Month: May 2023

An 18-year-old Texas A&M–Texarkana baseball player was shot during a game Saturday, according to a Facebook statement by the Texarkana Police Department. The incident occurred at approximately 5:30 p.m. CT at George Dobson Field at Spring Lake Park while the player was standing in the bullpen area. 

“It appears that he [was] struck by a stray bullet from some type of altercation in a nearby neighborhood to the west of the park,” according to the police statement. 

The NAIA game against the University of Houston–Victoria was called, and the player subsequently underwent surgery. Later, the school announced that the unnamed player was in stable condition at Christus St. Michael Hospital in Texarkana. 

“The university’s counseling services are available to players and other students,” the school’s statement read. “At this time we ask that you keep our student athlete, his family, teammates and friends in your prayers.”

Texarkana Police Department spokesman Shawn Vaughn told the Texarkana Gazette that the player was shot in the chest in the fifth inning. The game’s announcer said, “Shots fired! Shots fired,” according to an unnamed attendee. This led to the crowd scattering.

The game was declared a no-contest, the Texas A&M–Texarkana athletic department announced on Twitter. According to the school’s website, it was the team’s Senior Day and the team’s last home game before the Red River Athletic Conference baseball tournament next weekend. No arrests have been made at this time. 

Michigan punter Brad Robbins got a life-changing phone call on Saturday. But if you listen to his voice, it sure sounds like he thought he was being pranked. 

The Bengals took Robbins with the last pick of the sixth round on Saturday afternoon and when Cincinnati coach Zac Taylor called him to break the news, Robbins didn’t sound like any other draftee getting that highly anticipated call. 

“Brad, this is Zac Taylor at the Bengals,” Taylor said. 

“Oh, Zac Taylor,” Robbins replied, sounding a little sarcastic. “How’s it going?”

“I’m doing great, man,” Taylor responded. “You wanna come be a Bengal?” 

.@__BR91 did you think this was a prank call? 😂#RuleTheJungle | @IEL_LLC pic.twitter.com/gairWTDni1

— Cincinnati Bengals (@Bengals) April 29, 2023

The biggest tell that Robbins thought somebody was pulling his leg was when Taylor said, “We’re going to draft you right here” and Robbins responded, “Oh, yes, sir. I appreciate that,” without even a little bit of excitement in his voice. 

But it really was Taylor on the other end of the line and after a few more seconds it finally hit Robbins. 

“Holy s—,” he said. “Thank you.”

Punters don’t get taken very often in the draft, so you can forgive Robbins for thinking someone was having a little fun, but Robbins has an impressive résumé that includes three All-Big Ten selections. 

It was a great weekend for the Wolverines’ specialists, as kicker Jake Moody was taken in the third round by the 49ers. Michigan is just the second school in the last 40 years to have its kicker and punter selected in the same draft. 

Busy weekend, a lot to get to, so let’s dive into the takeaways …

The Cardinals have had a rough offseason—going right up to last week, with the tampering settlement on their contact with coach Jonathan Gannon in February. But they may have been draft weekend’s biggest winner. I believe the two guys who’d have been under consideration for Arizona with the No. 3 pick were Ohio State tackle Paris Johnson Jr. and Alabama edge rusher Will Anderson Jr.

They wound up with the latter (who I think they preferred), and a lot more, with new GM Monti Ossenfort dropping back nine picks, then going back up six. Here’s how it all shook out …

• The Cardinals gave up the third, the 34th, 105th and 168th picks.

• They got Johnson, plus the 33rd and 81st picks this year, and first- and third-round picks in 2024.

Or, if you want to simplify this, they got Johnson, moved their second-round pick up a spot (34 to 33), and sent fourth- and fifth-round picks away for a third-rounder this year, and first- and third-rounders next year. Which shows, to me, impressive command for the draft class by a rookie GM.

So how’d Ossenfort do it? Well, it starts with identifying Johnson. Arizona felt like the Buckeyes star crushed the predraft process, including a 30 visit the big man made to Tempe to see his future team. On that visit, he told Ossenfort and Gannon that his family’s history with the franchise—his dad, a defensive back out of Miami of Ohio, was drafted by the team in 1999—gave him business to finish in Arizona.

“I want to be here,” he told them.

Now, it’d be easy for any kid to say that to any team, but it came off as genuine to Ossenfort and Gannon. And it’d be meaningful, too, with the new bosses in Arizona looking for guys who had clean profiles who could grow into the “program guy” types that would make the Valley a good place for players to go.

As for the maneuvering itself, it really started with calls during the week to engage teams on coming up for the pick, with those bleeding into the hours before the draft, and the relationship Ossenfort had with Texans GM Nick Caserio (the two worked together for 14 seasons in New England). After Caserio took Ohio State QB C.J. Stroud (more on that later) at No. 2, at least one team interested in the third pick dropped off. But Ossenfort knew the Texans, because of his relationship with Caserio, would stay in.

The Cardinals took negotiations all the way until there were two minutes left on the clock, with other teams seeing the price as too high—a price that Ossenfort set with the desire to either get a pick in the range where the Cardinals would still get a player in their top cluster of prospects, or get enough back to get back into that range. The latter materialized with a monster package coming back from Houston (Nos. 12, 33, and the first and third picks in 2024).

From there, the Cardinals leaned on another relationship, between Lions GM Brad Holmes and their own assistant GM Dave Sears, who Ossenfort hired away from Detroit in February. The Colts weren’t moving, and it’d have been tough to do a deal in the division with Seattle, which left the Lions sitting there at six—and giving Arizona a chance to leapfrog another offensive line-hungry team in Vegas for Johnson. And that extra second-round pick they had—at 33—from Houston made it easy for the Cardinals to deal their slotted No. 2 at 34.

