Dennis O'Donnell Is an Idiot

Yes, he's the voice of 49ers preseason football, and we all know how terrific preseason broadcasters are. But today's Fifth Quarter on CBS 5 was as moronic as it was annoying. And by the way, it spoiled a pretty nice piece of work by a slender Chester McGlockton.

At some point during the Raiders game, Tony Stewart made a smart move trying to pick up and advance a punt that had already been touched by a Chiefs player. On those sorts of plays, there is no downside - if he fumbles, the Raiders get to take the ball where it was first touched by the Chiefs anyway. Apparently Dennis O'Donnell doesn't know this, as he referred to that moment and the ensuing no-brainer referee overturn as the "turning point of the game." He went on to talk about "another lucky break" that the Raiders got when a Chiefs player punched the ball out of bounds at the end of a huge McFadden run.

He said a few more stupid things and plugged in all the requisite SF broadcaster Raider mocks, but mainly I'm annoyed that people don't know that rule and would suggest that the Raiders got a gift call from the refs. The Raiders don't get gift calls. The Broncos get gift calls.

Ah - I forgot in my original post to mention that O'Donnell also implied the Raiders were idiots for ever considering Fargas the starter ahead of McFadden. If he had watched the game, he would know Fargas looked a lot better than McFadden in the early going. McFadden started breaking off big runs once the defense wore down, and that was exactly the plan for McFadden as the #2 who gets as many carries as the #1. Probably a moot point now with Fargas injured, but give Crash Test some credit - he looked awesome until he got hurt.