The game’s organizers announced Thursday that the bowl game would cease to exist after five seasons. Washington beat Boise State on Dec. 13 in what turned out to be the final LA Bowl ever.
“After five great years, the LA Bowl at SoFi Stadium will no longer be moving forward,” a statement said. “It has been an honor for our staff and volunteers to bring college football to one of the world’s greatest venues. We want to thank the athletes and football programs who participated and, most importantly, the college football fans who joined us over these past five seasons.”
The game first took place in 2021 when Utah State beat Oregon State. The LA Bowl kicked off bowl season in 2025 and had been one of the first games of each bowl season in the 2020s.
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It launched as a game between the Mountain West and the Pac-12, but the Pac-12 ceased to exist in its previous form after the 2023 football season. Former Pac-12 teams were still eligible for the game, however. That’s why Big Ten member Washington played in 2025 and Cal, now a member of the ACC, was in the game in 2024.
The Mountain West is also in the midst of change — thanks to the Pac-12. The rebooted Pac-12 has taken teams like Boise State and Utah State from the Mountain West as it rebuilds itself around Oregon State and Washington State.
The LA Bowl is the second bowl to disappear from the bowl schedule in recent months. The Bahamas Bowl was not played in 2025 and was replaced by the Xbox Bowl in Texas. Though there will always be a place for bowl games during the holidays — ESPN needs the programming and there is a willing audience to watch football — the current bowl system is in flux given recent changes to transfer rules and another potential expansion of the College Football Playoff.
MILAN — Paced by the ice dance duo of Madison Chock and Evan Bates, closed with a dramatic finish by Alysa Liu, the United States began the first three segments of the team figure skating event with a strong performance. The United States is looking to repeat as gold medalists in the team event, and Friday’s segments gave the Americans a solid push in that direction.
The U.S. team leads by two points over Japan heading into Saturday’s competition, which will feature the men’s short program and ice dance (free dance program).
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First on the day’s schedule: Ice dancing’s rhythm dance segment. That scheduling allowed the United States to send out its most veteran skaters, Chock and Bates, who have a combined nine Olympics’ worth of experience between them. They relished the challenge of leading the U.S. charge and starting first.
“Why not? It’s great,” Chock said after their skate. “Got the Olympic buzz, we get in and we do our job, and it feels more like a regularly scheduled competition.”
Skating to a medley of Lenny Kravitz hits, Chock and Bates performed the finest skate of the rhythm dance round, earning a 91.06 to finish atop the standings and gain the United States 10 points. Chock and Bates also kept challengers from France and Japan at bay, which will be necessary if the U.S. is to repeat its performance from Beijing.
Four years ago, the Americans actually finished second to the Russians, but medals were never handed out after Kamila Valieva tested positive for a banned substance. It wasn’t until the 2024 Summer Games in Paris when the U.S. team, including Chock and Bates, received their medals in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.
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“To break 90 is always a great feat,” Bates said. “To do it at an Olympic Games is even better.”
USA’s Madison Chock (L) and USA’s Evan Bates react after competing in the figure skating team event ice dance-rhythm dance during the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games at Milano Ice Skating Arena in Milan on February 6, 2026. (Wang Zhao / AFP via Getty Images)
(WANG ZHAO via Getty Images)
“It sets Team USA up great for the rest of the week,” Chock said. “We’re really happy to have been able to put out that performance for them.”
The pairs duo of Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea came into this Olympics carrying significant pressure in the team event. With likely medalists at every other spot, Kam and O’Shea need to hold up their leg in order to keep the U.S. team medal hopes alive.
Troubles struck the pair midway through their routine, as Kam fell during an attempted triple loop. But she recovered quickly, and the duo, skating to k.d. lang’s “Hallelujah,” was able to post a score of 66.59, fifth overall in the segment. The United States maintained its overall lead with a total of 16 points, two points ahead of Italy, Canada and Georgia.
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“We like to we wish that we were perfect every single time we stepped out on the ice,” Kam said, “but unfortunately … the ice is slippery, there’s two of us, there’s two different timings and sometimes things aren’t exactly as perfect as we want it to be.”
Liu, one of America’s leading gold medal hopes, wrapped up the day’s segments with the women’s short program. Skating to Laufey’s “Promise,” Liu carved a graceful, powerful program that drew a rousing cheer from the American contingent in the audience. Liu scored a 74.90 to keep the United States in first place after the first day of the team event.
