Author: rb809rb

The amount of players testing and actually doing physical activities at the NFL scouting combine has dwindled in recent years as prospects have attempted to put their best foot forward at the friendly confines of their college pro days and/or private workouts, or they’ve opted out altogether. Even among players who do test, there’s a decreasing amount of them opting in for every type of on-field drill.

This isn’t me being an old man yelling at clouds. It’s just what is happening and something I completely understand from a player’s perspective as they attempt to rein in some control of the biggest job interviews of their lives. The off-field process, which includes the literal interview portion, carries a good deal of weight as potential (and hopefully fruitful) marriages between player and franchise start to form. The NFL scouting combine has always been as much about the player-team interviews and medical testing as it has been about the on-field spectacle that has now become a prime-time event with actual live crowds.

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This class has a lot more good than great in it, and it also has a real lack of consensus among talent evaluators at just about every position. Even the ones with solidified first options, like quarterback and running back, there are plenty of arguments to be made about how the rest of their positions stack up behind them. As the NFL roadshow moves to Indianapolis for this year’s combine and draft season starts ramping up, here are a handful of players whose results I’m keeping an eye on. And that applies whether those results are with their on-field testing, medical testing, or teams making them take character tests about whether they are a cat, dog or reptile person.

Monroe Freeling, OT, Georgia

Freeling was on the fence of declaring for this year’s draft, but after the combine wraps up, he might be feeling giddy that he decided to throw his hat into the ring. Freeling’s film in the second half of the season had him shooting up draft boards, including my own. He’s a great athlete, at 6-foot-7, with a large frame that hints at his basketball-playing background. It’s a frame that he still has room to continue to grow into, too. Freeling’s strength and ability to anchor against stronger pass rushers greatly improved as the 2025 season wore on, all while he was still able to nimbly move to the second level or as a puller in space. His balance is a strong point of his game. In a wide-open offensive tackle class that has plenty of interesting names (including another one in a moment), Freeling has been labeled a project by some, but his film is much stronger than that. He has a chance to vault himself to the top of some boards with a strong display of athletic testing and during team interviews. I’m already leaning that way as it is.

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Max Iheanachor, OT, Arizona State

I had to cut myself off at just two offensive linemen because everyone should be watching this whole class, including the Utah duo of Caleb Lomu and Spencer Fano, both of whom could help themselves by showing weight gains. But both are as athletic as they’ve displayed on film (I still prefer Lomu). Kadyn Proctor is a massive tackle prospect out of Alabama, with the typically associated positives (strength and overwhelming defenders in the run game) and negatives (size limits his ability in pass protection against speedier pass rushers) for being so big. He can help himself just by having a good showing at weigh-ins.

Iheanachor is a tackle who was a JUCO transfer and a late comer to football. He had a great week of practices in Mobile at this year’s Senior Bowl, and his film is more polished than you’d assume for a player who can easily get labeled as a faraway project. He has great size with real length and flashes like an explosive athlete. I’m already viewing him as a top-30 player, and if he has a strong week of testing to back up his rise over the past several months, then his stock could keep rising.

Any tight end or running back?

Look for a big week from anybody at this position. Evaluators are all over the place about who are the second-best players at these respective positions. I’m personally interested in seeing how Georgia tight end Oscar Delp and Washington running back Jonah Coleman measure in and test (again, if they do test).

Denzel Boston, WR, Washington

I’m a fan of Boston, a big receiver who has the size and catching range of a player who can consistently win in isolated situations at the next level. If he runs well (or at all) at the combine, he can help dispel any concerns about his speed and overall athleticism.

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Makai Lemon, WR, USC

Lemon is a demon from the slot who has question marks on his size and just how consistently he can align and win from the outside at the next level. Lemon shows off plenty of twitch and can play much bigger than his size at the catch point. But how he measures in terms of height, weight and arm length will do as much to solidify his stock as anything else he does on the field.

