Michel Boujenah maintient son spectacle le 19 juillet à Carthage en Tunisie, malgré les critiques et les appels au boycott. Jugé « pro-sioniste », le comédien se défend dans le quotidien Nice-Matin.

Le spectacle est maintenu. Malgré les multiples appels au boycott du spectacle qu’il doit jouer le 19 juillet prochain à Carthage en Tunisie, Michel Boujenah, accusé d’être « pro-sioniste », a tenu à répondre via Nice-Matin dimanche 9 juillet. “Mon amour pour la Tunisie est indéfectible et ceux qui me connaissent savent que je ne milite que pour la paix, depuis toujours“, a-t-il déclaré.

Le comédien et humoriste d’origine juive tunisienne doit jouer une partie de son spectacle Ma vie rêvée à l’occasion de la 53e édition du festival international de la ville de Carthage. Il est accusé, notamment par le mouvement BDS (Boycott, Désinvestissement et Sanctions contre l’immunité d’Israël), de tenir des propos complaisants envers Israël. Or, celui-ci se défend en disant n’être qu’”un artiste, qu’un clown, pas un homme politique ni un économiste.”

« Ma position, c’est juste de soutenir le processus encore fragile de la Tunisie, car si une démocratie peut vivre dans un pays musulman , c’est fondamental pour tout le monde. Il faut protéger la Tunisie », a plaidé Michel Bouejenah. Pour lui, le problème ne vient pas réellement de sa “personne« : »On vit une période historique compliquée, où l’on veut toujours exporter le conflit israélo-palestinien partout », a-t-il affirmé.

Le 17 juin dernier, le comédien avait une fois de plus manifesté son amour pour son pays natal, la Tunisie, sur le plateau d’On n’est pas couché. Il avait exprimé sa hâte d’y retourner : « Je suis super content parce que, depuis la révolution, je n’y ai pas joué. J’y suis allé très souvent, mais pas pour jouer ». Sans doute ne s’attendait-il pas à un tel accueil.

Alessandra Sublet semble adorer l’automne – surtout en compagnie de ses enfants. La présentatrice a partagé un instant privilégié dans les bois avec ses deux bouts de chou, et n’a pas hésité à en faire profiter ses abonnés sur Instagram.

On ne croise plus vraiment Alessandra Sublet sur les plateaux télé. L’animatrice a entamé une mue vers le poste de productrice, et semble très satisfaite de cette disparition médiatique, loin des caméras : elle est désormais plus dans l’ombre, loin des projecteurs mais toujours autour de la télévision. En abandonnant la présentation d’émissions, elle a peut-être par ailleurs gagné en qualité de vie, en n’ayant plus besoin d’être en direct tous les soirs : c‘est en tout cas ce qu’on peut déduire de sa dernière publication sur Instagram.

Ce mardi 14 novembre, Alessandra Sublet s’est échappée dans les bois avec Charlie, 5 ans, et Alphonse, 3 ans, ses deux enfants adorés. « Sa tribu », comme elle le dit, qu’elle a emmenée avec elle pour “respirer le bon air« lors d’une »balade automnale ». Si elle ne précise pas où se situe exactement cette forêt, elle appelle le lieu « my place », “mon endroit” : un coin où elle serait donc habituée à se balader, peut-être pour se ressourcer régulièrement loin de Paris. Il faut dire que l’atmosphère y est parfois irrespirable pour Alessandra Sublet, notamment à cause de son clash perpétuel avec Thierry Ardisson, qui dure maintenant depuis plusieurs années.

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Crédits photos : BESTIMAGE

SACRAMENTO — 

A California public agency that offers workers’ compensation insurance coverage to employers has recruited a high-priced team of former executives from the private sector to turn it around after years of scandal and financial problems.

But the hires are earning six-figure salaries that dwarf others in state government, drawing concerns from some in the state Capitol who question the cost as the agency rebuilds following investigations in years past that led to the removal of top managers and mass layoffs forced by loss of business.

The State Compensation Insurance Fund, known as State Fund, has also been criticized for hiring the spouses and adult children of agency managers. Its 11-member board of directors, which is appointed by the governor and legislative leaders, has become a soft landing spot for former lawmakers and other political insiders.

Bonuses and incentives awarded by State Fund’s board have boosted compensation to more than $500,000 each for its seven top managers including its CEO, whose annual pay is some $732,000 — more than three times the $210,000 salary of the governor. The salaries have prompted some lawmakers to call for an oversight hearing to determine whether the compensation is justified.

