Day: October 1, 2026

First-year Browns head coach Todd Monken told everyone who would listen this offseason that he thought he could win in Cleveland. And for the most part, everybody laughed. But nobody is laughing anymore. One month into the season, Monken’s Browns are now in first place in the AFC North after their wild, dramatic, 27-24 win over the Pittsburgh Steelers in Cleveland on Thursday night. It took a 56-yard field goal by Andre Szmyt with 10 seconds left to do it, but the win left the Browns with a 3-1 record. Not bad for a franchise that won a total of eight games over the last two seasons. They have a young, talented team, a confident and fearless coach, and last night it sure looked like they’ve found a quarterback, too. Here are my takeaways from a night where they surely made Pittsburgh’s Mike McCarthy and Aaron Rodgers feel old: When I visited Browns’ training camp this summer, Monken made it clear to me that his main issue was to “find a quarterback.” He seemed to think it might even be a season-long search. But it seems pretty clear that he’s got his guy — at least for the short term. Deshaun Watson was mostly outstanding against the Steelers on Thursday night, completing 24 of 33 passes for 268 yards, with one touchdown and one interception. He was a lot better in the first half than the second, but he was also pretty good at the end of the game, when he went 4 for 5 for 46 yards. Watson has been pretty good all season too, though this was the first time he flashed some of his old potential. For the most part, he was on target, showed off his strong arm, and, maybe most importantly, he almost single-handedly kept the Steelers’ pass rush off-balance, using his mobility to get out of trouble and extend plays. Watson is 31 now and has barely played the last five years, so who knows how long this will last? But he’s coming through when it counts and the Browns are winning, so any thoughts Monken might have had about giving a shot to second-year pro Shedeur Sanders have to be on the back burner now. Back in the summer, Monken seemed ready to ride Watson as far as he could. And right now he doesn’t seem to be slowing down Maybe Sanders will still be the Browns’ quarterback of the future. It’s hard to imagine the Browns would bring Watson back next year under any circumstances once his fully guaranteed $230 million albatross of a contract finally expires. But that’s a problem for later. For now, Watson is giving Cleveland everything it needs. When Aaron Rodgers was leading the Steelers back from a 21-10 deficit in the fourth quarter, he looked like his younger self. He fired a strike down the field to DK Metcalf. He rolled out of the collapsing pocket and threw a 21-yard dart to tight end Darnell Washington for a touchdown. He even threw his 42-year-old body over the middle for a 2-point conversion on a quarterback sneak. It was fantastic to watch. It was just like old times. The problem is, it’s increasingly rare. Rodgers completed 22 of 40 passes for 299 yards, three touchdowns and two interceptions — hardly a good game by his standards. But it’s what is beyond the numbers that really is most alarming. Until he found Metcalf deep in the fourth quarter, he struggled to throw anything beyond 15 yards. Most of his downfield throws were wobbly floaters that were way off target. And even worse, he has become a sitting duck in the pocket. Most of the time when he tries to escape, he looks like he’s running in slow motion. That’s why he took a beating from the Browns defense, which ended up sacking him five times. There are things Rodgers can still do well. He’s got a brilliant football mind and rarely makes a mistake with where he throws the ball. His release is still lightning quick. He also knows how to throw his players open, maybe better than any quarterback in the league. And, as he showed late against the Browns, he’s still clutch. He knows what to do and how to do it when the game is on the line. But his ability to be consistent is shot. His big-play skills are all but gone, only available for an occasional cameo. And that’s turned McCarthy’s attack into something of a predictable, plodding mess that feels like it moves in slow motion. That can be effective — like on their game-opening, 17-play, 78-yard, 9:48-long touchdown drive — but only in small bursts. What they need is a lot more of the Rodgers they saw in the fourth quarter, the one who can move and still fire accurate throws down the field. Unfortunately for them, it just doesn’t look like Rodgers is capable of doing that with any regularity anymore. This has not exactly been the NFL’s best-run franchise in the seven-year reign of general manager Andrew Berry, but he deserves some credit for this: This roster is loaded with good, young, dynamic players on both sides of the ball. If they can solve their long-term quarterback problem, they could