The Cardinals, by the way, then dealt 33 to the team Ossenfort came from, in Tennessee, to go down eight spots, moving up in the third round and getting another 2024 third-rounder as a result.

That leaves Arizona with Johnson, and six picks in the first two rounds of next year’s draft.

Not bad for Ossenfort’s first swing at this.

As for one of the Cardinals’ trade partners, the key to the Lions’ draft was adjusting on the fly. Sitting with the sixth pick didn’t work out for them. Detroit GM Brad Holmes figured if Arizona picked Johnson at No. 3, then one of the two completely clean defenders he saw in the class, Anderson or Illinois Devon Witherspoon, would slip to him. Then, the Cardinals traded out, the Texans took Anderson, and everything got thrown in a blender.

Holmes and Dan Campbell were facing a scenario where the Colts would take a quarterback and Witherspoon, who they’d targeted for months, would land in Seattle. And while the Lions figured the Seahawks might not pull the trigger—GM John Schneider had taken only one corner in the top 100 in 13 drafts in Seattle, and that one was the 90th pick (Shaquill Griffin in 2015)—Detroit still had to prepare for the possibility.

We didn’t think we’d do this at six, Holmes said to Campbell, but who cares? He’s our favorite guy left.

That guy was Alabama RB Jahmyr Gibbs.

My sense is Detroit felt the same way about him as they did Witherspoon—who they targeted months ago, and who they tried to hide their intentions on (they didn’t have Gibbs in for a 30 visit, and Holmes and Campbell stayed away from his pro day). And who, ultimately, they hoped to pair with Witherspoon.

The initial idea was to get Witherspoon (or Anderson) at No. 6, then trade up from 18 to get Gibbs. Then Arizona traded out, the Colts took Anthony Richardson and, finally, to the Lions’ chagrin, the Seahawks took the draft’s top corner, a scenario under which, indeed, Detroit was ready to say who cares? and break the internet by taking Gibbs.

Thankfully, Ossenfort threw them a life raft.

The Cardinals gave Holmes the shot to pick up a high second, slide back six spots and, fingers crossed, still land Gibbs, by staying in front of two teams the Lions heard liked him, in the Patriots (at 14) and the Jets (at 15). So instead of Witherspoon and Gibbs, they wound up with Gibbs, and Iowa LB Jack Campbell (at 18) and TE Sam LaPorta (at 34).

In Gibbs, the Lions had another guy Holmes had long eyed. The GM live-scouted him at Alabama-Texas in September—when he arrived there to evaluate Bryce Young, Bijan Robinson and Anderson, he got a tip to “watch the transfer back from Georgia Tech”—and was impressed, when he was at field level, with how Gibbs was built and how he moved. In time, he’d come to look at Gibbs as more of a weapon than a back, and one who’d fit in his running back room as presently constituted better than Robinson would.

Also, on his 30 visit, Gibbs’s answer when the Lions asked what the best part of his game was—“my intelligence”—stuck with Holmes and Campbell.

As for Campbell, the team saw, rather than just an off-ball linebacker, a bit of a unicorn. He’s 6’5″ and 249 pounds, loaded with instincts, plays downhill in the run game, is athletic enough to go sideline to sideline, and has the feel and the feet to cover ground in coverage, while being, in the words of one scout, “a tall tree to throw over.” Bottom line, they felt like he could be a 10-year centerpiece and one that was smart enough to where, per one team official, “he was damn near installing our defense” in their combine meeting with him.

And then, as a bonus for missing on Witherspoon, they get T.J. Hockenson’s replacement with another Hawkeye tight end.

All of which, to me, was a pretty nice recovery from a bumpy start for the rising Lions.

The Patriots were another team that came away as a winner from the first couple of days of the draft—and I’ll say that with a caveat. We’ll get to that caveat in a second. We’ll start with what New England did with the 14th pick, and three positions of need (receiver, tackle, corner) as a focus coming into the draft.

Like the four teams in front of them, the Patriots did explore a move up, and also did work on moving back, before the draft. And the reason why is because they were in the sort of no-man’s-land area for this year, just below where the eight blue-chip nonquarterbacks (Anderson, Texas Tech’s Tyree Wilson, Georgia’s Jalen Carter as defensive front players; Johnson and Northwestern’s Peter Skoronski at tackle; Witherspoon and Oregon’s Christian Gonzalez at corner; and Robinson at running back) would come off the board.

Then, three quarterbacks went in front of them. The Bears preferred a longer, rangy tackle than Skoronski in Darnell Wright, Gibbs was picked, the Packers took a swing on high-upside Iowa DE Lukas Van Ness and Gonzalez was sitting there for New England.

I’d have taken him there, to be clear. But the Patriots had him in a cluster of four or so guys they valued at that part of the draft, and that allowed Bill Belichick to circle back on the Steelers’ overtures on coming up for a tackle, and ultimately take a fourth-round pick from them to move back three spots. And then, you had the Jets, who didn’t need a corner, and the Commanders, who preferred Emmanuel Forbes (who had some of the cleanest tape in the draft but weighs just 166 pounds) and, somehow, Gonzalez was still there at 17.

You know who else was in that cluster of players? Georgia Tech pass rusher Keion White, who they wound up drafting at 46. So they wound up with Gonzalez and Eastern Michigan G Sidy Sow for the 14th pick, and another guy they’d have been O.K. taking at 14.