Teams at the Olympics include one woman, one man, one pairs team and one dance team. The team event comprises eight segments: a short program and a free skate for each of the four individuals/pairs. The Olympics began with 10 teams; after the four short programs, the top five teams will advance to the free skate segments. Teams have the opportunity to swap out two members between segments for strategic or injury reasons.
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Earlier in the day, Team USA announced that Ilia Malinin, widely regarded as the gold medal favorite in the men’s program, would be skating the men’s short program segment for the team. Given how quickly the men’s event follows the end of the team event, it’s likely American team officials will reassess Malinin’s role on the team after the end of the short program segments on Saturday.
“It’s been hard for our high-performance department to make those decisions at the end of the day,” smiled team captain O’Shea. “It’s all about trying to maximize how people can perform within the team event and not jeopardizing their ability to perform well within the individual event as well.”
⚾️ Skubal’s big day: Two-time defending AL Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal won his arbitration hearing against the Tigers on Thursday and was awarded an arbitration-record $32 million contract for 2026 before he becomes a free agent at season’s end.
⚾️ Padres for sale? The Padres are moving closer to the franchise going up for sale, with opening bids expected to be submitted by the end of February, per The Athletic. One of the people interested in bidding? Warriors owner Joe Lacob.
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📆 2026: A sports year like no other
(Henry Russell/Yahoo Sports)
The 2026 sports calendar is bursting at the seams all year, but nothing quite compares to what we’re about to experience these next couple months. Get ready for the best stretch of sports… ever?
66 days of ecstasy: The madness begins this weekend with NBC’s overlapping coverage of the Olympics and the Super Bowl, kicking off a 66-day fever dream that features well over a dozen major sporting events passing the torch between one another without coming up for air.
🥇 Feb. 6-22: Milan Cortina Olympics
🏈 Feb. 8: Super Bowl LX
🏀 Feb. 15: NBA All-Star Game
🏁 Feb. 15: Daytona 500
⚽️ Feb. 21: MLS Season Opener
🎾 March 1-15: Indian Wells
⚾️ March 5-17: World Baseball Classic
🥇 March 6-15: Paralympics
🏎️ March 7: F1 Season Opener
⛳️ March 12-15: The Players
🏀 March 19-22: March Madness Opening Weekend
⚾️ March 25-26: MLB Opening Day
🏀 April 3-6: Final Four
⚽️ April 7-8: Champions League Quarterfinals
⛳️ April 9-12: The Masters
Plus: We’ve also got the Six Nations Rugby Championship (Feb. 5-March 14), the T20 Cricket World Cup (Feb. 7-March 18), the World Athletics Indoor Championships (March 20-22), the Women’s Champions League quarterfinals (March 23-25) and more over the next couple months.
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Looking ahead: The rest of the year has all the usual suspects, including the NBA and NHL playoffs, tennis and golf majors, and of course football in the fall. But are we forgetting something? Oh, that’s right — the United States is co-hosting the biggest World Cup in history this summer.
The 2026 World Cup, the first on U.S. soil since 1994, joins the Olympics and World Baseball Classic as major non-annual events that make this year in sports particularly special.
In fact, it’s the first time since 2006’s inaugural World Baseball Classic that all three of those events are being held in the same year.
The result is a jam-packed slate — week after week, month after month — full of the annual offerings we all know and love, mixed in with marquee events that only come around so often.
I mean, think about this: On the second weekend of June, the USMNT’s World Cup opener coincides with the Stanley Cup Final, the NBA Finals, the College World Series and a UFC Fight Night on the White House Lawn. The very next weekend, you’ll potentially be watching the USMNT’s second World Cup match, Game 7 of the NBA Finals and the second round of the U.S. Open… all on the same day.
Bottom line: The sports calendar typically follows a reliable rhythm of peaks and valleys, giving fans time to catch their breath. Not this year. 2026 is all about unstoppable momentum, and the fun starts today with the Milan Cortina Opening Ceremony (2pm ET, NBC).
🏈 NFL Honors: Stafford wins MVP
(Grant Thomas/Yahoo Sports)
Rams QB Matthew Stafford won his first NFL MVP Award on Thursday night at the annual NFL Honors show, beating out Patriots QB Drake Maye in one of the closest races ever.