be set up to be good for years. But all that youth seems like it’s a bit of a problem right now, because they sometimes play like they’re a bunch of inexperienced kids. The Baby Browns committed 14 penalties on Thursday night, including five (one that was declined) in the final 5.5 minutes. That included a defensive holding that gave the Steelers another shot at the game-tying touchdown, and an offside (by star edge rusher Jared Verse) on the ensuing 2-point conversion. They survived, but it’s not easy to make that many mistakes and still pull a game like this off. Better opponents are going to take advantage of that. It will be the Browns’ undoing if they somehow stay in the playoff race. Make no mistake, though: The kids are good, and they were showing off against the Steelers, particularly on offense. That includes their two terrific rookie receivers, Denzel Boston (4 receptions for 89 yards) and KC Concepcion (5 receptions for 64 yards), and two finds from last year’s draft, tight end Harold Fannin (3 receptions for 27 yards and a touchdown) and running back Quinshon Judkins (17 carries for 53 yards and a touchdown, plus six catches for 43 yards). And on defense, they’ve got a few young impact players, like edge rusher Jared Verse, whom they got in the Myles Garrett trade with the Rams, and linebacker Carson Schwesinger, the reigning Defensive Rookie of the Year. That kind of talent will carry them a long way in the future. The penalties and youthful mistakes, though, will keep holding them back.​Latest Sports News from FOX Sports

Watch out, Dodgers. Here come the triumphant Braves.One night after the Phillies stole Game 2 of the Wild Card series with a late rally and a clutch 10th inning home run, the Braves stepped up at Truist Park in the winner-take-all finale. An unlikely hero opened a bullpen game, Michael Harris II, Ozzie Albies and Matt Olson supplied the power, and Atlanta shut the door on Philly to advance to the NLDS for a date against the two-time defending-champion Dodgers.Here are my takeaways: It’s a do-or-die game, and Don Mattingly’s Phillies put Aaron Nola, their unpredictable right-hander, on the hill instead of Zack Wheeler, their reliable ace. Outside of excessive concerns about Wheeler pitching on short rest, the decision to go with Nola over him made little sense well before the first pitch was thrown.Nola has been the definition of volatile for the Phillies this season, alternating between flashes of brilliant stretches and frustrating spirals. In the first half of the year, Nola produced a 5.75 ERA across 19 starts and 97 innings pitched. In the second half, he recorded a 3.33 ERA in 14 starts and 78 ⅓ innings. So the Phillies were encouraged enough by Nola’s second-half turnaround that they decided he was the better option than Wheeler, who turned in a six-inning, one-run gem against the Rays on Sunday. Going with Nola’s unpredictability was a mistake. The 33-year-old recorded the shortest postseason start of his career on Thursday against the Braves. Nola lasted just 1 ⅔ innings after coughing up a three-run home run to Michael Harris II and putting the Phillies in a 3-0 hole in the first inning.Mattingly finally turned to Wheeler at the top of the third inning, but the damage was already done. Wheeler allowed a two-run home run to Ozzie Albies in the fourth inning, but that was his only blemish. Wheeler ended up pitching four innings before his night was over, so he was clearly OK with pitching on short rest. If your best pitcher is available in an elimination game, you start him. Perhaps the Phillies were saving Wheeler for Game 1 of an NLDS that they never reached. Mattingly and the Phillies learned that lesson the hard way. The Braves pitching staff has been remarkable this season, serving as the primary engine behind the club’s strong season. Despite the revolving door of injuries to the rotation and bullpen, Atlanta’s pitching staff finished the season with the fifth-best ERA (3.63) in the major leagues. Most teams would collapse after losing 4–5 starting pitchers, but the Braves depth pieces and next-man-up mentality kept them elite. So it was no surprise that when the Braves called on 32-year-old southpaw Ray Kerr to take the mound in Thursday’s elimination game, he delivered. Kerr grew up in foster care, then later worked at a 7-Eleven and a movie theater in Reno, Nev., before the Mariners offered him a minor-league contract in 2017. After getting traded to the Padres for a cup of coffee, Kerr joined the Braves in 2024, and pitched in just 10 games before undergoing Tommy John surgery. He finally made it back to the mound in August this season and recorded a 1.47 ERA in nine games (one start) before he received the nod to start Thursday’s elimination game for Atlanta. In the most important outing of his career to date, Kerr held the Phillies to 3 ⅓ scoreless innings while