Carmen Balber, executive director of Consumer Watchdog, a group that keeps tabs on the insurance industry, said the pay “seems beyond the pale.”

“It sounds completely out of proportion for executives at any state agency to be making so much money, considering the governor makes only about $200,000 a year,” she said.

Agency officials including Board Chairman David M. Lanier say the compensation is warranted due to the unique mission of State Fund, which was created by the Legislature in 1914 to provide workers’ compensation insurance to businesses in the state, including those who can’t afford coverage from the private sector.

State Fund currently insures some 110,000 California businesses, down from 292,000 policyholders in 2002. Its market share grew significantly from the mid-’90s through 2002 as deregulation of rates and other factors led many private firms to reduce the price of their coverage, causing them to struggle financially and eventually leave California or go out of business. State Fund was left to pick up the slack.

Changes in the law have helped bring more private insurers back into California, creating more competition and reducing State Fund’s market share from 52% to 10.85%, though it remains one of the top providers of workers’ compensation insurance in the state.

The agency’s officials refer to it as a “quasi state entity” because, although its employees are state government workers, it does not receive taxpayer money from the state treasury, instead deriving its revenue from some $1 billion in premiums paid by the businesses it insures, as well as returns on funds it invests.

“The challenge we have is it’s a billion-dollar insurance company,” Lanier said. “There’s not another one of those in state government, so we need and value talent and expertise from the insurance industry.”

The agency’s biggest troubles began in 2007, when State Fund’s board fired its president and vice president after an audit found questionable financial practices involving the sale of discounted policies through outside associations linked to some board members. The scandal also resulted in the resignation of two board members whose private firms collected at least $265 million over 10 years from State Fund for administering group policy programs.

In 2011, State Fund laid off 25% of its 6,800 workers in response to its loss of market share. And its workforce has continued to drop, sitting now at 4,270 employees.

In the years after the scandal, the board of directors sought to expand its powers by persuading the Legislature to increase from one to 16 the number of executive positions exempt from civil service rules and pay scales.

In 2014, the board appointed Vernon Steiner as president and CEO of State Fund, who touted his 30 years of experience in the insurance industry. He received a base salary of $450,000 as well as various performance-linked bonuses.

Steiner appealed in 2017 for the latest expansion of civil service exemptions, telling the state Senate Insurance Committee that he and the board needed more leeway to recruit additional talent in competition with the private sector as part of his efforts to turn the agency around.

“Although I absolutely understand we are a public agency and that we serve the public, we do it in a way that is a little bit different than most other public agencies,” Steiner told lawmakers. “We compete with private carriers, and although the labor pool within civil service offers a lot of rich expertise and experience, it doesn’t generally offer insurance expertise.”

Steiner has faced pointed questions about State Fund‘s executive salaries from legislators who said they were concerned about the fat paychecks from the public agency.

“This is the state, and I look at these salaries that you are talking about paying and they are more than almost every university president at the California State University, who run an incredibly diverse campus of 40,000 students and employees,” Sen. Steve Glazer (D-Orinda) told Steiner at the 2017 hearing. “That’s troubling to me.”

The average annual salary for presidents at California State University campuses is $330,000.

Excluding the university systems — which pay some athletic coaches millions of dollars — Steiner at $732,000 is the third-highest-paid state executive after the chief investment officers for the two state retirement funds, who make more than $800,000. By comparison, University of California President Janet Napolitano’s base salary and car allowance total $578,000 to run a system with 227,000 employees and a budget of $37.2 billion.

Glazer voted for the five new executive positions after he was assured in early 2017 that the committee would get periodic reports on the compensation. Committee members including Glazer said recently that they think an oversight hearing should be held by the Legislature.

The committee last heard from Steiner at a hearing in April that focused on the insurance industry, but not executive compensation issues. He said his agency had “engaged in a large-scale transformation” that improved the financial strength and customer service and culture of the organization.

“Although we have more work ahead of us, our efforts to date have yielded positive results and provided important benefits to California businesses and injured workers,” Steiner said. “I would say we are financially as strong as we have ever been.”

In a letter to lawmakers in 2018, Steiner said State Fund’s base pay and cash payouts to managers trended in the 25th to 50th percentile within the insurance industry.

