Jon Gruden has never had a promising Authentic Customized Ravens Jerseys , young quarterback like Derek Carr to develop in 11 seasons as an NFL head coach.

Carr hasn’t had the opportunity to play for a coach like Gruden, an offensive mastermind known for his maniacal work ethic and attention to detail.

The way those two fare together will determine whether Gruden’s return for a second stint as coach of the Oakland Raiders will end up as the resounding success owner Mark Davis hoped for while pining for a reunion the past six years.

”I had a chance to visit with Derek Carr this morning and I said, `Derek, this is an unbelievable opportunity and if you’ll just take advantage of the opportunity, there’s so many great things in store for you, not only professionally but personally,”’ said Rich Gannon, whose career took off after joining Gruden in Oakland in 1999.

”Jon’s excited to work with Derek and Derek’s already a good player but he’s got a chance to be a Hall of Famer and win multiple Super Bowls if he’ll just do the work.”

Carr will be tested and challenged like he hasn’t in his first four seasons. Gruden is famous for arriving at work each day at 3:17 a.m., putting in long hours each week.

He will also ride Carr hard if necessary in order to bring out the best in his game.

”I don’t care how hard Derek worked before, he’s going to have to change his work habits a little bit to fit in,” Gannon said.

Gannon became a star when he joined up with Gruden after 12 seasons as a journeyman in Minnesota, Washington and Kansas City. He became a first-team All-Pro in his second season with Gruden and won the league MVP the year after Gruden was traded to Tampa Bay.

Carr showed he was capable of being a top quarterback when he garnered MVP support in a breakthrough 2016 season. But he took a major step back this past year after signing a $125 million, five-year extension.

He matched his career high with 13 interceptions and recorded his worst totals in yards, touchdown and passer rating since his rookie year in 2014.

”I think there is a huge ceiling in Derek Carr,” Gruden said. ”I think he has proven that. Up to us as a coaching staff to improve around him, get more consistent, and come up with an offense that really allows him to soar into another level.”

Fixing Carr is just one of Gruden’s tasks. Getting receiver Amari Cooper back on track is nearly as important. After beginning his career with back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons, Cooper took a major step back in 2017. He was plagued by the drops that hurt him as a rookie and only topped the 100-yard mark twice all season while finishing with career lows with 48 catches for 680 yards.

It was a puzzling drop-off for a receiver who entered the year considered one of the top in the game. Hall of Famer Tim Brown said he believes Cooper could be in for a 120-catch season if he listens to Gruden’s advice.

”Even for a guy like me, who was having a pretty good career, he was able to take me to another level, showing me how much better I could be,” Brown said. ”I thought I was doing pretty good. Sometimes you just have to turn your brain off and buy in. If you can do that great things can happen.”

Even some of the greatest players in the game’s history credit Gruden for some of their success. Hall of Famer Jerry Rice arrived in Oakland in 2001 as the most accomplished receiver in NFL history but appeared to be on the decline after failing to reach 1,000 yards in each of his final two seasons in San Francisco.

But he had a rebirth in Oakland under Gruden, catching 83 passes for 1,139 yards at age 39. He followed that up with 92 catches for 1,211 yards the following season and compared Gruden to his former coach in San Francisco, Bill Walsh.

”Could be your best friend or your worst enemy, that’s going to keep you on your toes,” he said. ”Maybe that was something that the players, they were lacking this year. Sometimes you fall into listening to the talk but you need a coach that’s going to keep you focused. With Jon Gruden, he’s that type of coach.”

While Gruden’s biggest impact is on offense, his leadership and intensity translate to the entire team. Hall of Famer Howie Long has seen just about everything. He played for 13 years, announced for more than two decades and has two sons in the NFL.

So Long knows what players want in a coach.

”They want to be great and they want to be led,” he said. ”They want to believe in the guy in front of the room. I call it the Saran Wrap factor. Players see right through that in the front of the room if you’re not authentic, you’re not genuine, you’re not that way every day. … Jon has that.”