Then, there’s the intelligence they got on those guys that helped with the decisions. New Patriots line coach Adrian Klemm was at Oregon last year, so he could give Belichick all the information he needed on Gonzalez (who had some reasonable, minor questions asked about his personality through the process), and Belichick built a relationship with former Tech coach Geoff Collins when the Patriots practiced at the school ahead of Super Bowl LIII, and has a scouting director on his staff in Pat Stewart, who worked with Collins more than a decade ago at Western Carolina, so they had all they needed on the freakish White.

Both will need some development, but both have high ceilings, and one fills a major need.

Which brings me to the caveat—the biggest need the Patriots had, to me, was tackle. It still hasn’t been addressed to the point it needs to be as I see it. And that’s a tough position to have a deficiency at. So they have to be crossing their fingers on Riley Reiff, Trent Brown and Calvin Anderson. Or that Klemm will be the second coming of Dante Scarnecchia, their former legendary line coach.

There’s as much pressure on Anderson as there is on Stroud in Houston. The reason why relates back to the Deshaun Watson trade. Bottom line, when a GM deals off a quarterback who accomplished what Watson did as a Texan (regardless of the circumstances), he will probably be defined by what he does with the return—and Nick Caserio will be defined by this draft.

Caserio got three first-round picks, a third-rounder this year and a pick swap next year.

Kenyon Green was the first of those first-round picks. You can see Anderson as, essentially, the last two (even if it was the Texans’ own 2024 first-rounder going to Arizona in the deal), if you assume Stroud would’ve been taken second regardless, and consider how losing the extra first-rounder next year robs Houston of valuable flexibility in what’s expected to be a very strong first round. Which means, yes, Caserio needs to be right on Anderson.

Will he be? It did seem like momentum slowed for the Alabama star in the weeks leading up to the draft, with the concern being that Anderson was like a lot of Crimson Tide prospects—maxed out by Nick Saban’s development machine, with the upside there nearly fully tapped. The flip side of that argument in the result for Anderson, and that the Texans went to No. 3 to get him, would be that between Caserio, a certified FON (Friend of Nick), and DeMeco Ryans, a Tide legend, probably have the very best intel on just how far Saban thinks Anderson can go.

Either way, again, this is one Caserio needs to get right.

And I say that with the acknowledgment, too, that it was smart to take Stroud first before Anderson as a way of short-circuiting the market the Cardinals had for the third pick, and making it easier for the Texans to pursue.

The consensus I’ve gathered on Richardson and Will Levis over the past few weeks fits the order in which the quarterbacks went—with those two after Young and Stroud. Accordingly, my sense is, if the Bears pulled off the double trade they’d planned, and if the Panthers were at No. 2, instead of No. 1 and Young was gone, they’d probably have taken Stroud, and that Titans were interested in going up to No. 3 for a QB, with that QB being Stroud.

“Of the four, just off the tape alone, it was Bryce and C.J. and then a good drop-off,” says one veteran AFC executive Friday. “You’re swinging for the fences with Will Levis and Anthony Richardson.”

That, of course, doesn’t mean everyone saw it that way.

I don’t know whether the Colts would’ve taken Stroud or Young over Richardson—but I do know the logic in taking the Florida star at No. 4 for the Indy brass was that those guys were willing to take the risk in projecting him to be something he may not be yet, over letting him go become a superstar somewhere else. And the logic isn’t unfounded for two reasons.

One, the pick fits into GM Chris Ballard’s traits-happy ethos. He’s always been strict on the physical elements needed for success at each position—in the old “if you make exceptions, you’ll wind up with a team full of them” tradition of Bill Parcells. When he was scouting for the Chiefs, Patrick Mahomes was a really good example of what betting on traits, and a kid’s ability to develop them, can do for a team. And while Mahomes had way, way more playing experience than Richardson, there are parallels in the freak flashes of both.

Two, coach Shane Steichen’s already got the blueprint for that sort of development, with what he just pulled off with Jalen Hurts as the Eagles’ offensive coordinator. Midway through his first year in Philly, Steichen got the play-calling reins, and more or less installed the Oklahoma run game to get Hurts rolling. It worked, and bought time for the rest of Hurts’s game to come along. It’s not hard to see a similar scenario where Steichen can put Richardson in position to produce right away, while getting more out of him behind the scenes.

So, yeah, the chances of a whiff on Richardson are greater than with Young and Stroud. But in a conference stocked with talented quarterbacks, this was worth the swing.

And as for Levis—on Friday, we covered a lot of how this happened with the Titans (he had his best predraft meeting with Mike Vrabel), and how Tennessee asked Levis to bring in cutups of his best and worst plays for his 30 visit. I’d add, too, that because he wasn’t a first-round pick (and he easily could’ve been, with the Titans having worked on a deal to go up to 27 with Buffalo late Thursday night), he might get a little more patience than he would in another circumstance. Which could really help.

The Titans aren’t married to him (they could easily take another QB next year or the year after), and thus can take their time with him. Not that Vrabel would rush a rookie quarterback out there, anyway.

Conventional wisdom holds that the Falcons’ pick at No. 8 was a relic of a time gone by, but I think it’s a possible look at where the game is going. And I know that sounds dramatic, maybe even a little ridiculous. So you’ll have to follow me here.

Atlanta coach Arthur Smith has long had a certain admiration for the way the San Antonio Spurs teams that made the NBA Finals in 2013 and ’14, and the Golden State Warriors teams that followed them were built. Yes, those teams had great Hall of Fame players. But what Smith loved about their construction was how they were versatile and positionless, which allowed them to pose problems for, well, everyone. And in some ways, the blueprint he and Terry Fontenot have drawn up in building the Falcons, has similar earmarks.