Mike Mattoch, a former chief counsel for the Assembly Insurance Committee who has also worked as an industry executive with USAA, said the not-for-profit State Fund could pay its executives half as much and still draw talent with expertise in insurance.

“It’s a very cushy gig,” said Mattoch, who now works as an attorney for Consumer Watchdog. “They don’t do much of anything and they get paid a ton.”

In November, the State Fund board approved raises in base salary, bonuses and incentive payments for 17 managers, including Steiner, whose base pay this year has been increased by $36,000, or 7%, to $544,450. By comparison, State Fund’s then-CEO was paid $273,000 in 2007.

Steiner also gets an annual “at-risk compensation differential,” which is linked to performance, according to State Fund spokeswoman Jennifer Vargen. That amount is currently $177,623.

On top of that, Steiner receives a separate performance-based incentive payment of $30,000, and $17,900 for a “Long-Term Incentive Plan.” State Fund also contributed $39,046 to Steiner’s CalPERS retirement plan.

Other executives who receive performance and incentive payments include the chief operating officer, whose annual compensation this year is $566,000, and the chief information officer, whose yearly compensation is $588,000.

Lanier said his satisfaction with the progress of State Fund reforms led him to vote at November’s meeting for the increases in salary and incentives and bonuses for the executives, including Steiner.

“He walked into a very difficult circumstance. State Fund has been on a remarkable transformation and turnaround, internally, externally,” Lanier said.

High salaries are not the only concern some state officials have with the agency. State Fund also employs the relatives of some of its executives.

Both of Steiner’s sons have worked at the agency — his son Bennett was hired by the agency last year and is an underwriter making $50,400 annually.

“All civil service rules were followed and extra steps were implemented to ensure a fair process,” said Jonathon Tudor, an agency spokesman, who said Bennett Steiner’s application received an extra round of reviews in which his name was redacted and he was determined by a human-resources panel to meet the position qualifications.

Steiner’s other son, Casey, participated in a State Fund summer internship program in 2017 and 2018, making $16 an hour while attending college, but has never been an employee, Tudor said.

The agency’s vice president for human resources, Brandee Radaikin, was hired in July 2011 and receives a base salary of $130,600. Her husband, Bruce Radaikin, received an agency job in 2017, and his pay is $44,000.

“Bruce’s relationship to Brandee was disclosed when he applied to State Fund,” Tudor said. “Brandee played no role in his hiring. All civil service rules were followed. Bruce and Brandee are in different departments and report up through different executives.”

In 2013, the agency hired Douglas Ziemer as a program manager with an annual salary of $130,000, and two years later hired his wife, Nicole Ziemer to a personnel office job, with a top salary of $81,000. The Ziemers both left the agency in July and did not play a role in each others’ hiring, Tudor said.

Balber said hiring family members of managers is a concern.

“You might see that kind of nepotism in the insurance industry, but it has no place in an agency that is selling insurance with the state imprimatur,” Balber said. “That’s a problem.”

Republican state Sen. John Moorlach of Costa Mesa, who also serves on the Senate Insurance Committee, said the state doesn’t have a central manager monitoring the hiring of family members at its many agencies, a practice he said is prevalent.

“It is rampant within the state,” he said. “I have heard plenty of stories and I don’t like what I have heard.”

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WASHINGTON  — 

The U.S. missile strike that killed Iranian Quds Force leader Qassem Suleimani was a stunning escalation of the conflict between the United States and Iran — an act of open war in a struggle that has been carried out in the shadows for decades.

Yet President Trump and his aides oddly called the airstrike a “deescalation,” as if it were a step toward peace.

“We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war,” the president told supporters Friday.

It sounds like Orwellian doublespeak — an attempt to deny that killing a senior Iranian official ratcheted up hostilities by claiming the opposite.

Trump aides offered a convoluted explanation: Because Suleimani was working on plots against the United States, they said, killing him would impede those attacks — and thus “deescalate” the conflict, at least temporarily.

But that’s not deescalation; it’s preemption.

Still, there’s one way the term “deescalation” does apply. Trump and his aides appear to be using a tactic borrowed from nuclear weapons strategy — a gambit called “escalate to deescalate.”

The idea is that if you shock your adversaries with a sudden, violent attack, they may back down from action you want to deter.

But it’s a high-risk gamble. If the other side backs down, you win. If the other side retaliates and unleashes another round of escalation, the conflict can spiral out of control.

