BATCH OUT FOR FINAL 2 GAMES: Detroit Lions quarterback Charlie Batch has a compression fracture in his back and will miss the final two games of the season.
The injury to Batch's lower back, suffered in Monday night's loss to San Francisco, was detected during an MRI examination Friday."The injury will not require surgery, and we expect Charlie to be fully recovered before offseason workouts begin," coach Bobby Ross said Saturday.
The Lions announced Friday that Frank Reich would start Sunday against Atlanta and Scott Mitchell, benched after the Lions' 0-2 start, would move up to backup.
The Lions on Saturday signed quarterback Chris Dittoe. Dittoe was cut in training camp when Reich announced he was returning to the team. He played for the Frankfurt Galaxy in NFL Europe.
NFL VS. IMPEACHMENT: NFL football superseded the political football in Washington for most of Saturday afternoon.
CBS cut short its coverage of the impeachment debate at 10 a.m. MST to switch to a Jets-Bills football game. Dan Rather cut in seven times to update viewers on the votes for articles of impeachment.
Only one of those updates lasted more than a minute, as CBS showed the results of the first article of impeachment. Football fans missed two minutes of game action, but no scoring.
At one point, CBS went to a split screen, showing Rather talking on one side and Bills quarterback Doug Flutie scrambling for a first down on the other.
"We worked with the news division all day and made decisions as events unfolded," said CBS Sports spokeswoman LeslieAnne Wade.
Later Saturday, Fox twice preempted the Bucs-Redskins game to air news from Washington. Before going to the game, Fox aired a Democratic rally on the White House lawn. Fox used a split screen during speeches by Vice President Al Gore and House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt before showing Clinton's speech in its entirety.