LYON, France -- Portugal will hold its breath until the last minute hoping its best player at the European Championship will be fit for its semifinal showdown against Wales.No, Cristiano Ronaldo isnt the cause for concern.The fuss is about whether central defender Pepe, who has been key to Portugals place in the final four, will be fit to face Gareth Bale and his Wales teammates on Wednesday at the Stade de Lyon.Portugal coach Fernando Santos said on Tuesday that a decision would be made on match day, based on the state of Pepes recovery from a thigh muscle injury.We will make our decision tomorrow. I wont be rushed into it, so I am sure you will be rolling in your beds tonight unable to sleep, Santos said through a translator. I will sleep quietly, because I have other players who can play. If Pepe is 100 percent, I will think about it so he can be in the starting 11.Pepe missed training on Monday and trained separately from his teammates at their tournament base near Paris on Tuesday before traveling to Lyon.While Portugal has been able to turn to Nani, Ricardo Quaresma and 18-year-old Renato Sanches to get the goals that Ronaldo has yet to consistently produce, its defensive stability has pretty much hinged on Pepe.The Real Madrid defender has played every minute of his teams five matches, providing reliability in a backline that has been undermined by injury and inconsistent play. He has collected only one yellow card, committed just four fouls -- while receiving 10, in 510 minutes.Santos dropped fellow center back Ricardo Carvalho following a 3-3 draw with Hungary in the third group match, giving Jose Fonte the job. If Pepe is unavailable, Carvalho would likely be back in alongside Fonte.Santos has also switched between Cedric Soares and Vierinha at right back and Eliseu and Raphael Guerreiro at left back.Regardless of whos playing, Portugals backs have struggled to keep up with opposing wingers. Pepe, however, has been there to make last-gasp clearances and to shield goalkeeper Rui Patricio.Bale and Wales attackers will no doubt be aiming to follow the same route.Portugal will already have to cope without holding midfielder William Carvalho, who has played well, due to suspension.We think it is going to be a battle, Fonte said. We are prepared for this and have done our best to play our game tomorrow. Cheap Vans Old Skool . Pert has formerly spent time as an assistant coach with Cardiff City, Coventry City, and Bahrain mens national team. "Martyn is a highly-respected coach with experience at the top levels in England," said Whitecaps FC head coach Carl Robinson. Old Skool Vans Authentic .com) - The game was all punts and field goals before Kodi Whitfields catch. http://www.cheapoldskool.net/ . -- Jimmy Walkers first PGA Tour trophy came with a special gift tucked inside. Old Skool Vans Wholesale . Takahashi, who had a 10-point lead after the short program, received 268.31 points after the free skate to finish 15 points ahead of second-place Nobunari Oda. Cheap Old Skool Vans Wholesale . They were putting most of their energy into a record-setting offensive display. This story appears in ESPN The Magazines December 12 issue. Subscribe today!Go back to Week 1. Raiders vs. Saints. Its the beginning of the fourth quarter, and Oakland is losing 24-13. Third-year quarterback Derek Carr takes a snap, drops back a few steps and then surveys the field--calmly, like a father waiting for his children to appear on the steps of their school. After a moment passes, he slings a beautifully arched pass to wide receiver Amari Cooper, who has somehow crept behind the Saints secondary. Its a 43-yard gain and another highlight-reel throw for Carr.Now go back and watch again. Instead of waiting for Carr to release the ball, pay attention to everything that happens beforehand. Watch the Raiders tackles shoot their arms out and manhandle their defenders, while the guards refuse to cede an inch. Watch the chasm that opens up between the offensive line and the quarterback, an expanse of green that never seems to close. Watch the clock as the seconds tick by.Thats what Derek Carr remembers from that day. The time and the space and, more than anything, the smacking of pads and the crunching of bones and the terrible cries of mountain-sized men being knocked around by his blockers. He remembers dropping behind his offensive line as thunderous collisions unfolded in front of him, bearing witness to a level of violence that still leaves him awestruck.You can see it on film and you can see it on TV and you can see it in person, he says. But when youre behind it?Behind 10-foot eyelashes, his blue eyes widen.You can hear it.There comes a point in every story about Derek Carr when his older brothers name is invoked, typically as source material for the young quarterbacks innate gifts -- and, until recently, his perceived flaws. David Carr, the Houston Texans No. 1 overall pick in the 2002 draft, famously went bust. When Derek entered the draft in 2014, he had put up Heisman-worthy numbers at Fresno State, but Davids story lingered in scouting reports like a bad Yelp review, and several QB-starved teams (including Houston) passed