In nuclear strategy, both the United States and Russia have decided that “escalate to deescalate” — launching a small nuclear attack to deter a larger one — is a dangerous idea, because a miscalculation could be catastrophic.

A miscalculation with Iran could be catastrophic too, if it leads to a wider war.

Trump has used “escalate to deescalate” before, in his confrontation with North Korea.

In 2017, he was determined to stop North Korea from expanding its arsenal of nuclear weapons.

If Kim Jong Un continued threatening the United States, Trump warned, he would face “fire and fury … the likes of which this world has never seen before.”

It looked and sounded like a cycle of escalation that could lead to nuclear war.

As tensions spiked, Kim proposed a summit meeting with Trump and announced a suspension of nuclear tests as a sign of goodwill. The two leaders met in Singapore and agreed to work toward “denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula.”

Two years later, the process appears stalemated; North Korea is still building nuclear weapons and missiles, and Kim made new threats last week. So Trump’s main objective hasn’t been met — but the level of tension is lower.

A diplomatic opening was possible because there was an offramp: Trump halted joint military exercises with South Korea and offered Kim reduced economic sanctions in return for clear moves toward denuclearization.

The process hasn’t succeeded, but at least the two sides are talking.

The Trump administration has offered no such offramp to Iran — unless you count the long list of demands Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo has made of Tehran, ranging from an end to nuclear and missile development to wholesale changes in Iranian foreign and domestic policy.

The Trump administration has frequently offered to open talks with Iran, and it renewed those offers on Friday. But Trump has never offered Tehran anything as appealing as the menu he put before Kim.

Instead, Pompeo and other U.S. officials have often used language that sounds to Iranians as if the Trump administration is seeking regime change in Tehran.

And there’s an emotional element: Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has promised to seek revenge for the killing of his most important military official.

All those factors make it likely that we will see retaliation from Iran — and escalation instead of deescalation.

Iran’s retaliation could include attacks on oil refineries or tankers, or other U.S. interests by proxy forces in other countries. It could be a covert attack on an American general or other senior official in the Middle East. It could involve cyberattacks on U.S. financial institutions or other infrastructure.

But it’s almost certain to include a form of what might be called “strategic retaliation”: a carefully planned campaign, in the wake of Suleimani’s killing, to persuade Iraq’s parliament to expel U.S. forces from their country. Many Iraqis are outraged that the U.S. killed a senior Iranian official on their soil.

They could force the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to close, a humiliating setback for the United States — especially given the immense U.S. sacrifice in lives and dollars in Iraq since 2003. Worse, it would make Iraq a virtual satellite of Iran — a huge strategic win for Tehran.

It would also illustrate the biggest mismatch between the United States and Iran: We have more money and more military power — but they appear to have a clearer strategy and more patience.

Trump and Pompeo have defined their policy toward Iran as “maximum pressure.” But without a clear goal and a plan to achieve it, that isn’t a strategy; it’s only a tactic.

The president’s goal, he says, is to get the United States out of the Middle East. The targeted killing of Suleimani risks pulling us deeper in.

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WASHINGTON — 

Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo on Sunday defended last week’s killing of a top Iranian general and pushed back against reports that some senior Trump administration officials had privately voiced concerns before the strike that it could have deadly repercussions across the already volatile Middle East.

Senior Democratic leaders said the president’s seemingly impulsive decision-making had raised the possibility of a conflagration with Iran, which has vowed vengeance for the drone strike that destroyed a convoy carrying senior Iranian Gen. Qassem Suleimani outside Baghdad’s airport.

“We do not need this president either bumbling or impulsively getting us into a major war,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Pompeo said there was “no skepticism” among the president’s closest advisors about the accuracy of intelligence underlying the decision to kill Suleimani, even as Democrats sharply questioned administration claims that Suleimani, the head of Iran’s powerful Quds Force, had in fact posed an imminent threat to American personnel and interests.

“The intelligence assessment made clear that no action — allowing Suleimani to continue his plotting and his planning, his terror campaign — created more risk than taking the action that we took last week,” Pompeo said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Citing operational sensitivity, Pompeo refused to provide any details to support the administration’s contention that the strike, which killed Suleimani and several associates on Friday outside Baghdad’s airport, was intended to stave off an urgent threat.

“This was a bad guy. We took him from the battlefield. We saw that he was plotting further plans to take down Americans, in some cases many Americans,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Pompeo also defended President Trump’s overnight threat on Twitter to attack dozens of sites important to Iran and “the Iranian culture” if the Islamic Republic retaliates for Suleimani’s death. But in multiple interviews, he did not address the fact that targeting cultural sites is illegal under the Geneva Convention.