Robinson isn’t the genesis of that, but he’s a continuation of it.

Two years ago, the Falcons took Florida tight end Kyle Pitts in the top 10, a player who could be moved all over to generate matchups. Last year, it was USC’s Drake London, a player who has the size to be dominant outside, and the versatility and explosiveness to play inside or take the ball on end-arounds and sweeps. This year, it’s Robinson, a 220-pound jackhammer who can be their mail carrier, while being such a good receiver that the Falcons can legitimately line him up in the slot with game-breaking ability from both spots.

Simply put, each year, the Falcons felt like they were adding the draft’s best playmaker.

And now, the result, they hope, is a headache for defenses from the moment the offense breaks the huddle—with little to say who will line up where.

So in that way, the Falcons didn’t see Robinson as a tailback. They saw him as another queen on the chessboard for an offense that’s stockpiling them. Of course, there are still fair questions here. Whether they get enough from Desmond Ridder to unlock all of that is one. If they have enough up front on defense to make it work on the other side is another.

But the logic the Falcons used to get to the point where they were comfortable taking Robinson with the eighth pick isn’t that wild, and it certainly isn’t old school. It is, to be sure, unconventional from a group that prides itself on trying to disrupt and be a step ahead. And if it works, it sure could have an impact on how all of this works.

It’s a really, really good sign that Aaron Rodgers is already taking part in the team’s offseason program. That, and Rodgers’s designs on playing two more years, were part of the Jets’ discussions with the quarterback before the trade. And that renewed investment, and fire, are important, in that we’ve seen what an older quarterback scorned (Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Brett Favre) can do with that sort of motivational wind at his back.

Here’s what Robert Saleh has seen so far: “We’re a really, really young team, especially on offense, and just to watch him and Nathaniel [Hackett] and the way they communicate together, he’s already made his presence felt with regards to meetings and input, just discussions on all of the different things we’re trying to get accomplished on offense.

“He’s a tremendous human, first and foremost, Aaron is. Just listening to him, there are little, subtle things I’m not going to get into, but he definitely cares about people, and you can tell in the way he speaks to people. So we’re really fortunate that he’s here.”

Conversely, the past few years, Rodgers wasn’t part of the Packers’ offseason program, and there are people there who felt like last year—when the team was integrating rookies Christian Watson and Romeo Doubs to make up for the loss of Davante Adams—it really bit Green Bay. Watson and Doubs did come on late, and the sentiment was the breakthrough might’ve happened earlier had more work gotten done with the draft picks earlier.

Whether that was actually the case is debatable.

But that’s not the Jets’ problem and, evidently, won’t be going forward.

(We’ll have a lot more on Rodgers later in the week.)

If there’s one last takeaway on the Lamar Jackson contract, it’s to not hold your breath for the day of fully guaranteed contracts in the NFL. This will surprise some people, but in none of the four major sports in the country is there a CBA clause that either prohibits or mandates fully guaranteed contracts. Which is to say contracts are the way they are in football, baseball, basketball and hockey because individual negotiations got them there.

So if the NFL was ever going to have fully guaranteed contracts as a standard, it’d have to happen player by player, until all (or most of) the players had them.

It was five years ago now that Kirk Cousins got his groundbreaking, fully guaranteed, three-year, $84 million deal. A new day for players? Not exactly. Matt Ryan, Aaron Rodgers, Jared Goff and Carson Wentz all did blockbuster deals within 18 months of Cousins’s deal, and all reverted to the traditional quarterback contract structure, rendering the Vikings’ contract for their quarterback an outlier.

And similarly, in the 14 months since Deshaun Watson got his fully guaranteed, five-year, $230 million deal from Cleveland, Kyler Murray, Russell Wilson, Jalen Hurts and now Jackson have done top-of-the-market deals with a traditional quarterback structure that put the Watson deal in the same once-in-a-blue-moon category where Cousins’s landed.

The worst part for players is simply that if quarterbacks can’t consistently get over that hump, then it’s more or less going to be impossible for guys at other positions, too.

The Jackson negotiation certainly underscores why. After all, if you’re a player like the Ravens quarterback, hundreds of millions of dollars can be sitting there for only so long before you end up taking it. What’s more, it’d be tough to blame anyone for taking it. I know if I were Lamar, I would’ve done it long before he did—which is why there won’t be any change to all this anytime soon.

Trades will probably get more difficult to do now. The Broncos taking Marvin Mims Jr. in the second round Friday elicited a phone call or two to Denver from other teams wondering whether it was a signal things changed with either Jerry Jeudy, Courtland Sutton or both. Nothing had—Denver was still looking for a premium for both (a first-rounder for Jeudy, and a second-round pick for Sutton).

And now that the draft has passed, the price goes up on each guy, and other trade targets across the NFL.

The simplest way to explain why is that a pick next year is less valuable, because if you’re trading a player away for a pick next year, there’s a year in there where you’ll have neither player. And so since no one was willing to give up what it’d take to get the Broncos receivers in this year’s draft, and after a weekend through which teams were stingy with next year’s picks considering the expected strength of the coming class, it doesn’t add up that someone is gonna break the bank to get Denver to change its mind.

Another team this could affect would be the Vikings, with Minnesota more than willing to listen on Dalvin Cook and Za’Darius Smith. The former is due $11 million this year. No one is paying that, so the question becomes whether he takes less in Minnesota, or the Vikings pay to get a draft pick for him from someone else, or he hits the market. In Smith’s case, with $12.5 million due this year, the most likely scenario has the Vikings working a trade to buy a draft pick (in paying a chunk of Smith’s salary) or letting Smith go.