on the younger brother, sending him tumbling into the second round.Their loss. After two and a half seasons with the Raiders, Derek has bloomed into a viable MVP candidate, steering his team to seven wins on the back of an exhilarating aerial attack. Heading into Monday nights tilt with the Texans in Mexico City, he has thrown 17 TDs and just three interceptions, a ratio that puts him in elite company and could set him up for a mammoth new deal. When the ball is in his hands late in the game, everybody believes something big is gonna happen, says Matt Hasselbeck, a former NFL quarterback who now works as an ESPN analyst. I saw that with Brett Favre when I was his teammate.And so it is that Dereks story has finally subsumed his origin myth -- and that his brothers failure, once an indelible part of that record, has faded away like a discredited theory. But to ignore it would also be a mistake. Because while Carr has risen on the strength of his unique talents, he has soared because of the giants who stand in front of him -- those violent actors who buy him room to breathe, a luxury David never experienced as a young quarterback. Ive been able to see complete, total opposite sides of it, Carr says. I saw my brother in Houston have nothing. And I have our offensive line, which I think is the best in the NFL.The contrast is astonishing. David, who played behind a rotating cast of human turnstiles on the then newly formed Texans, was sacked a record 76 times during his rookie year, which is more than Derek has been taken down since entering the NFL. This year the Raiders offensive line has allowed just 11 sacks and 21 quarterback hits, ranking first in the league through Week 10. Theyve held up against stiff competition. The Broncos dominant front seven, which entered their Nov. 6 game against the Raiders with the best pressure percentage of any team since 2008, according to ESPN Stats & Information, hassled Carr on a mere 21 percent of his dropbacks, Denvers worst performance to that point of the season.To hear Carr tell it, battling Von Miller & Co. was like flying over traffic in a private jet. We just played the best pass rushers in the NFL and it was the most comfortable Ive felt, he says. The Raiders began building the current iteration of the line in 2014, the year rookie Carr became the teams starter. Right tackle Menelik Watson was already on the roster; GM Reggie McKenzie added left tackle Donald Penn in free agency, then selected Gabe Jackson, the teams right guard, in the draft. The Raiders signed veteran center Rodney Hudson in 2015, then splurged a year later on Kelechi Osemele, arguably the leagues most formidable guard. To ensure that Osemele could continue playing inside, McKenzie re-signed Penn, and the line that fans call Carr Insurance was born.This influx of talent has come at a price. Thanks in part to their quarterbacks cheap contract, the Raiders currently devote $37.7 million in cap dollars to the offensive line, $3 million more than what any other team pays. When asked if hes aware of how expensive his line is, Carr nods. As it should be, he says. Mr. McKenzie told me from the beginning, when I was named the starter, he said, Were gonna build this thing around you. They see that Im valuable to them. They want to protect me.Donald Penn remembers the first time he saw Derek Carr at training camp. As he and the other starters looked on, the rookie quarterback fired bombs to the Raiders backups, showing off his crisp, flawless throwing motion. I was like, This kids got something about him, Penn says. He carried himself with a swagger.Penn -- older, tattooed, a little brash -- would seem to have little in common with Carr, who is almost comically wholesome, the sort of athlete destined to star in ads for milk and comfortable jeans. Ive never heard him say a cuss word! Penn says. But Carr, who grew up hanging around David in locker rooms for more than a decade (when he was 6, he says, he used to eat lunch with his brother in the high school cafeteria), has always slid into new groups with ease. When he became the Raiders starter, he began attending the offensive line meetings and tagging along for their steakhouse dinners, gawkiing as his massive teammates overloaded the table with food.dddddddddddd He can recite information about their hobbies and their families, and hes shared his strong Christian faith with them. He often tells them he loves them.While Carr has bonded with the entire group, hes grown closest with Hudson, the center who sets protections during games. Carr says he always pulls up a chair next to Hudson during team meetings and that the two of them will often stay up late on Saturday nights, bouncing ideas off each other in the team hotel. We just go to another level in our discussions -- stuff we dont want everyone to hear because their brains might explode, he says with a laugh.Hudson, a soft-spoken Alabama native, says hell be out at dinner, look at his phone and see that DC has been texting him videos of plays. Were in constant communication, he says.The Raiders offensive line is unique in several ways, aside from being the most expensive. Its starting unit is