Mansoor Delane, CB, LSU

Cornerback is yet another position without a real consensus at this point in time, but Delane has done nothing but help his stock in 2025. Delane shows off a strong football IQ and understanding for concepts that he had to guard against, especially when passing things off in zone and playing high-low situations. Delane’s main question marks are more physical. He plays with loose hips and gets near the ball constantly, but just how big and athletic he is are the main hang-ups from cementing his place at the top of his position stack. If he goes off in Indianapolis, or at least has a strong showing, Delane could keep rising into the top 10.

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Keldric Faulk, Edge, Auburn

Faulk sat atop my midseason big board, but I’ve cooled a little since then as he didn’t quite make the leap I thought he might over the last month of the 2025 season. I haven’t cooled that much, though! And a monster week at the combine will help his case (and my bullishness) on Faulk’s combination of youth, length and overall athleticism. He projects as a plus run defender with a developing pass rush game, and he has some positional and scheme versatility as a bonus. If he measures well and tests like an upper-echelon athlete, teams will stay glass-half-full about how Faulk can develop at the next level.

Jermod McCoy, CB, Tennessee

McCoy has been battling to be the first cornerback selected despite not playing a game in over a year. That’s just how toolsy the tools that he flashed in 2024 were in his last season of playing. If McCoy can help assure teams that his knee is A-OK after an ACL injury in January 2025, he could keep his name high on boards. McCoy is supremely talented, but his stock has, and will be, fascinating to keep track of.

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Defensive tackles, in general

There are heaps of generously portioned defensive prospects for NFL teams to pick in this year’s draft. It’s a good year to need an interior defensive lineman, especially in the back half of the first round and into Day 2. There are a few different flavors — from maulers to run pluggers to oversized gap shooters — that can all show off something this coming week to get tabbed as the guy to help be a linchpin for defenses that are moving to more top-down play and lighter boxes, thus needing more beef up front. Prospects like Clemson’s Peter Woods, Ohio State’s Kayden McDonald, Texas Tech’s Lee Hunter, Georgia’s Christen Miller, Florida’s Caleb Banks, Iowa State’s Domonique Orange and Florida State’s Darrell Jackson Jr. can help separate themselves with big weeks.

MILAN — Hilary Knight felt the responsibility to speak up.

The previously unbeaten, unchallenged  U.S. women’s hockey team was facing real game pressure for the first time at these Olympics, down a goal and running low on time with just one period left in Thursday’s gold-medal match.

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“Who’s going to be the hero?” the 36-year-old American captain said. “We need a hero. There’s a hero in this room.”

Turns out Knight was wrong about one thing . There wasn’t one hero in the U.S. locker room. There was two.

The U.S. doesn’t take gold and glory without Knight giving her team new life with a tying goal with just over two minutes left in regulation, nor without Megan Keller juking a Canadian defender out of her skates to set up the winning goal four minutes into overtime. Those are the plays that made possible a 2-1 gold-medal-clinching, come-from-behind U.S. win. Those are the plays that will live on in U.S. women’s hockey lore long after the American victory celebration comes to an end.

America’s star-spangled comeback started with a third-period faceoff in the attacking zone after coach John Wroblewski pulled his goalie with just over two minutes to go. When the puck went to defender Laila Edwards at the point, Knight thought to herself, “I better get to the front of the net. She’s going to rip that puck.”

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That quick thinking allowed Knight to redirect Edwards’ rocket past Canadian goaltender Ann-Renee Desbiens. Knight’s goal was the 15th of her career in the Olympics and broke the American record held by Natalie Darwitz and Katie King, not that she cared about that whatsoever when the puck hit the back of the net.

“I was thinking we’re going to win the game,” said Knight, who has said that this will be her final Olympics. “It was just that simple.

“You never want to run out of time, especially with a great team, so when that goal went in, I was like here we go, this is ours.”

Knight’s goal certainly galvanized the Americans, but it didn’t crush Canadian spirits. For the first 57-plus minutes of Thursday’s game, underdog Canada had taken the fight to an U.S. team that had won seven straight games in the rivalry. The Canadians had, in the words of captain Marie-Philip Poulin, played “in-your-face, relentless hockey.” So they saw no reason they couldn’t win in overtime, even if Knight had ripped away victory in regulation.