allowing just one hit and one walk and striking out two. Even though he was just the latest pitcher to step up and deliver for these Braves, his performance was still nothing short of special given all that he had to overcome to be there in the first place. Despite the Braves’ early 3-0 lead that soon turned into a 5-0 deficit for the Phillies, the visiting club still created a handful of chances to cash in on runs. Philly just couldn’t get the job done when it mattered most, which has been an unfortunate recent October trend for the club. Their best chance to trim their deficit was in the sixth inning, when Kyle Schwarber lined a one-out single to right field and Bryce Harper followed with a double to put runners on second and third for the Phillies. But the rest of the Phillies’ lineup couldn’t hold up its end of the bargain as Alec Bohm grounded out and Bryson Stott flew out to end the inning and the threat. Again, in the eighth inning, Derek Hill led off the frame with a triple to center. Trea Turner brought Hill home on a sacrifice fly, but that was all the Phillies could muster. With two outs in the eighth, Braves manager Walt Weiss went to his best weapon — a cutthroat Chris Sale sprinting in from the bullpen to face Bryce Harper. Sale struck out Harper on four pitches, with none of those four offerings ever touching the strike zone. Sale took care of business in the ninth and punched Atlanta’s ticket to the NLDS.The Phillies went 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position and left five men on base. Their season, which was on the brink of ending without a wild-card berth after last week’s brutal collapse, finally ended in a whimper at the hands of their division-rival Braves. After multiple disappointing October endings, dating back to when the Phillies lost the Fall Classic to the Astros in 2022, it’s hard to tell where they go from here.​Latest Sports News from FOX Sports

Tucked high in the upper rungs of Michigan Stadium, Eric Brown clasped his hands near his mouth, almost as if to warm them on a cool fall afternoon. His wife, Lesley, stood to his right with the same pose – equally nervous, hands held equally tight, heart palpitations running equally high. The Browns are deeply religious people. Sundays are spent at All Christ Church Nashville before plopping on the couch to watch NFL games or bouncing between any of their five children’s athletic events. They believe firmly in Christ. God has a path for all, they might tell you. Consider their prayers answered. As Hank Brown’s eyes slid from center to left and the shotgun snap hit his hands, Eric and Lesley’s son cocked back the arm that was once deemed not good enough to carry Auburn back to relevancy and rifled a pass to the front left pylon of the end zone below his parents. Toe-tapping with the grace of Baryshnikov, wide receiver Reece Vander Zee perfectly matched his massive mitts to the back-shoulder throw, held on through contact from a Michigan defender and secured the grab through the ground. Iowa 20, Michigan 19. “I just ran as fast as I could to the end zone to celebrate with him,” Hank Brown told me. “I guess at the time, I didn’t really. I mean, I knew the game was over, but people from the sidelines started running and just tackling us. It was just a crazy, crazy experience.” You know the jokes by now. That Iowa football’s best offense might actually be its punter. That the Hawkeyes’ defense might often outscore those charged with, well, scoring points. That, in a college football world of wide-open schemes and downfield passing, head coach Kirk Ferentz might prefer the anti-passing approach of pre-World War II legends like Knute Rockne and Pop Warner. That was before Brown. Iowa marches into Saturday’s home date with No. 5 Ohio State at 4-0 for the first time since 2021. Their quarterback — a one-time SEC castoff and COVID recruit who won a quarterback competition this preseason — is completing nearly 70% of his passes and adds an element the Iowa offense has definitively lacked for the better part of a decade. Of course, this wasn’t always the plan. “He kind of became Hugh [Freeze’s] fall guy to a certain degree,” Brown’s high school coach and Super Bowl champion quarterback Trent Dilfer told me. “I love Hugh. Hugh’s a friend, but I thought that he got a raw deal there. “He very easily could have been the starting quarterback at Auburn doing this, too.” ‘They Know His Name’ There’s an angst all mothers know. It starts in kindergarten, dropping backpacks into a locker in a room surrounded by unicorns and rainbows. It perpetuates into middle school, where pre-pubescence and hormones bring out the worst in us. It prolongs into high school, where cliques run rampant and maturity is marked by one’s ability to avoid trouble and make grades. Is my kid going to make any friends? These scattered thoughts percolated in Lesley Brown’s