Obviously, it’ll require some needle-threading for either guy to be dealt.

Tuesday’s a relatively important day, with teams’ decisions on fifth-year options for 2020 first-round picks due. Eight options have been picked up so far—the ones for Bengals QB Joe Burrow, Dolphins QB Tua Tagovailoa, Chargers QB Justin Herbert, Bucs OT Tristan Wirfs, Falcons CB A.J. Terrell, Cowboys WR CeeDee Lamb, Vikings WR Justin Jefferson and 49ers WR Brandon Aiyuk.

And Giants OT Andrew Thomas’s option should be academic, with a bunch (Seahawks LB Jordyn Brooks, Ravens LB Patrick Queen) that’ll be interesting calls. Plus, the call on Jordan Love’s extension will probably be the most fascinating decision of them all.

We’ll know about Love, and the rest of them, in about 24 hours.

Bonus takeaway—thanks for following our coverage of the 2023 draft. I, and we, put a lot into it every year, so for a lot of us this weekend feels like a finish line. And don’t worry, with a verifiable bumper crop coming (USC QB Caleb Williams, UNC QB Drake Maye, Ohio State WR Marvin Harrison Jr., Georgia TE Brock Bowers, Penn State OT Olu Fashanu and Alabama edge rusher Dallas Turner head the class), it won’t be long until we turn the page to ’24.

(We’ll have more to wrap up the draft with in our Tuesday notes, so stay tuned for that.)

SI’s MMA Notes, Quotes, and Anecdotes runs every Monday.

Song Yadong dominated Ricky Simón on Saturday, ending their UFC Fight Night bantamweight bout with a fifth-round TKO finish.

The victory broke Simón’s five-fight winning streak, and Yadong ended the bout in emphatic manner with a picturesque left hook. Amid the excitement of his post-fight interview in the Octagon, Yadong called out Sean O’Malley and Chito Vera for a fight. But he forgot the one fight he really wanted.

“I forgot to say Petr Yan,” says Yadong (20-7-1, 1 NC). “He is a great fighter, and I want to fight him. I want to see who is the better striker. That is the fight I want.”

👀 @SongYadongLFG has a couple of names in mind for who he wants to see in the Octagon next! #UFCVegas72 pic.twitter.com/dzwjOVDQaQ

— UFC (@ufc) April 30, 2023

Only 25, this was an impressive showing for Yadong. His boxing controlled this bout, giving him an edge in every round, especially the second, third and fourth.

“I wanted to knock him out. I believed I could do it,” says Yadong. “I’ve been preparing and training for this fight, and that’s what I did.”

Simón (20–4) showed signs of life in the second. Once he recovered from a clash of heads and ensuing combo from Yadong, Simón began pulling his jab quite well, then timed out a takedown. He ended the round doing damage with hammer fists, but Yadong seized control in the third and refused to relinquish it.

Yadong drilled Simón in the final seconds of the fourth with a nasty left hook. His right hand was a major factor in the fifth, and he timed out Simón’s jab, which effectively decided the fight. When Simón threw his jab in the final round, Yadong landed an overhand right over the top of it. And that is the exact sequence that led to Yadong landing the left hook that dropped Simón in the fifth, and he followed up with a flurry of shots in the ground-and-pound to earn the TKO victory.

“I almost knocked him out in the fourth round,” says Yadong. “That’s when I got the timing down. I knew I would catch him in the fifth, and I got it.”

Yadong has won nine of his first 11 bouts in the Octagon. His future in the UFC is full of potential for championship gold. His next fight will be important, whether that is against Yan, Merab Dvalishvili or Vera, which would be a rematch of their 2020 bout that Yadong narrowly won by decision.

“I am excited for my next fight,” says Yadong. “I will keep working to show I am the best.”

Aljamain Sterling–Henry Cejudo bout includes fascinating backstory

Sterling will defend the bantamweight title against Cejudo this Saturday at UFC 288.

Sterling is chasing history. A victory Saturday would give him the most title defenses in UFC bantamweight history, which would be a major feat before he moves weight classes to featherweight or defends the title again against O’Malley.

A lot is at stake for Cejudo, too. If he wins, he’ll have to change his “Triple C” nickname. In addition to his Olympic gold medal, a victory against Sterling would start his third title reign in the UFC, making him one of the best to ever compete in the Octagon.

But is it a fair fight?

Cejudo has not competed in three years. In that same timeframe, Sterling has fought on four separate occasions. While retired, Cejudo was removed from the USADA testing pool. Sterling, who was active all that time, was not exempt from testing.

Whether Cejudo had an unfair advantage while healing his injuries is a question worth asking to both him and Sterling ahead of 288.

Luke Rockhold falters at BKFC 41

Rockhold reminded us who he is in his bare knuckle fight against Mike Perry.

It has been seven years since he wore gold in the UFC. He lost his last three fights in the Octagon. And Saturday, in the main event of Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship’s biggest event to date, Rockhold lost by TKO.

The BKFC 41 light heavyweight bout ended just over a minute into the second round. It appeared that Rockhold suffered damage in the closing moments of the first round, when Perry drilled him in the mouth with a vicious left hand. Rockhold never recovered, and, 75 seconds into the second, he removed his mouthpiece and ended the fight.