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“You live for those moments,” Poulin said. “I was excited. It would have been a hell of a story.”

The story turned in favor of the Americans four minutes into a frantic 3-versus-3 overtime. It started with Taylor Heise sending a length-of-the-ice pass to a streaking Keller.

“Meg was flying up the ice calling for the puck and I kind of wanted a change, so I chucked it up to her,” Heise said.

Keller took care of the rest. First she put a move so filthy on Canada’s Claire Thompson that it didn’t seem like it should be possible on ice. Then she didn’t waste her chance 1-on-1 with Desbiens, lashing the puck through the legs of the Canadian goaltender to secure an imperfect but resilient American victory.

“Honestly, we talked about it going into overtime, playing to win rather than playing not to lose,” Keller said. “I think a lot of times you get a little nervous trying to make a move, but I thought, ‘Why not?’ Let’s take a chance here and try to get to the net.”

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A come-from-behind victory over their bitter rivals bolsters this talented American roster’s case as the best women’s hockey team their country has ever produced. The U.S. had flattened everything in its path before the gold-medal match, outscoring its first six opponents 31-1 and not giving up a goal for 16 consecutive periods.

The only goal the U.S. surrendered before Thursday was a flukey one in its opening game of group play. Czechia’s Barbora Jurickova emerged from the penalty box at the exact same moment the U.S. coughed up possession of the puck, leading to a breakaway goal.

“I just think we cemented ourselves as one of the best U.S. teams in history,” Heise said.

She wasn’t alone in that sentiment

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“This is the best U.S. team I’ve ever been part of,” Knight said.

For decades, the hierarchy at the top of women’s hockey has been Canada, the U.S. and then everyone else. One of the North American powers has captured gold at every Olympics to feature women’s hockey and every world championships. With few exceptions, the rest of the world has essentially battled it out for third place.

Canada entered Thursday having won five of seven Olympic golds, but the U.S. has enjoyed the upper hand in the rivalry recently. First, the Americans edged the Canadians in overtime in the gold-medal match at last year’s world championships. Then they convincingly swept four Rivalry Series matchups earlier this winter. Then, in the final game of group play in Milan, they inflicted the worst beatdown on the Canadians in their brilliant Olympic history.

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The lingering question coming out of that 5-0 U.S. blowout was how much the score was a product of the absence of Poulin. Was the gap between the best two teams in the world really that wide? Or might the Canadians have been more competitive if they had the superstar who scored the game-winning goal in three previous Olympic gold-medal matches?

Maybe it was the return of Poulin. Maybe it was Canadian pride and urgency. Whatever the reason, Thursday’s gold-medal match looked nothing like the one-sided previous matchup.

Hungrier and more aggressive from the start, Canada scored first and put the favored Americans on their heels. The message to the U.S. was clear: This was not going to be another walkover.

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“Honestly, we played exactly how we wanted to,” defender Erin Ambrose said. “We kept them to the outside, we put pucks deep, we took care of the puck. Our goalie made big saves when we needed her to. We played a pretty darn good hockey game.”

That’s what made the final result so hard to stomach for the teary-eyed Canadians after the game.

They were in position to win for all but two minutes of regulation, until Knight struck. And so did Keller. And the gold belonged to the Americans.

Joe Gibbs Racing has filed a lawsuit against former competition director and crew chief Chris Gabehart, alleging that Gabehart attempted to “steal JGR’s most sensitive information” and take it to Spire Motorsports to be the team’s chief motorsports officer.

According to the suit, Gabehart had information from Joe Gibbs Racing like “comprehensive post-race audit and analyses of team and driver performance for the 2025 season,” “complete payroll details, including job titles, contract length, annual compensation, incentive compensation, and compensation plans for prior years,” sponsor revenue and the team’s pit crew analytics from the 2024 season on his personal phone and Google Photos account.

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Additionally, the team says Gabehart had a “Spire” folder on his work computer with proprietary JGR information about how the team operates and how it creates setups. JGR is asking for $8 million in damages along with attorney fees.