“We’ll act lawfully,” Pompeo said on ABC. “We’ll behave inside the system. We always have, and we always will.”

Despite the administration’s talk of de-escalation, the secretary appeared to amplify the president’s remarks with a warning that could be construed as threatening other sitting Iranian government officials if Iran retaliates for the killing of Suleimani.

“We’re going to respond against the actual decision-makers: the people who are causing this threat from the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Pompeo said on CNN.

Senior Democratic lawmakers readily acknowledged that Suleimani was a malign force in the region, but said they were not convinced the administration had justified the rare decision to kill an official of a foreign government.

The administration late Saturday delivered to Congress a formal notification of the drone strike that killed Suleimani, fulfilling a legal requirement to do so. But Democrats continued to vehemently protest Trump’s failure to consult with congressional leaders in advance of the attack, and the secrecy surrounding the administration’s reasons for taking so drastic a step.

“I accept the notion that there was a real threat,” said Sen. Mark R. Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” But he said “the question of how imminent is something that I need more information on.”

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NEW ORLEANS — 

It’s no country for old men because — Holy Skol! — the Minnesota Vikings have knocked Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints out of the playoffs for the second time in three years.

Hours after the postseason of 42-year-old Tom Brady came to an abrupt end, the same happened for fellow future Hall of Famer Brees, 40, whose team was beaten in overtime Sunday before a stunned and yelled-out crowd at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.

Kirk Cousins, who had an abysmal record in big games, came through in a huge way for the underdog Vikings, throwing a four-yard pass to tight end Kyle Rudolph in the back corner of the end zone in overtime to seal a 26-20 win.

“No. 8!” Vikings coach Mike Zimmer said in the raucous and cramped visitors locker room, summoning his quarterback into the cheering scrum of purple-clad players. “How’s it feel to win a playoff game, baby?”

A gleeful Cousins accepted the game ball, then addressed his teammates, punctuating his message with a pumping fist.

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“That’s how we’ve won all year — team, right?” he said. “You held them to 20 points, men. You gave us a chance at the end. But I’ve got three words for you.” He then invoked his jugular-bulging catchphrase from his Washington Redskins days. “YOU LIKE THAT?”

The beleaguered Cousins came into the game with a 6-30 career record against teams that finished seasons at .500 or better, and his team was facing a living legend in Brees, who had completed nearly 75% of his passes this season and hadn’t been intercepted in his previous five games.

That streak would end in this one, and Brees would also lose a fumble for the first time all season, the ball tumbling from his surgically repaired hand that was injured during a Week 2 loss to the Rams.

“It’s disappointing when you’re not holding the trophy at the end,” Brees said, “no matter how you look at it.”

It was two years ago that the Vikings devastated the Saints in the “Minneapolis Miracle” game, when Case Keenum threw an against-all-odds 61-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Stefon Diggs on the last play of the game, a divisional matchup New Orleans had all but won.

Perhaps emotionally drained, the Vikings would lose at Philadelphia in the NFC championship game. This time, they will try to keep motoring in a divisional game at top-seeded San Francisco.

Cousins, 31, is suddenly among the elder statesmen in a field of playoff quarterbacks that features Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers, 36, but also a bunch of relative youngsters, including Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson, who turns 23 on Tuesday, as well as Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes and Houston’s Deshaun Watson, both 24.

These playoffs marked the first time in the wild-card round that two of the four games were decided in overtime. Houston knocked off Buffalo that way Saturday.

Even though his team lost, Saints reserve quarterback Taysom Hill was stupendous. An incredibly versatile player who steps in for Brees at various points, he had a 50-yard completion — the longest pass play of the game — caught a 20-yard touchdown pass, and ran four times for 50 yards, earning a first down on each carry.

“He played unbelievable today,” Vikings linebacker Eric Kendricks said of Hill. “Really, he’s been doing that all season. Kind of shows up on tape. Every time, we knew where the play was going to be and he was still able to execute them.”

Hill was one of the few offensive weapons who was effective against an otherwise smothering Minnesota defense. Brees was sacked three times after being sacked just 12 times in 11 games during the regular season. The Vikings got a strong push up the middle to get to him, their strategy in light of the ability of Saints tackles to secure the edges.