Luke Rockhold says he isn’t done but wants some gloves for his next fightpic.twitter.com/O0VW8wa4Ey

— MMA Mania (@mmamania) April 30, 2023

Perry (3–0) has the potential to continue having success in bare knuckle fighting. Rockhold (0–1) does not. While fighters are typically the last to know when it is time to retire, it appears this is the perfect moment for the 38-year-old Rockhold to step away from combat sports. That was also the case for Chad Mendes, who lost an outstanding bout in the co-main to Eddie Alvarez. Mendes retired following the loss (it was odd not to see him leave his gloves in the cage, but only because there were no gloves to be left), but Alvarez, at 39, suddenly has new life.

While all signs point to retirement, Rockhold has already announced his intention to fight again.

Justin Barrasso can be reached at JBarrasso@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @JustinBarrasso.

With most of the first-round NHL playoff matchups concluded, it’s time to look at the updated odds for which team will win the Stanley Cup and how the odds changed from when the playoffs first started.

Despite jumping out to a 3-1 lead, the Bruins dropped four consecutive games to the Panthers and were eliminated in Round 1. Boston was the prohibitive favorite to win the Cup entering the playoffs at +300, the Avalanche were the next closest team with odds of +625 and they were also eliminated in the first round. The fact that the two teams considered to be odds-on favorites to hoist the Stanley Cup are now out of contention speaks volumes as to how exciting these NHL playoffs have been thus far. The Lightning, Jets, Wild, Kings and Islanders join the Bruins and Avalanche as teams ousted in Round 1. The Rangers and Devils play a deciding Game 7 of their series Monday night.

The second round starts on Tuesday and features some exciting matchups. The new favorites to win the Cup are the Maple Leafs, who will face off against a Panthers team that just eliminated the previous favorite. The Oilers and Golden Knights sit behind Toronto as the next two teams with the shortest odds but Las Vegas and Edmonton will go head-to-head in the second round. Fresh off their seven-game series victory over Colorado, the Kraken now take on the Stars.

Updated Stanley Cup Odds Before Second Round

Toronto Maple Leafs +360

Edmonton Oilers +380

Vegas Golden Knights +570

Dallas Stars +600

Carolina Hurricanes +720

Seattle Kraken +950

Florida Panthers +950

New Jersey Devils +1250

New York Rangers +1300

*Once the Devils and Rangers series is determined, these odds may change.

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It was last Monday, and Panthers GM Scott Fitterer had just finished a meeting with Frank Reich’s coaching staff, scheduled for one final discussion on what Carolina would do with the No. 1 pick it spent so much to get. Fitterer had been disciplined in never making a declaration to anyone on what the team would do, and that bled over into the meeting. He danced around it, making it obvious enough to everyone for the people in the room to order their kids No. 9 jerseys for the fall, without ever actually saying it.

But the time was coming, and someone would have to put it into words, eventually.

So Fitterer sauntered into Reich’s office and matter-of-factly spit it out.

All right, man, the GM said jokingly, who are we taking?

Both smiled. Reich started laughing.

Yeah, it’s Bryce, Reich responded.

Some 72 hours later, it’d be done, and the book would be closed on a months-long process leading to a final call that, ultimately, will almost certainly either make or break Fitterer and Reich in Charlotte. There were dinners, and 30 visits, and pro days, and combine interviews. There was the big trade, and there were draft meetings, and a quarterback who was the leader wire to wire—even as the team tried to troubleshoot the decision every which way.

In the end, there was Young, and Young alone atop the Panthers’ draft board, the tag waiting to be pulled just after 8 p.m. ET in a meeting at Bank of America Stadium. And there was a building full of people who were there the whole way waiting for confirmation that night of what they all had known was coming for a while.

That knowledge is why the moment between Reich and Fitterer was so anticlimactic. It’s also why being there for the first pick Thursday night, for most of the scouts and coaches, was like being invited to a wedding—you knew who’d be trading vows—and why when Young arrived Friday, the only memorable thing he told the staff was, This feels right.

For everyone, it had felt right for a while. With more time, for the Panthers, it only felt more right.

And in the MMQB column this week, with the draft behind us, we’re going to explain why.

The NFL draft is done, it’s the Monday after and in this week’s MMQB, we’ve got …

• An inside look at the fantastic story in Dallas, where Cowboys scout Chris Vaughn made the call to his son Deuce to let him know his dad’s team was drafting him.

• Some flowers for new Cardinals GM Monti Ossenfort, who was perhaps the league’s most aggressive mover in his first draft at the helm.

• A deep dive into how the Lions’ Plan A came undone and how quickly GM Brad Holmes was able to recover.

• More on the impact of Lamar Jackson’s deal in Baltimore.

But we’re starting right at the top of the draft.

Fitterer can still remember the first time he really laid eyes on Young, outside of quick looks here and there when Tide games showed up on the TV or while he was studying other players on tape.

He was home with his wife and son in Charlotte, the night before the Panthers played in Atlanta in December 2021, and the Heisman ceremony was on. Young won it, of course, and, as he made his way to the stage and launched into his speech, the Fitterers became relatively enthralled with the spindly 20-year-old signal-caller, who, at the time, may have looked to the uninitiated more like a high school point guard than an Alabama quarterback.

Fitterer and his wife had the same feeling—this guy is unique—and then talked about how great it’d be to find someone like that to lead your team.

Almost exactly a year later, the process of making Young that guy began, in earnest.

As the 2022 season quickly came undone and coach Matt Rhule was fired, Panthers owner David Tepper had periodic conversations with his football people on the direction of the team and what was next. They’d make decisions to trade Christian McCaffrey and keep Brian Burns, and the process started to inform them on where they were. They had a stout defense with a young cornerstone. The offensive line had come together to drive a run game that dominated with Steve Wilks as interim coach. What was missing was obvious.