Gabehart was the team’s Cup Series competition director in 2025 after serving as Denny Hamlin’s crew chief for the previous six seasons. Hamlin won 22 races with Gabehart atop the pit box and made NASCAR’s title race in three of those six seasons. Before working with Hamlin in the Cup Series, Gabehart crew chiefed in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series for the team.

Per the suit, the team parted ways with Gabehart after he asked for more control over the team’s racing decisions. When JGR said no, the parties began working on a separation agreement. After Gabehart left, the team did a routine analysis of his computer and found the folder marked with Spire’s name. The team says Gabehart saved the information on Nov. 7, the day after his meeting with team owner Joe Gibbs.

Spire has been a Cup Series team since the 2019 season and expanded to three cars in 2024. It is fielding cars for Michael McDowell, Carson Hocevar and Daniel Suarez in 2026.

MILAN — As she skated around the Assago Ice Skating Arena rink, moments before the most important routine of her life, Alysa Liu caught sight of her teammate Amber Glenn near the kiss-and-cry couch. Glenn, devastated after Tuesday night’s program, had skated a spectacular routine of her own nearly two hours before. As Liu drew close, she gave Glenn a congratulatory thumbs-up.

“What are you doing?” an exasperated Glenn replied. “Go skate!”

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So Alysa Liu did. And she won herself a gold medal, smiling all the way.

There are no record books to measure such things, but it’s entirely possible that no Olympian has ever smiled as much as Liu did on Thursday night, executing a brilliant, virtually flawless free skate that vaulted her from third place into first. She smiled when she stepped onto the ice, she smiled when she spotted Glenn, she smiled through her lutzes and loops and salchows, she smiled when she pointed her left finger to the sky to close out her routine. And she smiled — and giggled a triumphant laugh — when she skated right up to the rinkside camera and bellowed, “That’s what I’m f***ing talking about!”

That is the entire breadth of the Alysa Liu experience — giddiness, confidence, joy, serenity — and gold-medal-winning talent. At an Olympics where so many others have crumbled under the pressure, she literally laughed in pressure’s face.

“She’s not like us,” her coach Phillip DiGuglielmo said, beaming in the afterglow of her victory. “The rest of us here would be like, ‘Oh my God, I’m nervous. I can’t do this. I have a million voices in my head.’ She has one voice in her head and it says, ‘I got this.’”

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“The feelings I felt out there were calm, happy, confident,” she said after coming off the ice, drawing out pauses between each word. “Of course I had fun. But I’ve been having fun all the time.”

Her story remains a remarkable one: a champion at the intermediate, junior and national levels from 2016-20, she made the 2022 Olympic team … and then decided she was done with skating. Completely, thoroughly, slam-the-door done. She enrolled in classes at UCLA, she spent time with friends, she traveled the world … all parts of a normal life denied to competitive figure skaters.

Somewhere along the line, though, she decided to come back to skating, decided that this was the way she could best express her abundance of ideas, in fields far from the ice. Get her started talking about music or fashion or choreography, and she’s likely to spiral off in giddy delight about her latest inspiration or creation.

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“I think I have a beautiful life story, and I feel really lucky,” Liu said. “I’m glad that a lot of people are now watching me so I can show them everything I’ve come up with in my brain.”

Liu rediscovered a love of skating, and skating loved her back. In short order, she rose from retirement to world champion to, now, Olympic gold medalist — the first American woman to win an individual gold medal since 2002.

“I 100 percent believe that if she had not stepped away, she would not be here right now,” DiGuglielmo said. “Giving her that break — not just stepping away, she shut the door — her body got healthier, her mind …. was sparked, all those things that make you into the person you are.”

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What’s most remarkable about Liu is this: for an Olympian, she’s remarkably unfazed by the Olympics themselves. She visualizes something larger, something beyond the Olympic stage, which is truly an achievement given that she’s still 20.

“I don’t need this,” she said, holding up her gold medal. “What I needed was the stage. And I got that. So I was all good, no matter what happened. If I fell on every jump,” she said smiling, “I would still be wearing this dress.”