—

Kai Forbath was planning to move into an apartment in New Orleans the week of the 2016 season opener http://www.jetsauthorizedshops.com/authentic-sam-darnold-jersey , when a phone call from the Saints quickly turned his day upside down.

The players were off from practice, so Forbath had no doubt about why he’d been summoned to team headquarters five days before the first game.

Coach Sean Payton delivered the disappointing news that the Saints had decided to sign rookie Wil Lutz and release Forbath to make room.

”Coach Payton said he just had a gut feeling that he had to go with him,” Forbath said, ”so they gave him a shot.”

Saints punter Thomas Morstead, who has been the holder for both of them, recalled Lutz making every kick in his tryout the day before the move was made.

”He came in and just killed his workout,” Morstead said, ”and if Coach Payton gets a gut feeling on something, he’ll trust himself over what anybody thinks.”

Forbath had just returned from a weekend out of town to celebrate his birthday, after beating out Connor Barth for the job in training camp.

”It was kind of shocking, but you know it’s not the first time something shocking’s happened to me in this league,” Forbath said. ”It’s a business, and everything happens for a reason.”

Lutz, who spent the 2016 preseason with Baltimore after coming out of college at Georgia State, has performed well enough to match Payton’s hunch.

He finished fifth in the NFL in points in 2016 and seventh in his second season. Lutz has missed his share, ranking 13th in the league this season in field goal accuracy (86.1 percent) and 19th as a rookie (82.4) Da'Ron Payne Color Rush Jersey , but there he was last weekend knocking a 57-yard kick through the uprights late in the third quarter of the wild-card round playoff game.

”You’ve got to feel confident, and confidence comes from behavior demonstrated. Then you have to have that routine, and although it seems to focus around one swing, I think it’s that mentality that, man, you’re going to go out there and friggin’ put an arrow through them, you know?” Payton said. ”Sometimes that breaks guys, but in his case, it’s definitely an asset.”

That field goal helped the Saints hold off Carolina’s late surge and hang on for a 31-26 victory that sent them to the divisional round to play at Minnesota on Sunday.

That’s where the 30-year-old Forbath has been since the middle of last season, when the Vikings cut Blair Walsh and turned to him to stabilize this critical specialty role that can determine whether or not a team reaches the Super Bowl.

Walsh, of course, hooked his last-second 27-yard try to the left two years ago in the subzero cold at the University of Minnesota’s stadium to let Seattle advance in the wild-card round with a 10-9 victory.

He wasn’t able to shake the shank the following season, when the Vikings signed Forbath for the final seven games.

If Vikings fans, at least the adults old enough to remember, wince at the memory of Walsh’s miss then they might start weeping when thinking about the wide left from 17 years earlier by Gary Anderson .

That kick, Anderson’s first miss of the entire season http://www.officiallightningprostore.com/authentic-adidas-mikhail-sergachev-jersey , helped keep the Vikings from advancing to the Super Bowl in an overtime NFC championship game loss to Atlanta.

Mike Zimmer, who like so many head coaches grow weary of unreliable kickers, was asked this week about his confidence level in Forbath.

”Good,” he said. ”We’ve got the crystal ball on our side.”

Forbath made all 15 of his field-goal tries in 2016 and missed only one 3-pointer over the first nine games of 2017, until tailing off a bit down the stretch. He went 3 for 3 at Green Bay on a Dec. 23 night game with single-digit temperatures to help get back on track.

Forbath has missed eight extra points in 23 games for the Vikings, and his touchback rate (44 of 88, 50 percent) lagged behind Lutz (54 of 98, 61.7 percent), but he won’t have to carry the burden of that career-defining wide left into the most important game of his life that Walsh would have.

”You can’t try to put extra pressure on it,” said Forbath, the Lou Groza Award winner at UCLA for the nation’s best place kicker as a junior in 2009. ”That’s when bad things happen.”

For Forbath, the Vikings are his favorite team of all those he’s kicked for. He only appeared in 10 regular-season games for the Saints, so he dismissed the notion of a point to prove in this game even if Lutz didn’t necessarily buy that.

