NFL:  LIONS & BRONCOS //  WORLD SERIES, GAME SIX

            For more sports analysis go to Mile High Sports Radio AM1510, and Denver’s best sports blogging team, milehighsports.com

            Sports Notebook posts new every Tuesday and Friday. Editor, Marvin Leibstone. Comments to: mlresources1@aol.com

NFL ---   A Denver Broncos cornerback might now be thinking, “Oops! Why us?” In a few days, his team will be facing a franchise that’s having a super season, the 5-2 Detroit Lions. The Broncos are at 2-4, winning its first game after a month of losses last week. More specifically, on Sunday the Broncos uncertain defense will be challenged by a Lions offense that includes quarterback, Matthew Stafford, whose successful passing yards for the year are greater than the yardage obtained by Denver’s QB Tim Tebow and Kyle Orton combined, 1,912 vs. 1,219. Add that the Lions will be fronting the NFL’s 2011 leading wide receiver, Calvin Johnson, who, in seven games, has already had 10 touchdown catches. Denver’s cornerbacks and safeties will be tested by this WR who seems to travel faster than Usain Bolt while intuiting where, what and how an opposition will be when hoping to undo his per-play intentions---Johnson’s a high-caliber escape and evasion artist.

More than likely, Denver’s QB Tim Tebow will be running the ball a lot more than passing, not only because it’s what he does best but that he’ll likely be forced to by one of the NFL’s best defense squads, and if Tebow hasn’t in a week’s time corrected his radar and speed for knowing which close-in receiver to connect to, he may be sacked over and over. But---if Tebow’s made the siting and handoff corrections and has the necessary protection to complete his improv, well, he’s large, powerful and fast enough to evade capture for handing off or short-passing the football successfully.

A downside is that Denver’s effective running back Willis McGahee has been injured and won’t be afield for a Tebow connect on Sunday. A saving attribute, however, is that, with helpers drawing heat away, Tebow can bore his way through any defense quickly enough for those three yard gains that add toward a first down.

Yet whatever points Tebow can put on the board, if the Broncos defense can’t get in between QB Stafford and WR Johnson, those Tebow-earned points may be returned to the Lions.

If Denver loses by a TD, it’ll be because they will have played well and better than in past weeks.

* * *

WORLD SERIES  ---   AS far as entertainment and suspense go, game six of the 2011 World Series was not only one of the best WS games forcing a seventh challenge in a decade; it was one of the more improbable WS games among the 107 held since the first in 1903.  From the initial pitch to a Texas Ranger in the first inning until bottom of the 11^th when the St. Louis Cardinals topped the Rangers, the game sizzled with unexpected hits, missed catches, intentional and unintentional walks, some strikeouts ending punishing runs, others killing opportunities for a team to score from bases loaded but two outs against them.

As soon as Texas believed it was winning and would take the WS away from St. Louis 4-2, a turnover followed and the game went to a tie. Then quite suddenly, St. Louis owned the night by two runs, in time for the Rangers to take it back again by two. Soon enough there was another tie score, then the same two-run exchange and extra innings, the Rangers suddenly under for good from David Freeze’s walk-off HR in the 11^th, final score 11-9.

Hope alone isn’t a hit, neither is tenacity by itself a hit, and you can cross fingers all you want and get down on bended knees through several innings straight and pray, but the Gods are too respectful of baseball players to allow that to translate into hits and runs. However, a team bugged by hopelessness and lacking drive and that doesn't believe in the phrase “to labor is to pray” risks being hitless. In other words, the Cards wouldn’t let go of winning game six before they won, they were indeed the intrepid ballclub, the brand of franchise that never quits and becomes bats striking balls that land where nobody can glove them and cause outs. But the Rangers functioned from the same mind-set, the outcome being those two-run exchanges at the tail-end of the competition---Freeze ended the cycle.

Which team will win game seven of the WS? If game six is our indicator, it’s anyone’s guess.

END/ml