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The final tally: Stafford had 366 points and 24 first-place votes. Maye was right behind with 361 points and 23 first-place votes. Others receiving first-place votes: Josh Allen (2) and Justin Herbert* (1).
It’s the closest MVP vote since 2003, when Peyton Manning and Steve McNair were co-winners of the award.
Stafford joins Y.A. Tittle (1963) and Rich Gannon (2002) as the oldest first-time MVPs, all at age 37.
Coming back for more: Stafford committed to return for his 18th season amid retirement speculation. “I’ll see you guys next year,” he said. “Hopefully I’m not at this event and we’re preparing for another game at SoFi,” which will host next year’s Super Bowl.
More NFL Honors:
Awards: Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Seahawks (OPOY); Myles Garrett, Browns (DPOY); Mike Vrabel, Patriots (Coach); Christian McCaffrey, 49ers (Comeback Player); Tetairoa McMillan, Panthers (OROY); Carson Schwesinger, Browns (DROY); Joe Thuney, Bears (Protector)
Hall of Fame: Drew Brees (QB), Larry Fitzgerald (WR), Luke Kuechly (LB), Adam Vinatieri (K) and Roger Craig (RB) were announced as the five-man 2026 Hall of Fame Class. As previously reported, Bill Belichick and Robert Kraft didn’t make the cut this year.
Man of the Year: The night concluded with Commanders LB Bobby Wagner being named the Walter Payton Man of the Year for philanthropy and community impact. He gave a wonderful speech honoring his late mother, Phenia.
*A voter explains himself: “I was the Justin Herbert vote,” Sam Monson posted on X. “The guy had the worst offensive line in the NFL all season and despite that he was working miracles in almost every single game. Stafford’s OL became 2/5ths as bad as Herbert’s for 5 minutes and he became a turnover howitzer. He embodied ‘value.’”
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📺 Weekend Watchlist: Olympics edition
Italian ballet dancer Nicoletta Manni holds the Olympic flame on Thursday in front of Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. (Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)
🇮🇹 Opening Ceremony
After getting a taste of the Winter Games over the past two days, the Milan Cortina Olympics begin in earnest today with the Opening Ceremony. If you can’t catch it live (2pm ET, NBC), it will also air in primetime (8pm, NBC).
Details: The primary venue is San Siro, home of Inter and AC Milan, but the Parade of Nations will also take place in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Predazzo and Livigno to represent the geographical breadth of these Games. Mary Carillo, Terry Gannon and snowboarding legend Shaun White will host, while Mariah Carey and Andrea Bocelli are among the musical performers.
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🎿 Downhill Skiing
The eyes of the world will be on Lindsey Vonn as she takes the starting gate for Sunday’s downhill medal event in Cortina (5:30am, USA) and tries skiing on a freshly torn ACL. The three-time Olympic medalist — including downhill gold in 2010 — posted a video of herself doing an intense workout on Thursday. “I’m not giving up,” she wrote.
Meanwhile, for the men: Tomorrow’s downhill event (5:30am, USA) represents the first medal event of these Games. Prepare for chaos at the notoriously difficult Stelvio track in Bormio, which has already seen multiple crashes during training runs.
⛸️ Figure Skating, Team Event
The Team Event kicks off the figure skating program at the Milano Ice Skating Arena, where the eight segments of the competition — short program (men’s, women’s and pairs), free skate (men’s, women’s and pairs), rhythm dance and free dance — will run all weekend before medals are awarded on Sunday (1:30pm, USA) based on cumulative points.
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Who to watch: Team USA are the reigning gold medalists, though the only returning members of that team are married couple Madison Chock and Evan Bates (ice dance). Newcomers include Ilia Malinin, 21, the only skater to ever land a quadruple axel in competition, and Alysa Liu, 20, winner of last year’s world championship.
More medal events: In addition to what’s listed above, there are 10 more medal events this weekend as part of a record 116 total coming in these Olympics.
🎿 Cross-Country Skiing: Women’s Skiathlon (Sat. 7am, NBC); Men’s Skiathlon (Sun. 6:45am, USA) … Athletes race 10km using the classic technique and 10km in freestyle.