”I think he kind of uses it as an edge. All of us have that edge we kind of keep on our shoulder, and I think that’s his thing,” Lutz said. ”He’s done really well this year for those guys.”

—

A look at what’s happening around baseball today:

CHECK HIM

The Chicago Cubs might have further word on Yu Darvish after the Japanese ace said he felt soreness in his troubled triceps tendon following a minor league rehab start. Darvish hasn’t pitched in the majors since May 20 because of right triceps tendinitis. He threw five sharp innings for Class A South Bend on Monday Kirk Cousins Jersey Big , and was set to rejoin the Cubs during their series at Dodger Stadium.

”In the triceps there’s likeliness to get more fatigue there, especially if there’s a long gap between innings,” he said through a translator. ”That’s when I feel fatigue there. Not necessarily pain, but I can’t for sure say there is nothing going on in the tricep zone.”

NIMMO NEEDED

The Mets take a seven-game skid into their game against Pittsburgh, but at least they may get their most productive hitter back. Brandon Nimmo has a sore right pinkie after getting hit by a pitch Sunday, but an MRI showed no broken bones and he is day to day. He didn’t start Monday but entered as a pinch-runner in the eighth inning and stayed in the game to play left field. The Mets have also lost 14 of 15 at home and are 13-25 at Citi Field this season.

ACES ALONG I-95

Aces Luis Severino and Jake Arrieta square off as the Yankees continue a series in Philadelphia. Severino (11-2, 2.24) has never faced the Phillies Authentic Philip Rivers Jersey , and Arrieta (5-5, 3.42) is 3-1, 3.83 in seven career starts vs. New York. The Yankees won the series opener Monday in their first appearance at Citizens Bank Park since beating the Phillies in the 2009 World Series. The Yankees improved to 14-14 against the Phillies, leaving the Los Angeles Dodgers as the only team they have a losing record (6-7) against in the regular season.

ON THE SKIDS

Carlos Martinez has lost three straight decisions entering a tough test against Corey Kluber and the Indians. Martinez (3-4, 3.24) hasn’t won since May 2, and St. Louis has dropped his past five starts, a span in which he has a 7.06 ERA. Kluber (11-3 http://www.billsauthorizedshops.com/authentic-taron-johnson-jersey , 2.10) pitched seven innings of one-hit ball in a 12-0 victory over the White Sox in his previous outing.

COLLEGES

Oregon State and Arkansas begin the College World Series, a day after the opener in their best-of-three matchup was rained out in Omaha. Luke Heimlich (16-2) starts for Oregon State against the Razorbacks’ Blaine Knight (13-0).

A two-time Pac-12 pitcher of the year, Heimlich was not picked in this month’s Major League Baseball draft. He wasn’t with the team at last year’s College World Series after it was revealed he had pleaded guilty to molesting a young relative when he was 15. He served two years’ probation and went through a treatment program, but later denied wrongdoing in interviews with Sports Illustrated and The New York Times.

It was unheard of not that long ago Tashaun Gipson Jersey , but now it has become somewhat commonplace: pitchers by committee.

A manager begins a game not with a starting pitcher but a reliever — and with more relievers to follow.

Cubs manager Joe Maddon, certainly not a stranger to taking a risk, tried it Saturday with poor results against a suddenly hot team that’s not playing like a last-place club.

Don’t look for him to make the same mistake Sunday.

Maddon will run out one of his regular starters, right-hander Tyler Chatwood (3-5), at Great American Ball Park to try to avoid a four-game sweep by the Cincinnati Reds, who are playing nothing like the tail-ending team they’ve been all season.

The Reds mounted their second six-game win streak of the year — the first time they’ve done that since 2012 — by making quick work of the Cubs’ starter-by-committee plans Saturday during an 11-2 victory keyed by the pitching of right-hander Anthony DeSclafani.

And, remarkably, keyed by the hitting of DeSclafani, who hit the Reds’ seventh grand slam in 33 days and their third of the week, but the first by a Cincinnati pitcher since Bob Purkey against the Cubs on Aug. 1, 1959.

