5-yard line and setting up the dramatic final sequence.
In San Francisco, the Arizona Cardinals kept the 49ers bottled up for much of the game, until the home team advanced the length of the field for the winning score, a one-yard touchdown by Arnaz Battle with 22 seconds to play.
The 49ers beat the Cardinals 20-17 in the season opener for both teams. Despite an ugly offensive performance, San Francisco snapped a four-game losing streak against the Cardinals.
The 49ers were limited to just 109 total yards through the first 57 minutes, but put together an unlikely 12-play, 86-yard drive to seize the victory.
The winning touchdown came on an end-around to Battle, one play after Battle had fumbled into the end zone where teammate Darrell Jackson recovered.
In a ceremony at halftime, the 49ers paid tribute to their late coach Bill Walsh, who guided San Francisco to three Super Bowl victories in his 10 years at the helm.
INJURY TURMOIL: Despite stunning French Open champions Paolini and Errani to advance, Chan was forced to pull out after her partner’s tearful women’s singles defeat Last year’s mixed doubles champions Hsieh Su-wei of Taiwan and Poland’s Jan Zielinski on Monday crashed out of the quarter-finals at Wimbledon, leaving the Taiwanese star focused on pursuing a fifth women’s doubles title in London, while a partner injury forced compatriot Chan Hao-ching to give up on her doubles campaign. Hsieh and Zielinksi, who last year also won the Australia Open title, narrowly lost their opening set 7-6 (9/7), before Britain’s Joe Salisbury and Brazil’s Luisa Stefani stunned the former champions 6-3 at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. The Taiwanese-Polish duo had been dominant in the first two
Real Madrid’s FIFA Club World Cup quarter-final against Borussia Dortmund had taken three crazy turns during nine minutes of second-half stoppage time when Marcel Sabitzer chested the ball and sent a right-footed volley toward Thibaut Courtois’ post. Courtois leapt to his right, extended the long arm on his 2m frame and just managed to get his gloved fingertips on the ball, knocking it down. Courtois hit the ground as the ball bounded up. He looked skyward, planted his right hand to regain his balance, grabbed the ball with both hands on the second bounce and fell onto it with his chest. Sabitzer turned
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has overturned French Olympic fencer Ysaora Thibus’ four-year suspension for doping, ruling that her positive test for a banned substance was caused by kissing her then-boyfriend, American fencer Race Imboden. Thibus, a silver medalist in team foil at the Tokyo Games, had tested positive for ostarine, a prohibited muscle-building substance, during a competition in Paris in January last year. However, CAS concluded there was no intentional wrongdoing, finding it scientifically plausible that repeated kissing over several days with Olympic medalist Imboden — who was taking ostarine at the time — led to accidental contamination. The court
‘SU-PENKO’: Hsieh and Ostapenko face a rematch against their Australian Open final opponents, the same duo Hsieh played in last year’s Wimbledon semi-finals Taiwanese women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei and Latvian partner Jelena Ostapenko on Wednesday survived a near upset to the unseeded duo of Sorana Cirstea of Romania and Russia’s Anna Kalinskaya, setting up a semi-final showdown against last year’s winners. Despite losing a hard-fought opening set 7-6 (7/4) on a tiebreak, the fourth seeds turned up the heat, losing just five games in the final two sets to handily put down Cirstea and Kalinskaya 6-3, 6-2. Nicknamed “Su-Penko,” the pair are next to face top seeds Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Republic and Taylor Townsend of the US in a reversal of last
RSS