⛸️ Speed Skating: Women’s 3000m (Sat. 10am, NBC); Men’s 5000m (Sun. 10am, Peacock) … 7.5 laps around the 400-meter oval for the women, 12.5 laps for the men.
🏂 Snowboarding: Men’s Big Air Final (Sat. 1:30pm, USA); Men’s and Women’s Parallel Giant Slalom Finals (Sun. 7am, USA) … The former is about maximizing hang time to pull off tricks, while the latter is a head-to-head race.
🎯 Biathlon: Mixed 4x6km Relay (Sun. 8am, Peacock) … Each athlete (two men and two women per team) completes three laps around the 2km track.
🛷 Luge: Men’s Singles Final (Sun. 12:30pm, USA) … Racers reach speeds up to 90 mph while riding on their backs.
⛷️ Ski Jumping: Women’s Normal Hill (Sat. 11:45am, Peacock) … Athletes fly roughly 105 meters on this smaller hill compared to 140 meters on the larger hill.
Plus: Mixed Doubles Curling and Women’s Hockey continue their preliminaries, with the U.S. women’s hockey team scheduled to face Finland on Saturday (10:40am, USA), as long as the Finnish team has recovered from its norovirus outbreak by then.
The Super Bowl encourages coaching staffs to empty the clip with staple concepts, gadget plays and tendency breakers. Through my film and data study, I wanted to share some of my favorite wagers and how the game plans of the Patriots and Seahawks can lead to a potential payday. Or at least some personal entertainment.
Darnold is set to become the third QB in NFL history to start a Super Bowl after playing for five-plus teams in his NFL career, and the second to start in a season opener for four-plus teams then later start in a Super Bowl. By Wednesday, Seahawks players and coaches were preaching about his resilience in their sleep, understanding the disbelief surrounding one of the unlikeliest NFL paths in recent years.
Bill Belichick did many great things for the New England Patriots. But when they parted ways, he left the roster in shambles. That’s a big reason why they went 4-13 in 2023 (Belichick’s last season) and also in 2024 (Jerod Mayo’s first). Then they hired Mike Vrabel and showed everyone that you can turn a bad roster into an AFC champion with one aggressive offseason.
From the moment of Bad Bunny’s appointment, Roger Goodell and the league’s owners were stepping into a dispute with a segment of their own fan base. It would instantly be a political lightning rod in a country that has a mountain full of them. The reality is that the NFL doesn’t really know for sure what is going to happen on Sunday. Nor do we as an audience.
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🇺🇸 Olympics trivia
(Matthias Hangst/Getty Images)
Question: Team USA has medaled in every Winter Olympics sport except for one. Which of the following is that sport?
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Despite more than an hour delay for fog, Lindsey Vonn cleared a major hurdle before Sunday’s Olympic women’s downhill with a successful training run in Cortina on Friday, exactly one week after she tore the ACL in her left knee and was airlifted off a mountain in Switzerland.
Completing the training run was not only considered a key test of the knee, it was a requirement if the 41-year old Vonn was going to compete for a fourth Olympic medal 16 years after winning gold in Vancouver. One of Vonn’s three opportunities to complete a training run was eliminated Thursday when officials cancelled it due to heavy snow and dangerous conditions.
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Wearing a brace on her left knee, Vonn navigated the Olympia delle Tofane slope relatively cleanly in 1:40.33 — a time that placed her 11th out of the 43 finishers.
Vonn did not speak after her run, but her coach, Aksel Lund Svindal did.
“She was smart, she didn’t go all in,” Svindal said. “She made a mistake on the bottom, but the rest looked like good skiing. No big risk.
“To me, it looked symmetrical. I didn’t see any differences (between her) right and left (side) and that’s what we were looking for today, so it was good.”
Vonn is on the list of participants for Saturday’s training even though she needed to complete only one to qualify for Sunday’s downhill.
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Asked if he thinks she can compete for a medal — or even win gold on Sunday — Svindal said it’s possible.
“I think she can, because there were reserves today,” he said. “She looks symmetrical. You’ve seen earlier this season, when she skis well, she can win.
“From what I saw today, I think she can. It’s gonna be hard, but she could possibly bring that on Sunday.”