“I think once we traded Baker [Mayfield], and Sam [Darnold] came back [from injury],” Fitterer said Sunday. “Sam actually played well this past year. But you have two swings at it, you have high hopes for both Sam and Baker when they got here and, at a certain point, I remember talking to Mr. Tepper and [assistant GM] Dan [Morgan] and we’re like, We gotta just draft and build our own. Even if Baker hit or Sam hit, it was going to be a lot of money to renew these guys, and how do you build a team properly unless it’s like a top-five quarterback?

“How do you really build a team properly to support him? So we thought the rookie way was the right way to go, to draft and develop, and fix the problem rather than taking swings here and there. … Eventually, you just have to draft and develop your own guy.”

That Fitterer was already thinking about it was evidenced in his travels. Before the team’s Halloween weekend game in Atlanta, Fitterer snuck away to Knoxville to get a look at Will Levis and Hendon Hooker when Tennessee hosted Kentucky. Three weeks later, with the Panthers in Baltimore, Fitterer went to see Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud at Maryland. He didn’t get to see Alabama live, but that exercise, and the ongoing conversations, led to the conclusion.

It was obvious what the Panthers had to do.

But that would be backburnered for the coaching search, and then the search for assistants for Reich on what quickly became an all-star staff. Fitterer, Morgan and the scouts, in the meantime, slowly chipped away at the tape of Young, Stroud, Hooker, Levis and Florida’s Anthony Richardson. Eventually, after working to install an offense and plan OTAs, Reich, OC Thomas Brown, QBs coach Josh McCown and senior assistant Jim Caldwell dove in.

And they came back with themes on Young that were common among the scouts. He stayed in—and won from—the pocket, despite his lack of stature. You could see his head turn back there, proof he was working through progressions and manipulating coverage with his eyes. He let plays develop, while always playing on time and with precision.

Reich told others he wanted a quarterback who understood the position and knew what it’d take to truly master it. It’d be rare to find someone who had that at Young’s age.

But, at least on tape, it sure looked like he did.

By the time the Panthers got to the combine, they’d done enough work on tape to be comfortable with at least two of the quarterbacks in the class (my sense is those two were Young and Stroud), and that gave Fitterer time to try to get ahead of the market on trading up.

They had the ninth pick. As we chronicled in March, Fitterer and Bears GM Ryan Poles met at Lucas Oil Stadium, and at an Indianapolis hotel a little out of the way (the Hyatt) from the normal NFL hustle and bustle in the city, which Poles had booked to keep his meetings quiet. As the week after the combine wore on, the Texans first came strong, and it looked like the Bears would deal twice, with Houston coming up to No. 1 and Carolina to No. 2. But Fitterer kept after Poles, the Texans got cold feet and the Panthers got to the top of the draft.

Fitterer didn’t want to give up a third first-round pick, and Poles’s desire to get a receiver to help Justin Fields (and get himself a better read on his young quarterback) led the teams to agree to a deal with two first-rounders, and second-rounders this year and in 2025, and DJ Moore going to Chicago. And at that point, while Fitterer didn’t have a decision yet on whom he’d take, he did have a leader.

“Coming out of our February meetings with scouts, Bryce was probably the leader,” Fitterer says. “But we had committed to keeping an open process and we really did. It’s not just like b.s. We really did go into this like, This is such an important decision for our organization. Let’s not lock in [on someone] in February and say ‘This is our guy.’ And so we went through it. … There’s some really impressive guys. There’s some real guys in this quarterback group.

“But the one thing about Bryce is he just was so steady all the way through the process, and every time we sat with him was like, S—, this guy’s special.”

And yet, again, Fitterer, Reich and their staffs resisted calling the fight any earlier than they had to. Stroud would make a run at it. Richardson, who had some similarities to Josh Allen (whom Morgan was with in Buffalo), did, too. So Young would have to keep checking boxes.

He’d get the chance to once the trade was finished.

That Friday afternoon, Fitterer called his assistant, Claire, and asked for her to start planning for a sizable Panthers contingent to hit the road. Because Stroud, Young and Levis had back-to-back-to-back pro days in Columbus, Tuscaloosa and Lexington, flying commercial would be impossible, so the group would fly private—with Fitterer; Reich; the offensive coaches; Morgan; lead negotiator Samir Suleiman; Tepper; and his wife, Nicole, on the list.

By Monday, March 13, the plans were set for the crew to see those three quarterbacks the following week and Richardson in Gainesville the week after.

On March 22, the Panthers’ traveling party watched an impressive display from Stroud, one that might have been enough to prompt another look at his tape from the fall, and then boarded the jet for Alabama. That night, they went to Evangeline’s, a posh Tuscaloosa eatery maybe a mile from campus.

As the food was coming, Caldwell asked Young to detail his process. He started by explaining a Saturday night, with his physical recovery from an SEC game. He went into Sunday, from grading the previous day’s tape, to diving into the next week’s game plan and trying to learn it well enough to present it to his teammates Monday. He kept going, and going, and, after about 10 minutes, he was in mid-day Tuesday and those at the table were looking at each other. Reich looked at pretty much everyone with a smirk. Tepper laughed.

Young came off like a battle-tested NFL quarterback, not some wet-behind-the-ears college kid confronted with a hedge-fund billionaire and his table full of NFL execs and coaches.

“It’s like you’re sitting with a 40-year-old man and the level of detail of his answers,” Fitterer says. “You could ask him a simple question, and he gives so much detail and thought to each question. It was pretty cool.”