“We kind of watched the Falcons game,” said Vikings defensive end Danielle Hunter, referring to the Nov. 10 game in which Atlanta sacked Brees six times in a 26-9 Superdome shocker. “We knew about getting pressure on Brees, who would either hold the ball or stand back, not make the perfect throws he normally makes. That was part of our game plan, just getting pressure up the middle.”

It was Hunter who forced the Brees fumble at the Minnesota 28-yard line, thwarting what could have been a go-ahead touchdown drive and taking the oxygen out of the chuffed-up Superdome.

The play that really knocked the wind out of the place came in overtime, when Cousins connected with receiver Adam Thielen for a 43-yard gain to the New Orleans two-yard line. The catch was a spirit-crusher for the Saints and redemption for Thielen, who had lost a fumble on the third play of the game.

Thielen made a gesture after that miscue, using two fingers to simulate the flushing of a toilet. It’s something he has been doing after bad plays since his days at Minnesota State in Mankato.

“It’s a motto that I learned in college, that it doesn’t matter what happened before, I’m going to flush it down the toilet and go on to the next play,” said Thielen, whose college team even had a miniature toilet on the sideline as a reminder. “It doesn’t matter what happened in the season, doesn’t matter what happened on the last play, there’s always an opportunity to make a next play.”

As a result of that attitude, the Vikings remain flush with opportunities.

None of them was No. 1 overall.

But when it’s all over, one of them will be.

For the first time since the 2010 NFL season, there aren’t any quarterbacks among the final eight who were selected first in the draft.

In fact, only one of them was a single-digit selection — Tennessee’s Ryan Tannehill went eighth in 2012 to Miami, which got rid of him anyway.

Unlike the divisional rounds of the last decade, there’s no Peyton or Eli Manning, Cam Newton, Alex Smith, Andrew Luck, Carson Palmer or Jared Goff.

There are two No. 1 picks remaining in this field, but neither is a quarterback: Seattle defensive end Jadeveon Clowney (2014 by Houston) and Kansas City tackle Eric Fisher (2013).

In this year’s second round, the only two quarterbacks who have appeared in a Super Bowl — Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers and Seattle’s Russell Wilson — are playing each other. The Seahawks play at the Packers in Sunday’s late game.

“To come back here, back East, it’s a long ways, we were able to do it, pull through,” Wilson said after Seattle’s 17-9 victory at Philadelphia on Sunday in an NFC wild-card game. “We’ve been road warriors and it’s exciting.”

In the other NFC divisional game, Minnesota at San Francisco on Saturday afternoon, it’s two quarterbacks who began their careers elsewhere: The 49ers’ Jimmy Garoppolo in New England and the Vikings’ Kirk Cousins in Washington.

“Being a fourth-round pick and kind of working your way up in the league — now you win a playoff game,” Cousins said. “Guess what. You look around and you realize there are more mountains to climb.”

The early game Sunday is Houston at Kansas City, pitting two of the league’s most dynamic young quarterbacks in Deshaun Watson and Patrick Mahomes. They were drafted in near succession in 2017, with the Chiefs taking Mahomes 10th and Texans grabbing Watson 12th.

In Week 6, Houston won at Kansas City 31-24.

Watson converted a fourth down to run down the clock in that game, but Mahomes was no pushover. The Chiefs star threw for 273 yards and three touchdowns.

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“It’s a wonderful feeling to be able to deal with all of the adversity, the ups and downs and the flows of the game, and to be able to keep fighting for 60 minutes,” Watson said after that victory. “That’s what we did. We never got discouraged. We kept fighting, we kept pushing, we kept encouraging and that’s the biggest part about this locker room.”

Saturday night’s game features two skyrocketing star quarterbacks, Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson and Tannehill, both of whom have surprised people with their meteoric rise.

Jackson almost certainly will be the NFL’s most valuable player, and Tannehill has been remarkably productive since replacing the struggling Marcus Mariota.

In 12 regular-season games, Tannehill had 26 touchdowns — 22 passing — with six interceptions. In six of his final seven games, he had a passer rating of 130.8 or better.

The Ravens are 19-3 with Jackson as starter. Since his first NFL start, in Week 11 of last season, Jackson’s 19 regular-season victories are most among NFL starting quarterbacks.

He is the only quarterback in NFL history with at least 3,000 yards passing and 1,000 yards rushing in a season.

Jackson said last week that he’s ready to put behind him Baltimore’s playoff loss to the Chargers a year ago.