While somewhat unprecedented for an athlete to even attempt competing at an Olympic level with an injury that typically requires reconstructive surgery and a minimum nine-month rehabilitation period, Vonn said in a press conference earlier this week that she had minimal pain and swelling in the knee and that it felt stable. Those assertions were backed up by a training video she posted to Instagram on Thursday showing Vonn progressing through a high-intensity workout that included weighted squats and box jumps.
She posted another social media message before Friday’s run with a smiling selfie and mountains in the background with a caption: “Nothing makes me happier!”
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The successful training run should allay some fears that Vonn was too ambitious in trying to compete at these Winter Games. Though orthopedic experts interviewed by Yahoo Sports stressed that a normal person could not and should not attempt to do what Vonn is doing, Dr. Yair David Kissin of the Hackensack University Medical Center said it was a “great example that every case needs to be individualized.”
He added: “It brings tears to my eyes as a sports medicine ACL doctor, a knee doctor, that she can attain that level of athleticism, of performance, after going through what she’s gone through. Nobody sees the work she put in. You have to respect and appreciate that.”
The fog rolled in roughly midway through the course Friday after just five competitors and only a few minutes before Vonn’s scheduled run, almost eliminating visibility during a key section of the course. Vonn seemed to remain in good spirits through the delay, at one point practicing dances with her American teammates.
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Perhaps no one is more comfortable on this Italian slope than Vonn. It’s where she claimed her first World Cup podium, as well as her 63rd victory, the one that gave her more downhill titles than any woman, ever. In all, she’s won 12 World Cup events at Cortina, and it’s a big reason why she came out of retirement to compete in these Olympic Games.
“I don’t think I would have tried this comeback if the Olympics weren’t in Cortina,” Vonn said prior to these Olympics. “If it had been anywhere else, I would probably say it’s not worth it. But for me, there’s something special about Cortina that always pulls me back, and it’s pulled me back one last time.”
The United States mixed doubles curling team of Cory Thiesse and Korey Dropkin are 4-0 after two days of competition at the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics following wins over Canada and Czechia on Friday.
After going behind 1-0 after the first end, the U.S. scored three points over the next two ends for a 3-1 lead. That advantage would quickly dissipate after the Canadians earned two points in the fourth end to even the score.
The teams would exchange points in the fifth and sixth ends, but the U.S. would go ahead for good in the seventh end after Dropkin scored three points for a 7-4 lead. Knowing what they needed to do to preserve the lead, the American team played defense with Gallant and Peterman only able to muster a single point as rapper Snoop Dogg watched in the crowd sitting next to Dropkin’s mom, Shelley.
Rapper Snoop Dogg was in attendance for the U.S. mixed doubles matches on Friday. (Photo by Andrew Milligan/PA Images via Getty Images)
(Andrew Milligan – PA Images via Getty Images)
“We kind of spotted him halfway through the game and saw his jacket that we were on, which was awesome,” Thiesse said afterward, via The Athletic. “Yeah, just so cool to be able to meet him and to have him here, supporting us.”
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“He had his arm around my mom,” said Dropkin. “Like, get out of here. This is wild. I think coach mum was helping Snoop out, telling him all about curling.”
A few hours later, the U.S. had a much easier time in their second match of the day dispatching Czechia 8-1.
Vít Chabičovský and Julie Zelingrová had no answers for Thiesse and Dropkin as the U.S. built a 4-0 lead after two ends and didn’t falter the rest of the match. The U.S. added four more points before the Czechs conceded following the sixth end.
The 4-0 start by Thiesse and Dropkin the best at an Olympics among any U.S. men’s, women’s or mixed doubles curling team since the sport was added in 1998.
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The four victories surpasses the total that previous U.S. mixed doubles teams picked up in each of the previous two Olympics. Rebecca Hamilton and Matt Hamilton went 2-5 in 2018 and Vicky Persinger and Chris Plys finished 3-6 in 2022. Neither of those teams advanced to the playoffs.
Well, guess what? The Patriots are back in the Super Bowl. And it is possible this isn’t their last one of this era.
The Patriots will play the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl LX. They went 14-3 with an MVP-level quarterback in Drake Maye, who is in just his second season, and an NFL Coach of the Year in Mike Vrabel. And they have a lot of young players all around the roster, including a heavy dose of rookies contributing.