Someday, a few more Winter Olympics down the line, we might look back on Alysa Liu’s 2026 performance as the start of a revitalization of interest in the sport of figure skating, the way Dorothy Hamill inspired thousands of young skaters after her 1976 gold. And even if not, we’ll still have this one true memory of one perfect night on the ice.

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“When you enjoy doing something, you can excel at it,” DiGuglielmo said. “She can really show that you can do what you love, do it really well, and win the Olympics.”

Her medal around her neck, her skates swapped for sneakers, Liu paused for a thought. “I felt so connected with the audience,” she said, and then laughed. “Oh! I want to be out there again!”

MILAN — Alysa Liu carried the flag of the “Blade Angels” into Thursday night’s free skate all the way to the top of the podium.

Ranked third after the women’s Olympic short program, Liu was one of the final three skaters on Thursday. Skating to Donna Summer’s “MacArthur Park,” she was exuberant, graceful, smiling all the way in a confident performance.

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When her total score landed — 226.79, good enough for first place with two skaters left to go — she leaped off the kiss-and-cry couch, made a heart with her hands, and mouthed “I love y’all!” to the crowd.

Only two Japanese skaters remained between Liu and gold. Kaori Sakamoto followed with a solid, but less-than-perfect routine that was not enough to surpass Liu. Then came Ami Nakai, whose short skate was more than two points higher than Liu’s. A clean routine and the gold would be hers. It wasn’t; she had a minor hiccup midway through.

A tense moment awaited as the judges tallied their scores. And when they did, Liu was on top — edging Sakamoto by 1.89 points. Nakai, just 17, took the bronze.

American Amber Glenn rallied from a disappointing short program to finish fifth, while Isabeau Levito finished 12th.

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Liu, 20, earned the first individual Olympic medal for an American woman since Sasha Cohen’s silver in 2006 — the first gold medal winner since Sarah Hughes in 2002. And she did so with a smile, marking a triumph and return to glory for American women’s skating.

“The feelings I felt out there were calm, happy, confident,” she said after coming off the ice, drawing out pauses between each word. “Of course I had fun. But I’ve been having fun all the time.”

Liu’s story is as quirky as it is remarkable. The U.S. national champion in 2019 and 2020 and a 2022 Olympian, Liu decided after the Beijing Olympics that she’d simply had enough of skating. She retired, pursuing the kind of life an Olympic figure skater simply can’t have: college, hanging out with friends, traveling. She even journeyed all the way to Mount Everest Base Camp with a friend, a long way from the rink.

But something nagged at her to return, and two years ago, she decided to give skating another opportunity. She succeeded beyond all expectation, skating well enough to win the world championships last year.

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“She’s not like us,” her coach Phillip DiGuglielmo said after her victory. “The rest of us here would be like, ‘Oh my God, I’m nervous. I can’t do this. I have a million voices in my head.’ She has one voice in her head and it says, ‘I got this.’”

Along with Glenn and Levito, Liu has formed the “Blade Angels,” the talented Team USA trio that’s captured the hearts of skating fans and the promotional eye of NBC. Skating observers predicted that they could engineer a medal sweep in Milan; while that didn’t happen, the Blade Angels have (mostly) enjoyed their time in Milan.

Earlier in the night, Glenn skated a redemptive program, making up for her struggles two nights earlier. Thirteenth after the short program, Glenn rallied to miss the podium by just 4.25 points.

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“Going from 13th to the podium is unheard of, so I wasn’t exactly expecting it,” Glenn said. “And even if I had been completely perfect today, it still wouldn’t have been enough.”

A few skaters later, Levito suffered a fall during her routine and ended with a score of 202.80, ending her medal hopes.

“I do my best when I think less when it comes to skating. The majority of it is mental,” Levito said afterward, her voice soft, a gentle smile on her face. “I kind of just went on autopilot (after the fall) because in training I just go, go, go a lot of repetitions. I do my best when I’m thinking less.”