“That game still motivates me,” he said. “I still haven’t played my second playoff game yet. … That game is over with. We’ve been having a great year this year. We just got to keep it going. I want a Super Bowl. I’m not worried about that. That was my rookie season.”

The Lakers were blocking shots at a historic rate Sunday night, even prompting Dwight Howard to do the finger wag that Dikembe Mutumbo made famous.

The Lakers had 20 blocked shots, one shy of their team record, using that defensive weapon to hold off the Detroit Pistons 106-99 at Staples Center.

Anthony Davis led the way with eight blocks to go along with 24 points and 11 rebounds. JaVale McGee had six blocks, Howard five and Avery Bradley one before he exited with a right ankle sprain.

“We want to protect the paint as much as possible,” Davis said. “If teams are going to beat us, make sure they beat us from the outside.”

The Lakers are the first team to block 20 shots since the Toronto Raptors did it Nov. 7, 2001. It was the second-best total in Lakers history; they had 21 blocks against Denver in April 1982.

Davis and McGee are just the third pair of teammates in NBA history with at least six blocks each, a feat previously accomplished by Dirk Nowitzki and Erik Dampier for Dallas on Jan. 29, 2005.

Almost overlooked was that LeBron James had a triple-double with 21 points, 14 rebounds and 11 assists — his ninth of the season and 90th of his career. But even James praised all the blocked shots by his teammates.

Highlights from the Lakers’ win over the Detroit Pistons on Sunday.

“It’s just an unbelievable feat, a remarkable feat,” James said. “Dwight, JaVale and AD, they just make it easy on us. They make it easy on us and we try to contain a lot of these small, quick guards, a lot of these rim attackers. To know that you have that safety net behind you with JaVale, Dwight and AD, it’s a heck of a luxury.”

When Howard blocked Detroit center Andre Drummond in the fourth quarter, the Lakers center wagged his finger. Howard’s teammates laughed and smiled.

“He’s a great shot-blocker,” Davis said. “I told him he had to be a little bit more original. He’s got to come up with his own thing. But that just goes back to protecting the paint. He was one of the guys who did that for us.”

The Lakers had given up 68 points in the paint Friday against New Orleans. They wanted to change that course against the Pistons.

“We’re not happy with giving up 68 points in the paint against the Pelicans. That was sort of the theme of our film session yesterday,” coach Frank Vogel said. “Those guys took a lot of pride in protecting our rim.”

Still, the Lakers blew a late 11-point lead and needed Davis to score 11 points over the final 3:40, including a three-pointer with 1:28 left for a four-point lead, to remain undefeated against teams with losing records. Alex Caruso, who missed Friday’s game with tightness in his right calf, had 13 points off the bench.

One of the biggest highlights of the first half came in the first quarter when McGee received a pass from James with the shot clock winding down and drilled a three-pointer — making him two for two this season — to the delight of the crowd and his teammates.

The Lakers had two guards go down in the second quarter, but only Bradley was unable to return.

Bradley had stolen the ball and then turned it over driving to the basket. As he jumped around, Bradley rolled his ankle and had to be helped to the locker room.

Kentavious Caldwell-Pope rolled his left ankle on a drive, went to the locker room, got the ankle retaped and returned to play in the second half in place of Bradley, who already missed a month this season with a hairline fracture in his right leg. The Lakers said X-rays on Bradley’s ankle were negative.

“Hopefully he’s not too bad,” Vogel said. “He felt like he could come back, but he was still limping. So we’ll just see how he responds overnight and I’m sure we’ll get more testing on it tomorrow.”

Derrick Rose scored 28 points and former Laker Svi Mykhailiuk had 14 — one off his career high — for the Pistons. Drummond had 12 points on two-for-13 shooting and 18 rebounds before fouling out. Blake Griffin missed his fourth straight game with knee soreness.

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SEATTLE — 

After a lackluster thud to begin Pac-12 Conference play, Washington rebounded with its biggest conference blowout in nearly a decade.

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Isaiah Stewart scored 18 points and grabbed 10 rebounds, Quade Green added 14 points and Washington rebounded from a loss to open conference play with a 72-40 romp over Southern California on Sunday night.

Stewart was again dominant on the interior despite sitting the final 9 minutes of the first half with foul trouble. The freshman post was 6-of-12 shooting and had two of Washington’s 12 blocked shots. Fellow freshman Jaden McDaniels added 11 points despite an off shooting night, but also had seven rebounds and six blocks.