“We want to start our own dynasty,” Patriots cornerback Marcus Jones said this week. “We’re part of an organization that had one for a minute. But there are different guys on the field, and different faces in the building.”
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Another Patriots dynasty? Everyone just got over the last one.
“We’re taking it one game at a time, and we’re glad to be here,” Jones said. “But the journey isn’t over.”
Patriots back in the Super Bowl
The uniforms are the same, Robert Kraft still owns the team, Josh McDaniels is back in the Super Bowl as the team’s offensive coordinator, but this is mostly an entirely new Patriots era. Not one player who played in the Patriots’ most recent Super Bowl, which was seven years ago, is on the current roster.
That’s because the roster had to be turned over. It was in disrepair at the end of the Belichick era, and then New England had a great offseason with a top free-agent haul and also a fantastic draft class. Many of the free agents who were signed were still at an age in which they can be factors for more than one year, like 26-year-old defensive tackle Milton Williams.
New England had the 11th-youngest roster in the NFL as the regular season started, according to Philly Voice, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. The Patriots had a lot of rookies play significant roles this season. Among all NFL teams, they had the second-most games played by rookies this past season, at 174, according to NFL researcher Tony Holzman-Escareno. Rookies Will Campbell and Jared Wilson will make history as the first duo of rookies to start on the same offensive line in a Super Bowl. And the contributions of the rookie class doesn’t count Maye, who will be the second-youngest quarterback to ever start a Super Bowl. Only Dan Marino was younger.
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The foundation of the roster is very young. In other words, this doesn’t seem to be a one-year anomaly.
“We’ve got a lot of young, hungry talent,” said defensive tackle Christian Barmore, who at age 26 is another big contributor to New England’s success. “Hungry is a dangerous word because the guys want to win. I see a lot of guys, looking them in the eye, that want to win.”
Just because a young team makes a Super Bowl doesn’t mean another is guaranteed. Most Super Bowl teams don’t make it back within a few years. Think back to what we were saying about the Philadelphia Eagles about a year ago.
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There will be factors working against the Patriots. They played the NFL’s easiest schedule, and that will get harder. The Buffalo Bills are still a very good team in the AFC East. Any number of factors could push the Patriots off the tracks. It happens all the time.
But a franchise that became synonymous with domination this century is in really good shape for the next few years, at least. It’s a team that is used to winning by now.
“As far as being with the Patriots, I understood the standard the second I signed here,” Patriots outside linebacker K’Lavon Chaisson said. “Just being across the building, seeing the Super Bowl rings and monumental moments on the wall, and the great guys that still come back in the building and speak to us and express their experience being a part of the Patriots, I knew the standard and we expected nothing less going through the journey.”
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Maye’s ascension doesn’t seem to be a fluke, and he will keep the Patriots’ window open for a while. The Patriots are coming off a fantastic offseason under the combination of Vrabel and executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf, and New England is in pretty good cap position for another offseason. That’s what happens when you have an elite quarterback on a rookie deal.
Just as soon as the Patriots fell close to the bottom of the NFL, they rose back up again.
“I said, one day it’s going to be better,” said Barmore, who was drafted by the Patriots in 2021. “And that moment is here.”
No team took a bigger step forward than the Chicago Bears in 2025. Going into this season, the Bears had made the playoffs just three times since making the Super Bowl back in 2006. In 2024, Chicago finished 5-12 in another lost season, firing head coach Matt Eberflus during QB Caleb Williams’ first NFL season. The franchise had reached a low point.
But the team made a huge 180 turn in 2025, bringing in Ben Johnson as head coach, shoring up the offensive line and adding multiple weapons on offense in the form of TE Colston Loveland and WR Luther Burden III. That, coupled with an improving Williams, plus second-year WR Rome Odunze and a solid running game featuring D’Andre Swift and rookie Kyle Monangai, and the Bears had everything they needed to be successful. And they were.
The Bears won 11 games and the NFC North division title, winning a playoff game for the first time since 2010. So, now that we have that blueprint, which team/offense will rise to the occasion in 2026 and also be more relevant in fantasy? Matt Harmon was joined by Adam Rank of NFL.com on a recent episode of the Yahoo Fantasy Forecast to discuss which unit could make a similar jump next season.