The stage, ultimately, was set for Liu. A month ago, at U.S. Nationals, she posted a 147.80 in her free skate. Thursday, she needed to be better than that to win gold. She was, scoring 150.20 — nearly three points better than everyone else.

And now she’s joined the elite club of just seven other American women figure skaters to win gold at the Olympics.

The United States had a banner day at the Milan Cortina Olympics on Thursday. The U.S. women’s hockey team won its third-ever gold medal. Alysa Liu dazzled on ice to deliver Team USA a drought-ending gold in figure skating women’s singles. Speedskating icon Jordan Stolz added some more hardware, too.

Here are five of the top stories from Day 13 of the Winter Games:

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Megan Keller scores in overtime to give Team USA the gold

After a dominant tournament, the U.S. women’s hockey team faced its toughest test yet Thursday. Canada nearly pulled off the upset, but Hilary Knight’s record-setting goal tied things up with 2:04 to play.

The gold-medal game went into overtime, and that’s when Megan Keller made the play of her career. Keller received a pass deep in Canada territory, juked her defender and just barely snuck the puck by Canada’s goaltender, Ann-Renee Desbiens, to give Team USA a 2-1 walk-off win.

Alysa Liu is golden, and Amber Glenn’s free-skate redemption slingshotted her to a fifth-place finish

The “Blade Angels” put on a show Thursday during the free-skate portion of figure skating women’s singles. Liu headlined that act with an awe-inspiring performance to Donna Summer’s “MacArthur Park.” After registering the third-best short-program score on Tuesday, her 150.2-point free skate thrust the 20-year-old, two-time Olympian into first place and clinched the U.S.’ first medal in the women’s individual event in 20 years.

That medal turned out to be gold. Liu became the first American woman to top the figure skating singles podium since Sarah Hughes in 2002.

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Meanwhile, her teammate, Amber Glenn, bounced back from what she described as a “soul-crushing” short program to finish fifth, thanks to a redemptive free skate that saw her land another triple axel.

Although 18-year-old Isabeau Levito fell on a triple flip to start her free skate, she regained focus and the grace that got her to that moment, ultimately finishing 12th in the event.

Jordan Stolz takes silver in men’s 1,500 meters

The 21-year-old Stolz was seeking his third speedskating gold medal of the Olympics but fell short in the 1,500, finishing 0.77 behind China’s Ning Zhongyan, who set the Olympic record with a time of 1:41.98. Stolz came away with a silver, missing out on his chance to become the first athlete in 46 years to complete speedskating’s sprint treble at an Olympics.

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Stolz won earlier in these Games with gold-medal performances in the 500 meters and 1,000 meters. He has one final chance at a third gold, as he’s set to take part in Saturday’s mass start event.

U.S. women’s curling advances to semifinals on clutch shot

U.S. women’s curling nearly faltered against Switzerland with a trip to the semifinals on the line. Switzerland took three points in the 10th end, tying things up and sending the game to an extra end.

But Team USA held a massive advantage in that end, the hammer. And the Americans needed it to secure a narrow 7-6 win over Switzerland.

With Switzerland clogging up the house, Team USA’s Tabitha Peterson guided a clutch hammer just past those stones. She managed to put just enough force on the stone, allowing it to settle in the house just itches closer to the button than Switzerland’s stones.

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It was a walk-off victory for Team USA, which will play in the medal round at the Olympics for the first time since 2002.

Spain wins gold medal in Winter Games for first time in 54 years … in ski mountaineering

Spain went more than half a century without winning a gold medal in the Winter Games. It ended the dry spell on Thursday in an event that’s new to the Olympics: ski mountaineering.

Oriol Cardona Coll won gold in the men’s sprint. Ana Alonso Rodriguez, also representing Spain, earned bronze in the women’s sprint.

Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wolken was on site for the spectacle in Bormio, Italy, and chronicled what he saw, heard and learned about a sport that finally received Olympic validation.

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Highlight of the day

Megan Keller is a defenseman. But she looked like a forward late in Thursday’s gold-medal game against Team Canada. Not only did the former Boston College standout assist Hilary Knight’s goal that forced overtime, but she also lit the lamp in OT with a move that dropped jaws.