composed entirely of black players; Penn says theyve hung posters of the NCAA-championship-winning 1966 Texas Western basketball team and the Tuskegee Airmen, other groups that shared similar distinctions, in their practice room. Its also the heaviest line in football, with the average lineman weighing in at 324.2 pounds. That runs counter to the trend of teams employing lighter, more athletic linemen who can move side to side while blocking.Raiders O-line coach Mike Tice says he wants blockers who are brainy and athletic, but he doesnt deny that hes assembled a group of road-grading sledgehammers. The lines muscle was on full display in the Denver game, when the Raiders averaged 5.1 yards per rush. At one point, the team ran the same play 10 times in a row, simply overpowering the Broncos defensive line with brute force.In addition to tallying knockdowns (Jackson, the right guard, is known for racking up pancake blocks), Tice also tracks takedowns, which occur when a lineman uses his hands to bring down a rusher. People say you cant be physical pass-protecting -- they think you can only be physical in the run game. I disagree, he says. Even if were passing, I still want to knock guys down and keep the quarterback clean. Carr is known for his lightning-quick release, but Tice wants his line to buy him enough time so that he can set his feet before taking deep shots, especially against defenses that play tight coverage. We pride ourselves on that, he says.When a quarterback can step into his throws and hes got an arm like Derek? He chuckles. People are in trouble.When Carr tells stories about his linemen mauling defensive players, he omits the opponents names to be respectful. The 25-year-old is incredibly polite and relentlessly positive. It sometimes seems he was manufactured in a lab for franchise quarterbacks, designed to appeal to GMs and grandmothers alike. So its a little jarring when he gets fired up in response to a question about his brothers career in Houston. I feel so bad for him because their team sucked, he says. (If that seems milquetoast, consider that sucked might be the closest thing to profanity in Carrs vocabulary.) Thats a team you dream of playing. The Raiders, if we wouldve played that team -- it wouldve been ridiculous. We wouldve looked forward to that.In high school, Carr was asked to write a paper making an argument on any topic. He elected to write about why the Texans shouldnt trade his brother. What quarterback wouldnt have struggled, young Derek wrote, with such a feeble supporting cast? He says David wouldve absolutely thrived behind the Raiders line. If I was on that Houston Texans team, I dont know if my body wouldve held up, he says. These days, when Carr sees quarterbacks like Russell Wilson and Sam Bradford scrambling behind slipshod protection, he cringes. Honestly, I feel for them, he says. Im so thankful for what I have -- what we have.Its impossible to overstate the impact that offensive line play has on the development of a young quarterback. Just look at Dallas, where rookie Dak Prescott is thriving. While Prescott is undeniably talented, he has also been blessed with the opportunity to throw passes behind a battalion of human tanks. Meanwhile, fellow rookie Carson Wentz struggled in Philadelphia after Lane Johnson, the Eagles stud right tackle, was suspended and replaced with an inexperienced blocker.David Carr, who now works for the NFL Network, says that, after being repeatedly sacked and hit, he grew wary of his protection and gradually developed a skittishness that took permanent hold in his psyche. He compares being an NFL rookie to childhood -- a little boy or girl who grows up without encountering danger is more likely to become fearless. Its like that with quarterbacks, he says. If youre never in a situation where its a complete disaster, you can develop at a normal rate.He sees that growth in Derek. In college, the younger Carr completed 72 percent of his passes in a clean pocket but just 29 percent when under duress, according to ESPN Stats & Information. During his first two years in the NFL, he posted QBR ratings of 9.7 when pressured and 7.8 under duress. This year his QBR when pressured has risen to 41.4, which was eighth best in the NFL heading into Week 11.Because Carr mostly avoids contact, hes learned not to fear it, even during the rare plays when his linemen get pushed around. Theyve brainwashed me, he says with a laugh. As hes grown more composed and intrepid, hes become comfortable making adjustments on the fly. Take, for example, that throw to Cooper, the 43-yard completion in the Saints game in Week 1. Amari wasnt even supposed to get the ball, he says. But because they protected me for so long, I saw that no one was going anywhere. So I looked off the safety for, like, three seconds, and he had to take the bait. That ball never shouldve been completed against that coverage.Going forward, Carr says, he plans to continue taking more risks on the field, trying his hand at creative looks and passes. Its helped me take my game to another level, he says. In Oakland, he has the freedom to experiment -- and the time, and the space. ' ' '