Washington (11-4, 1-1 Pac-12) had dropped two straight, including its Pac-12 opener on Thursday night against UCLA. The rout of USC was an impressive bounce-back performance by the Huskies.

It was Washington’s biggest conference victory since beating California 109-77 on Feb. 10, 2011.

“We should have never lost that game,” Green said of the 66-64 loss to UCLA. “We had to come out and lay one on them today.”

Highlights from USC’s loss to Washington on Sunday.

USC freshman Onyeka Okongwu had 12 points and nine rebounds, but was the only Trojans player in double figures. The Trojans (12-3, 1-1) had their seven-game win streak snapped thanks to a terrible night of shooting. USC shot 20% from the field and just 2 of 15 on 3-pointers. The lack of shooting from the perimeter allowed Washington’s zone to be even more effective in clogging the paint.

“When they got the ball in the paint we had length and athleticism flying around, which made it very difficult to score in the paint and that was what I loved the most,” Washington coach Mike Hopkins said.

USC had not lost since Nov. 29 when it lost to Marquette and opened conference play with a win at Washington State earlier in the week. The 40 points were a season-low for the Trojans. They scored 54 in a win over Fairfield in late November.

“Tonight is as poorly as we can play. We couldn’t make some of the stuff up that happened offensively tonight,” USC coach Andy Enfield said. “I never saw this coming. I thought our guys would come out and execute. We got the ball where we wanted for most of the game we just didn’t finish our shots and then we had a lot of silly turnovers.”

It was a matchup of talented freshmen in the post with Stewart and Okongwu going head-to-head. Stewart was the clear winner, but he also had a better supporting cast.

Washington used a trio of scoring runs to turn the game into a blowout. The Huskies jumped out to a 10-1 lead to start, but it was the run to close the first half with Stewart on the bench that was decisive. Washington led just 14-12 when Stewart checked out after picking up his second foul with 9:19 left in the half. The Huskies outscored USC 21-9 the rest of the half to take a 35-21 lead. Nahziah Carter scored eight points during the stretch and the Huskies received unexpected contributions from Nate Roberts off the bench with seven points and six rebounds in the first half.

USC pulled within 41-29 after Jonah Mathews hit the Trojans first 3 of the game and Nick Rakocevic scored. Washington answered with 11 straight points, started by McDaniels’ 3-pointer and capped by Jamal Bey’s dunk in transition and a 23-point lead.

Washington led by as many as 35 in the second half.

Adam Henrique had two goals and an assist, Ryan Getzlaf got the deciding goal in the fifth round of the shootout and also had three assists, and the Ducks beat the Nashville Predators 5-4 Sunday night.

Daniel Sprong had a goal and an assist, and Cam Fowler also scored to help the Ducks end a three-game losing streak. John Gibson made 22 saves.

Craig Smith scored twice, and Rocco Grimaldi and Austin Watson each had a goal for the Predators, who have lost four of five. Juuse Saros made 43 saves.

Roman Josi had an assist to extend his point streak to 10 games, the longest ever by a Nashville defenseman.

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With the Predators trailing 4-2, Smith pulled them within one at 4:13 of the third, and Grimaldi tied it at 6:30 with a sharp-angle shot after Josi lost his footing readying a backhand shot.

Highlights from the Ducks’ win over the Nashville Predators on Sunday.

Josi has seven goals and 11 assists during his point streak. It was Josi’s 10th assist in the past six games.

The Ducks scored three goals in the second period after falling behind 2-1 on Smith’s first power-play goal of the season at 2:59.

Fowler tied it up with a wrist shot with 7:26 left in the period, and Sprong put Anaheim back in front with 5:08 remaining by following up Fowler’s one-timer for his first power-play goal. Henrique made it 4-2 with 3:38 to go on the power play when Sam Steel’s shot struck his right skate and careened in.

It was Henrique’s first three-point game of the season and his second multi-goal game.

Henrique backhanded his own rebound in to put the Ducks in front 1-0 with 7:54 left in the first, but Watson tipped Colin Blackwell’s shot from the point past Gibson to tie it with 49 seconds remaining.

Notes: Predators F Matt Duchene (illness) and D Dante Fabbro (upper body) did not play for the second straight game. Nashville also scratched D Dan Hamhuis. Ducks F Rickard Rakell missed his sixth game because of an upper-body injury.