DeSclafani (3-1) posted his third win in a row while giving up two runs and three hits in 6 1/3 innings.

Cubs reliever-turned-starter Luke Farrell (2-3) was long gone by then, having been lifted with only a 2-1 deficit and two outs in the third inning. The Reds went on to score eight more runs against the Cubs’ bullpen — and catcher Chris Gimenez, who pitched the eighth inning.

DeSclafani’s shot came with two outs in the third inning against left-hander Brian Duensing, and it was a no-doubt drive well up into the left-field stands.

“All in all, I was trying to hit the ball hard somewhere and not strike out,” said DeSclafani, who came into the game with a .138 career batting average. “I knew a fastball was coming and I tried to square it up, and it happened to go out. … It was awesome. It all happened so quick.”

And slowly the Reds, once 8-27 http://www.officialpenguinsproshop.com/authentic-adidas-justin-schultz-jersey , are starting to play the way they expected when the season started. They’ve won nine of 11 and are 5-0 on their current six-game homestand.

“When you get down in the standings, it can be deflating,” said Reds interim manager Jim Riggleman, who replaced Bryan Price during the terrible start. “But they kept coming to the ballpark and working hard, and now we’re getting closer to respectability in the standings, though we’re not there yet.”

The Cubs’ domination of the Reds is disappearing, too – going into the series, they’d won 43 of 62 against them in the last four seasons — as quickly as DeSclafani’s homer reached the seats.

“We’re playing clean baseball — we’ve run the bases, made plays … are getting timely hits,” Riggleman said. “We have a nice string of well-played games.”

This probably isn’t encouraging to the Cubs’ faithful, either. Chatwood is 0-4 with a 4.18 ERA in five career appearances against the Reds. He has walked 63 batters in 68 1/3 innings this season.

Despite Chatwood’s lack of success against the Reds, only Joey Votto (2-for-10, .200) has double-digit at-bats against him.

Chatwood opposes right-hander Sal Romano (4-7), who is coming off his best start of the season — seven shutout innings against the Detroit Tigers on Tuesday. Romano gave up four hits and struck out six despite walking four in a 9-5 Reds victory in which the Tigers scored all of their runs in the ninth inning.

Romano’s last start against the Cubs wasn’t a good one. He surrendered seven runs and six hits in five innings of a 10-0 Chicago victory on May 19. He is 0-1 against them in two career games.

Maddon gave Kris Bryant the day off Saturday after he went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts in the Reds’ 6-3 win Friday as he tries to get some of the slumping hitters going. Bryant is likely to be in the lineup Sunday against Romano.

“We’ve got to get (Willson) Contreras going, we’ve got to get KB (Bryant) and (Anthony Rizzo) going,” Maddon said. “I mean, these were our primary offensive weapons last year, and they really haven’t hit their stride yet.”

The Tampa Bay Rays finished the second-best homestand in their history Ronnie Stanley Jersey , with a much easier path between now and the All-Star Game as they try to claw their way back into wild-card contention.

Tampa Bay (41-40) went 8-1 at Tropicana Field, finishing a grueling stretch of 16 games against the New York Yankees, Houston Astros and Washington Nationals and going 10-6 in those games to rise back above .500.

Now the Rays have a stretch of 16 straight games against teams with losing records, including a three-game series at the Miami Marlins (34-51) starting Monday.

The Rays have dominated with their patchwork pitching staff, allowing a total of seven runs in their last six games, with five wins and a 1-0 loss. They took three of four from Houston to close out the homestand and hope to continue the success to take some positive momentum into the All-Star break.

“The fact that we have been winning and everyone has been coming together at clutch moments has been great,” said outfielder Mallex Smith, who had a late solo home run in Sunday’s 3-2 win over Houston. “We’ve been jelling as a team. We’ve been feeding off one another. It seems like someone new coming through at the right time every day.”

Next for Tampa Bay is Nathan Eovaldi (2-3, 4.08 ERA), who played for the Marlins from 2012 to 2014 and will almost certainly fare better than his only career appearance against his former team. In June 2015, he played there with the Yankees and gave up nine hits and eight earned runs in less than an inning, leaving after two outs with a 108.00 ERA to show for it.