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The analysts start by looking at the bottom-10 offenses in EPA per play (expected points added) in the NFL from 2025. Rank immediately views this as cheating and goes right for the Los Angeles Chargers, who finished 10th. The Chargers just brought in Mike McDaniel as the new offensive coordinator. L.A. also has a great offense already in place, led by QB Justin Herbert with WRs Ladd McConkey and Quentin Johnston, plus RB Omarion Hampton.
The New Orleans Saints are the other team that sticks out for Rank. Head coach Kellen Moore was able to do “so much with so little” this past season. If New Orleans’ offseason looks anything like what the Bears did this past offseason and go “all-in” on offense, the Saints have an easy path to success in a weak NFC South division.
Harmon agrees with Rank, stating the correct answer is the Chargers in this exercise with McDaniel coming in. Harmon was also surprised by Saints rookie QB Tyler Shough this season after being a skeptic. The ceiling for the Saints offense is also high, given how they looked with the lack of weapons in 2025.
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New Orleans has WR Chris Olave, who had a great season with 100 catches for 1,163 yards and nine touchdowns. The Saints also have a top-10 pick in the 2026 NFL Draft, which Harmon believes they could use to draft Ohio State WR Carnell Tate.
Martinez, 77, began as a color analyst for the team in 1987 after his 17-year playing career ended. He ended up managing the Blue Jays in 2001 and 2002 before joining the Baltimore Orioles’ television booth from 2003 to 2009 and then returning to Toronto in 2010.
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In a statement, Martinez said that following the 2025 World Series, he made the decision to walk away following conversations with his wife, saying, “It was time for me to step out of the booth and enjoy the years ahead.”
It has been a fantastic journey with Sportsnet, the Blue Jays and the wonderful Blue Jays fans all over the world. Thank you all for embracing me and welcoming my family and me in a way that has made us feel like we are part of yours. I will dearly miss my working partners, the leadership at Rogers, and the Toronto Blue Jays baseball club, all of whom made it so much fun to be at the ballpark talking about the game I’ve loved for my whole life. As to the fans specifically, I will miss the “selfies,” the handshakes and the welcoming smiles. I will never forget any of those, nor the unwavering support and generosity, which has meant more than words can say. I look forward to continuing to root for the Blue Jays along with you, and you’ll always be in my heart. My sincere appreciation to all of you.
I had hoped to be part of the 50th year of the Toronto Blue Jays, but it’s time to pass the torch. Enjoy 2026 and beyond, I will see you down the road.
With the utmost gratitude and respect,
As a player, Martinez began his MLB career with the Kansas City Royals in 1969. After eight seasons, Martinez was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers and remained with the team through the 1980 season. Early in the 1981 season, he was dealt to Toronto, where he would stay until retiring in 1986.
Justin Boone is a two-time winner of the FantasyPros Most Accurate Expert Award (2019, 2025) and has nine top-10 finishes in the competition.
Once per month, he’ll be updating his dynasty trade value charts in this space, while providing insights when major moves happen.
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These charts are based on 12-team PPR leagues and should be used as a guide to compare players and build trade offers. So bookmark this page and check back whenever you’re working on your dynasty rosters.
And be sure to follow the links below to see his latest dynasty rankings and values at every position.
Schwartz is not free to move on to another job for the 2026 season, however, as he remains under contract with the Browns because he resigned and was not fired. According to The Athletic’s Dianna Russini, he’s expected to sit out the season.
The 59-year-old Schwartz was hired as defensive coordinator in 2023 and developed a top-five unit in the NFL. The Browns’ defense this past season, which featured five-time All-Pro and single-season sack record-holder Myles Garrett and NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year Carson Schwesinger, allowed the fourth-fewest total yards per game (283.6) and had the third-best pass defense with 167.2 yards allowed per game.
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His success made him a strong candidate to replace the fired Kevin Stefanski. But the team decided to hire former Baltimore Ravens offensive coordinator Todd Monken instead. That reportedly upset Schwartz to the point where he was looking to move on from the organization.
During his introductory news conference this week, Monken praised Schwartz’s job with the Browns’ defense, but declined to comment on his possible return.
“First of all, I think Jim is an outstanding defensive coordinator — I think we all would agree with that,” Monken said. “But I think it’s a little inappropriate for me to comment about that at this time.”