Keller had the puck on a string, as she deftly directed it past the front skate of Canada defenseman Claire Thompson before tracking it down and scoring a game-winner that’s now part of U.S. hockey lore.

One more thing

Maybe maturing is leaving a sibling rivalry in the past. In an act of self-awareness and humor, Kate Gray’s brothers proudly revealed the back of their sweatshirts on Thursday after Gray advanced to the women’s freeski halfpipe final.

Gray was greeted by the words “My sister is more athletic than me” in all caps on their backs.

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Bravo, boys. Bravo.

he Milwaukee Brewers are signing manager Pat Murphy to a three-year contract, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reports. The deal is a new contract, not an extension, because it reworks the final year on Murphy’s previous agreement, according to Rosenthal.

Murphy’s contract was set to expire after the 2026 season, but he is now signed through 2028, with a club option for 2029. The agreement will include $8.95 million of new money and make Murphy one of the highest paid managers in Major League Baseball, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reports.

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Murphy, 67, earned National League Manager of the Year honors the past two seasons, in which the Brewers won 93 and 97 games and two NL Central titles. He’s the only manager besides Bobby Cox (2004-05 with the Atlanta Braves) to win Manager of the Year in consecutive seasons.

[Get more Brewers news: Milwaukee team feed]

Milwaukee’s 97-65 record last season was the best in MLB, despite the team being 6.5 games out of first place on May 25. But a second-half surge (41-25) boosted the Brewers to another division title. Milwaukee went on to lose to the eventual World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Championship Series.

With Murphy’s contract up after after the coming season, Brewers team owner Mark Attanasio was asked earlier this week about a new deal for the manager. He evaded the issue, saying “we don’t talk about contracts,” but apparently the team and manager had a new agreement in the works.

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Murphy also avoided the topic of a new contract when asked about it before spring training.

Prior to being named manager, Murphy was Craig Counsell’s bench coach in Milwaukee for eight seasons. He was promoted when Counsell left to become the manager of the Chicago Cubs. The Brewers defeated the Cubs in the NLDS last season.

In his two seasons as Brewers manager, Murphy has compiled a 190-134 record. He recorded a 42-54 record as interim manager for the San Diego Padres in 2015, when he took over after Bud Black was fired.

LOS ANGELES — The first three holes Thursday looked miserable for Rory McIlroy.

But roughly eight hours after he first teed off, McIlroy didn’t hesitate.

“The rain,” McIlroy said instantly when asked which part of the round he preferred. The second stretch, though completely dry, was surprisingly much more difficult.

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Whether it was the uncharacteristic rain that battered players in the morning and sent the event into a three-hour delay, or the 20-plus mph wind gusts that whipped through Riviera Country Club, McIlroy appeared to handle both with very little issue.

He posted a 5-under 66 to open the Genesis Invitational, which gave him a share of the lead as he hit the clubhouse. Aaron Rai eventually passed him with a birdie late Thursday right before play was suspended for the day due to darkness.

“I’ve started to just really enjoy this style of golf,” McIlroy said. “If you had asked me 10 years ago, I didn’t enjoy these conditions, but it’s been a shift in a mindset and maybe just a continuation of trying to build upon the skill set that I have. Then, when it does get to conditions like this, I’m a lot more prepared.

“I wouldn’t say I enjoy them, but I can certainly handle them better.”

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McIlroy birdied twice in his first three holes before the rain delay hit, and then he birdied his first one out of the break, seemingly unbothered by the hours-long gap in his round. He easily saved his par plenty of times when things could have fallen apart on him, like when he had to chip from the putting surface at No. 6, and he spun it back close enough for an easy par.

McIlroy nearly went bogey-free Thursday. He slipped at the par-3 16th when he pulled his tee shot well left and short of the green. That was perhaps the one time all day when he looked frustrated as he slammed the top of his iron onto the small, white toy Genesis car serving as the tee marker twice on his way off the box.

But McIlroy birdied the short par-5 17th right afterward to make up for it to get back into a share of the lead before walking off the course for good.