mind as she sat in the bleachers for Lipscomb Academy’s final scrimmage in the fall of 2020. “As a mom, you’re like, ‘Did we make the right decision moving five kids down here?’” Lesley told me. Hank grew up in the Chicago suburb of Wheaton, Illinois, the same town where Lesley and Eric met years earlier as high school classmates; where Eric was Wheaton College men’s soccer’s all-time leading goalscorer; where Hank — a scrawny late-bloomer and the second-eldest of four boys and a daughter — learned the game. But as the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the country and high school football in Illinois was canceled, Hank was suddenly without a team. Parents and students at Wheaton Warrenville South filed a class-action lawsuit against the Illinois High School Association over the cancellation of fall sports. Those involved even gathered outside the Chicago home of Gov. JB Pritzker to voice concerns that their children would lose scholarship opportunities and that their mental health would be affected. Eric proposed a more dramatic solution: What if the family moved to Tennessee? “We left a town where Les and I both were raised. We lived there. We went to college there. We were raising our kids there. We kind of always kid around like we knew everyone and everything,” he said. “So we moved to this town, Nashville, where we knew no one and nothing.” As the Browns ruminated on the move and looked into schools for their kids, an old college soccer teammate who lived in the area called up Eric and asked if he’d considered Lipscomb Academy. He’d heard of it but didn’t know details — not least that Dilfer had been named its head football coach. Eric and Dilfer connected in the days that followed. A short conversation turned into an hour, and an hour turned into two. Eric loved what he heard. Dilfer loved the idea of a talented signal-caller joining his ranks. The only problem? Lipscomb had an entrenched starter, and Hank would have to play JV football his junior year. “I would have never thought Hank Brown would be the starting quarterback at the University of Iowa when I first met him as a fifth grader,” quipped Greg Holcomb, Brown’s longtime private trainer. “He’d throw a football and be like, ‘Oh yeah, he’ll be all right.’ He’s really done a great job just putting himself around the right people.” “As a quarterback, you want to play young, and you want to play early,” Brown told me. “But, at the same time, you don’t want to play before you’re ready. I was a late-bloomer. I didn’t fully develop even really until I got to college, and he knew that I’d be ready by my senior year to be able to go out there and execute.” Brown was never supposed to have a starring role in Lipscomb’s final scrimmage of the fall. But the program’s starting quarterback picked up an illness before kickoff that shelved him. As did a classmate also battling for the backup quarterback job. That led to Brown. With the poise and precision he’s since flashed in Iowa City, he tossed three touchdowns and nearly 300 yards on the night against a solid Father Ryan squad. The student section — still not all too familiar with the new kid from the Chicago suburbs — started chanting his name. A mother’s fears were swiftly swept away. “I’m just crying,” Lesley conceded. “Not because he played well, [but] because I’m like, ‘Oh my goodness, they know him. They know his name.’” ‘The Guy You Want In The Locker Room’ Hank’s junior year on the JV team at Lipscomb Academy didn’t dissuade recruiters. By spring, he’d cemented himself as the starter for the coming fall, and those coaches who flocked to the school to see his high-profile teammates were suddenly interested in the talented signal-caller by way of Chicago who’d yet to take a truly meaningful snap in Nashville. A six-inch growth spurt helped the equation. As did Dilfer’s tutelage. A three-star recruit, Brown owned around a dozen offers by season’s end. He settled on Liberty and Freeze, drawn in by the coach’s previous work with quarterbacks and the program’s emphasis on faith. That is until Freeze was hired by Auburn in late November. “I took the Auburn job just a few weeks away from signing day, and was debating what to do in the quarterback room — which was not in good shape when I took the job here,” Freeze told me. “Not that you’re depending upon a high school freshman to come in and be the savior, but looking at the options … we all had this sneaking suspicion, whether or not Hank Brown ends up being the guy at Auburn, he is the guy you want in the locker room.” Brown eventually followed Freeze to Auburn, where he was thrust into that aforementioned unsettled quarterback situation. The program hadn’t totally bottomed out under previous head coach Gus Malzahn, but cracks had begun to form. Freeze, a quarterback whisperer since his days at Ole Miss, had a fixation on finding a dynamic signal-caller