The next day, more of the same. Fitterer wanted to see Young’s arm strength in person, and that meant training on deep sideline routes and drive throws through the middle of the field. His arm was never going to be Richardson’s, of course. But what the GM and coaches saw was plenty. He could get the ball to difficult spots and change speeds like a pitcher to throw the right ball every time.

While all that was happening, Nicole Tepper played her part, sidling up to Young’s parents while their son put his best foot forward. The owner’s wife knew her best role in all this, which was to try to get to know the people, rather than just the player.

“Nicole’s a very good judge of character, and that’s why she’s involved in this,” Fitterer says. “She sees it from a different viewpoint and she’s got a really strong b.s. meter. So it was great. … We may fall in love with the guys as players and kind of turn our head, kind of dismiss certain things. She’s got that intelligence to dial in.”

And on Young?

“She loved him,” Fitterer continues.

Her husband, of course, would contribute, too, and in an interesting way—it wasn’t so much about what he thought as what he knew. And what he knew was that his team would have its best shot at getting the decision right with as thorough a process as possible.

So as sure as most of the crew might’ve been after Young’s pro day, there was still work left to be done.

“[Tepper] is all about process,” Fitterer says. “He’s not about the evaluating. He’s not going to sit there and say, Hey, listen, I think this guy’s got a great arm. That’s not his world, and Dave’s smart enough to realize that. He doesn’t want to influence it that way. He just wants to make sure that we’re looking at it from every viewpoint and challenging ourselves, and that we have the data behind our decisions—that we’re not just looking at it from a scouting standpoint, that we have all the back-checks that we can use that are out there.

“Are we doing enough? Are we testing these guys enough? Do we know enough about their psychological makeup and competitiveness? He just keeps asking questions. And he’s not challenging us. He’s just making us think. Are we thinking about this properly?”

To make sure they were, there was one box left to check.

Young’s 30 visit was scheduled for April 11, and there’d be no dinner on the Monday night before. The quarterback was delayed flying into Charlotte, and scouting intern Caden McCloughan, son of former Washington and San Francisco GM Scot McCloughan, picked him at the airport between midnight and 1 a.m. McCloughan reported back to Fitterer that Young, upon arrival, was all smiles—thankful and respectful, and looking forward to the next day.

Young got dropped off at his hotel, showed up bright, early and as scheduled in the morning, and never uttered a word about the long night he’d just fought through.

The quarterback met with the team’s sports science people and player engagement people, then Fitterer and Morgan together in the GM’s office before heading into a meeting room to sit down with Reich, Brown, Caldwell, McCown and young assistant Parks Frazier. The coaches started drawing concepts and plays on the board. It was easy to tell Young was in his element.

“They start putting things on the board. And they’re teaching them different plays and different concepts, just to see how much he really knows,” Fitterer says. “And he’s totally grasping it and he’s soaking it up. He is as impressive as you would think in terms of learning and retaining—and he’s kind of unflappable, too. Even someone talking in his ear the whole time, trying to distract him, he can talk and write and kind of keep his focus.”

By then, the idea Fitterer had once floated—that he’d be willing to move off the first pick and go back down a spot if there were multiple quarterbacks he liked—had melted away.

When Fitterer first raised the idea, it was with the insistence that it’d take a lot for him to consider moving off the first pick. The Panthers had actually gone through an exercise to prepare for what they’d do if a Godfather offer came while they were on the clock. Turned out, the price would’ve been more than just a 2024 first-round pick. But instead of someone else convincing the GM it might be worth looking at his options, Young’s steadiness in holding his lead firmly planted the Panthers’ feet in the ground at No. 1.

After the 30 visit, it was essentially over.

Let’s take the guy we have conviction on, Fitterer said in one draft meeting.

At the end of the next week, on April 20 and 21, the Thursday and Friday before the draft, Fitterer and the personnel staff again met with the coaches. They didn’t spend a second on the top quarterbacks, going through every other position, because the GM didn’t want his decision to leak out. They started the meetings with the Day 3 quarterbacks, then went to the receivers and the linemen, never doubling back to work over the top signal-callers.

The next Monday, Fitterer and Reich called the coaches in. And after that meeting, quietly, the GM and coach nailed down their decision. A small group that included the Teppers, Morgan, VP Adrian Wilson, Reich and Fitterer were in the know. No one else really was.

Even though, really, by then, everyone did know.

By the final days, all those boxes were checked, for better or worse.

On the latter, there was the one flaw in Young’s file—his height and weight, with the questions similar to the ones Fitterer and Morgan had once seen Russell Wilson face in their time as Seattle personnel men. From that experience, they knew one question to ask was how the shorter quarterback would see the middle of the field.

Panthers analytics chief Taylor Rajack helped take care of that one, creating a heat map and coming up with statistics that showed Young was among college football’s most accurate quarterbacks in the short areas, over the first eight to 10 yards, over the middle, with a completion percentage to match. It showed that in the forest of linemen, and with all the traffic in the middle of the field, Young could create vision through movement and awareness, the same way Drew Brees once could.

So with all that work complete, there was only one thing left to do.

Shortly after 8 p.m. ET Thursday, Roger Goodell announced the start of the draft as Fitterer, Reich, the Teppers and all the Panthers coaches and scouts watched on TV. The league had asked that they wait at least five minutes. So with five of the allotted 10 minutes left, Fitterer said to the room, All right, let’s turn in the name, before pausing and letting the whole thing go:

Bryce Young.

The significance of that moment wasn’t lost on anyone in the room.

Neither was how obvious, by then, the decision had become.