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Rai, who has won once on Tour in his career, got to 6-under for the day and made back-to-back birdies before play ended through 16 holes. He’ll have two holes to complete Friday before starting the second round. Jacob Bridgeman, in his first round at the Genesis Invitational, joined McIlroy at 5-under.

Scottie Scheffler, uncharacteristically, struggled. The top-ranked golfer in the world made two bogeys and a double to make the turn at 4-over, and he bogeyed the 10th before his round was called. His 5-over mark put him in a tie for last on the leaderboard.

The rough conditions Thursday appear to be a one-day issue. The rain will be gone the rest of the weekend, according to forecasts, and the wind will die down significantly, if not altogether.

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“This course is going to play very different I think the next three days … just score-ability with the wind being down,” said Collin Morikawa, who carded a 3-under playing alongside McIlroy. “So we’ll see some low scores over the next 54 holes.”

While that should open the door for the rest of the field — including Scheffler, who always seems to find a way to make a charge in time for the final round no matter what happens to him Thursday — McIlroy has the early advantage in his second Tour stop of the season.

Freddie Freeman is not taking his career with the Los Angeles Dodgers one season at a time.

The 2020 National League MVP and nine-time All-Star has longevity in mind when looking at the rest of his Dodgers career. Freeman has two years remaining on the six-year, $162 million contract he signed with L.A. in 2022, but he said Thursday that he envisions wearing Dodger Blue beyond that.

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The 2024 World Series MVP also sees himself in the lineup for every game the Dodgers play this season.

“I’m going to prepare to play 162 games,” Freeman told reporters on Thursday, including MLB.com’s Sonja Chen. “Then when that day comes or the night comes where they say, ‘We’re going to give you tomorrow off,’ I will fight that battle and most likely lose. But I want to play every game.”

Freeman, 36, has played 147 games in each of the past two seasons. He has played in at least 157 games in eight of his 16 MLB seasons, including his first two with the Dodgers. And he has appeared in all 162 games twice in his career: the 2014 and 2018 seasons with the Atlanta Braves.

Playing two years beyond his current contract could create some nice, round numbers for Freeman’s career. Going through 2029 would give him 20 seasons in the major leagues. He would be 40 years old. And an extra two seasons could also give Freeman the opportunity to reach 3,000 career hits.

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He enters the 2026 season with 2,431 hits. Sitting 569 hits short of 3,000, he would need to average 142 hits the next four years to reach the milestone. The veteran first baseman surpassed that total in 11 of his seasons and topped 190 hits three times. He led the NL with 191 hits in 2018 and MLB with 199 hits in 2022. (Amazingly, his career-high 211 hits in 2023 finished second to NL MVP Ronald Acuña’s 217.)

[Get more Dodgers news: Los Angeles team feed]

Is Freeman planting the seeds for an eventual contract extension?

“Four is just a number that’s floated,” Freeman said, via The Athletic. “Is it less? Is it more? I don’t know. … I do love this game. I love playing it. But for me, if I can do four [more years], that’ll be 20 years. I think that’s enough.”

It’s possible that the Dodgers could have difficulty finding a position for Freeman by 2028.

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If he can’t play first base, designated hitter isn’t an option with four-time MVP Shohei Ohtani manning that spot through 2033. Freeman might face competition at first base if one of the organization’s top prospects, Josue De Paula, has to move from the outfield (he finished 2025 in Double-A). Currently, many scouting reports believe that’s in De Paula’s future because he’s not a good runner.

Yet if Freeman continues to hit above .300, which he has averaged in his Dodgers career (.310/.391/.516 slash line), the team will likely find a way to keep him in the lineup.

“I love being here. I’m from Southern California. I’ve had a great time with fans,” Freeman said. “I’m not worried about another contract, not going to bring it up, not going to talk about it. I have two years left.

“I’m just an employee. I just do my job, and if they want me back, they want me back,” he added. “But I think [Dodgers president of baseball operations] Andrew [Friedman] and everyone knows that I love being here. So whatever happens, happens.”