to run the offense that had given Nick Saban fits before Freeze was thrust out of the SEC under the cloud of scandal. Brown had his moments at Auburn. He completed 7-of-9 passes for 132 yards in the Tigers’ 2023 Music City Bowl appearance. But after a 2024 campaign in which starter Payton Thorne was largely ineffective and Brown was granted limited opportunities, Freeze and his staff decided to dip into the portal for a quarterback ahead of the 2025 season. “I tried like heck,” Freeze said. “I did not want to lose him.” How that was communicated depends on who you ask. Freeze says he made it clear he intended to keep Brown, even if the program brought in another quarterback to compete for the starting job. Eric said he felt there were mixed signals sent between what Freeze said and what Auburn’s general manager shared. The Tigers eventually signed former five-star Oklahoma signee Jackson Arnold as the heir apparent to inherit the starting job from the departed Thorne. By that time, Brown had already called Freeze to tell him he’d decided to enter the transfer portal and seek a starting chance elsewhere. “I’m super close with those coaches at Auburn — even still talk to some of them — but, at the end of the day, it’s part of the sport, especially the past few years, how much it’s changed,” Brown said. “It was a hard conversation, but they understood to an extent what the situation was, but we were also obviously bummed.” Iowa offensive coordinator Tim Lester and Eric Brown hadn’t spoken in 15 or 20 years. That’s life for high school acquaintances. Lester attended Wheaton Warrenville South in the mid-1990s with Brown’s parents, while he credits Hank’s uncle, Jeff — a prolific college quarterback in his own right at Wheaton College — as the reason he wanted to play the position himself. Lester kept enough tabs in his hometown to know about Eric’s son; enough to give Eric a shout when Hank entered the transfer portal; enough that he had already watched Hank’s film out of curiosity. “The first time we talked, I don’t know if we talked about Hank for like a half-hour into the conversation,” Lester joked. The former Western Michigan head coach was also clued into those in Brown’s Auburn orbit. Thorne’s grandfather coached Lester in high school, while his father, Jeff, served as Lester’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 2022. That comfort prompted a swift recruiting process. Brown took in a basketball game in Iowa City on his lone visit after entering the portal. He was committed to the Hawkeyes within five days in December 2024. “Knowing the family and knowing the town that we come from, being a part of this type of culture, I felt strongly [about Brown],” Lester told me. “But they had to feel strongly about wanting to be a part of it.” ‘Nobody Is Surprised’ There’s a blurriness to the immediate aftermath of last week’s win over Michigan. Brown said he raced around the field celebrating with teammates. Eric and Lesley, leaping into the heavens, hugged any willing stranger donning Hawkeyes gear around them in the furthest corners of Michigan Stadium. Back home, youngest brother, Brooks — a prolific 2028 quarterback recruit in his own right — and his high school buddies celebrated in the living room, racing around shirtless, screaming at the top of his lungs. A friend donning a No. 9 Hawkeyes jersey flashed it for the cell phone camera. “Hank Brown is the greatest quarterback!!” they boisterously proclaimed. Dilfer thought back to two signs that hang in his office at Lipscomb Academy that read: “The edge of uncomfortable is where you find greatness,” and “Do hard things because they equal great things.” Brown spent hours in that room during high school. On Sundays after church, he’d whip over to school to comb through the offense with Dilfer and pick his brain on quarterbacking. “This is nothing new,” Dilfer said. “Nobody who knows Hank is surprised. Not one human. Not one teammate. Not his parents. Not his friends. Not his mentors. Nobody is surprised.” That’s paying off in spades for Iowa — where Brown was only officially named the starter over Wake Forest import Jeremy Hecklinski ahead of the Michigan game. Lester said Brown has been more confident in his arm talent in recent months. A few minor tweaks around footwork and throwing motion during bowl practices last fall did wonders. “The only way to get better is to go through hard s—,” Lester said. “That’s the only way. There’s no easy path to being good at anything. He’s (Hank) been through hard.” Even on The Plains last week, they celebrated. Lesley received texts from parents they’d come to know during Hank’s time at Auburn after Iowa’s upset win. In the waning moments before the Tigers kicked off against Vanderbilt that afternoon, Brown’s final pass at Michigan played on the big screen. The whole stadium cheered.​Latest Sports News from FOX Sports