Eovaldi has shown promise since returning from Tommy John surgery — his last start against Washington lasted six innings and he gave up no runs Cam Robinson Jersey , one and and two walks with nine strikeouts.

The Marlins will answer with Wei-Yin Chen, who knows the Rays from his days with the Baltimore Orioles. He has started 21 career games against Tampa Bay, more than any other opponent, and posted a 5-6 record with a 3.72 ERA.

That’s considerably better than his overall numbers this year — he’s 2-5 with a 6.14 ERA, though his last start was solid. He limited Arizona to one run and five hits in six innings last week. Against Tampa Bay last year, he pitched well, holding the Rays to two runs and two hits in six innings.

The in-state rivals will meet again right after the All-Star break for three more games, but the extended run against lesser opponents is something the Rays must dominate if they want to get back into wild-card contention.

Even after winning eight of nine games, Tampa Bay is still 11 games behind Seattle for the second AL wild card. Still, being 42-41 after opening the season 1-8 isn’t bad, especially considering the injuries they’ve dealt with and the talent traded away since the end of last season.

Yovani Gallardo brings out the best in the Texas Rangers’ hitters. Good thing for him he is on their side.

Gallardo has enjoyed unusually strong run support since returning to the majors after a two-month stint with Triple-A Round Rock. The Rangers averaged 11 runs per game in his three June starts Albert Wilson Color Rush Jersey , including an 11-3 thumping of the Chicago White Sox on Friday when they blasted five home runs.

Gallardo hopes he will continue to be a good luck charm when he starts the opener of a four-game series against the Tigers in Detroit on Thursday night.

“This is what they do,” Gallardo told MLB.com and other reporters afterward. “This is the kind of offense we have here. It definitely makes it easier, but yet it is one of those things where you can’t allow it to get out of hand as well. You’ve just got to keep it tight in the strike zone and get some quick outs.”

Gallardo (2-0, 9.00 ERA) didn’t require an offensive explosion from his team against the White Sox, as he delivered his best outing of the season. He tossed 7 1/3 innings on just 90 pitches, giving up three runs on four hits and striking out seven.

“He was in control the whole time,” Rangers catcher Robinson Chirinos told MLB.com. “I think he built from that last outing (5 1/3 innings) in Minnesota. It was the same thing; he’s throwing really well.”

Gallardo, who was released by Cincinnati in April, is 2-1 with a 2.45 ERA in three career starts against the Tigers, but he has not faced them since 2015.

He’ll be opposed by left-hander Matthew Boyd (4-6, 4.18), one of several Detroit pitchers who could be dealt this season.

Boyd has gone winless in his last four starts, though his last start was a quality outing at Toronto. He gave up three runs on four hits over six innings and posted seven strikeouts, his highest total since May 17.

The Rangers have given Boyd fits in the past. He is 1-4 with a 5.53 ERA in five career starts against them. Chirinos has homered twice against Boyd in seven career at-bats.

Detroit will try to bounce back from two road losses to the streaking Chicago Cubs, who have won six straight. The Tigers lost 5-2 on Wednesday, and manager Ron Gardenhire had to depart to the clubhouse early due to heat exhaustion. He is expected to be back in the Tigers dugout on Thursday.

“It’s frustrating to be right there, to be so close,” catcher James McCann told MLB.com. “But at the end of the day, that’s not reflected in your win-loss column. It’s either a win or a loss. We came up short two games in a row.”

The Tigers have lost 13 of their last 15 games, but they do have a hot hitter in Nicholas Castellanos, who has hit safely in 10 of the last 11 games. Castellanos smacked a solo homer and walked twice on Wednesday.

Texas’ Shin-Soo Choo has been swinging an even hotter bat. Choo has reached base in 44 consecutive games after getting two hits, including a homer, on Wednesday. The Rangers will have a quick turnaround after losing at home in extra innings to Houston 5-4 in that game.