There are very few writers out there as critical of the play-for-play coaching decisions of Lovie Smith as I am.  I think he is as brutal a clock manager as there is in the sport.  I think he acts stubbornly in support of his own poor decisions.  (Who didn’t know he’d go for it on the fourth down this week?)  But I think his benching of Tommie Harris is a bold stroke of desperate genius.  For too long Lovie has been The Great Excuser, putting overmatched players on the field simply because they’re there and he likes them.  Benching Tommie shows that Smith is well-aware he’s coaching for his NFL life.  And I like that.  (To hear Warren Sapp break down the situation, click here.)

“If you put him in a group of most-competitive, biggest-clutch players, I think he’d have to be the guy who would win it all,” his Raiders coach, John Madden, said in a phone interview Monday.

“He was the most competitive guy that I ever knew.”

Never was that more evident than during a five-game stretch in 1970 when the 43-year-old Blanda, his chiseled jaw framed by salt-and-pepper sideburns, led the Raiders to four victories and one tie with late touchdown throws or field goals.

“It got to the point where when he’d come in [the game], the whole team would go, ‘Here comes George. We’re going to do it now,’ ” Madden said. “Then pretty soon all the fans started believing, and they’d all go nuts. And then the topper is when the opponents knew it. It was like, ‘Oh no, here he comes.’