Bears agree to terms with center Drew Dalman on 3-year deal worth $42 million: Source
Drew Dalman and the Chicago Bears agreed to terms on a three-year deal worth $42 million, with $28 million of that being guaranteed, according to a league source.
Dalman was the top center on the market — the only center to place inside the top 70 of The Athletic's updated list of the top 150 free agents — and ranked 15th on the overall list. A fourth-round pick out of Stanford in the 2021 NFL Draft, Dalman spent the first four years of his career with the Atlanta Falcons.
Advertisement
In 2022, Dalman started every game at center for the Falcons. Over the last two seasons, the 26-year-old missed 11 games due to injury. An ankle injury sidelined him for eight games in 2024. Despite the injury, Dalman ranked fourth among centers in run blocking, according to Pro Football Focus. He also did not allow any sacks in nine games. The 6-foot-3, 305-pounder's strength is in zone run blocking schemes.
Dalman is the son of retired San Francisco 49ers offensive lineman Chris Dalman. His dad played seven seasons with the 49ers (1993-1999) — starting at right guard and center — and was part of the Super Bowl XXIX-winning squad.
This story will be updated.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Times
an hour ago
- New York Times
Casey Schmitt contributes as Giants' win streak reaches seven games
DENVER — Tristan Beck received the most thankless assignment you can give to a major-league reliever: enter a game at Coors Field trailing by a run and try to keep it close. Three batters in, Beck was already pitching from his heels. He had allowed one run and only recorded a second out because the Colorado Rockies ran their way into it. When he threw a breaking ball that actually moved according to its designs, the Rockies' Keston Hiura snuck his barrel to it and hit a hard grounder that hugged the third-base line. Beck whirled around, saw the ball skipping over the bag and assumed his inning was becoming a war of attrition. Advertisement That's when third baseman Casey Schmitt made a lunging grab while staying on his feet. As his momentum carried him into foul territory, he flung a throw across his body that arrived true, in time and without so much as a hop to first baseman Jerar Encarnacion. 'I gotta admit it,' Beck said. 'I had to double-check who that was back there.' It will be no easy feat for the Giants to replace any element of Matt Chapman's game while he recovers from a sprained right hand. He's one of the league's smartest and tidiest baserunners. He is their leading home run hitter. And, of course, he's a five-time Gold Glove winner whose defensive skills annually account for a significant portion of his Wins Above Replacement. Chapman's defense should be the most irreplaceable aspect of his game. Instead, it might be the area where the Giants have the most coverage. Schmitt, a gifted defender, turned heads with his sparkling play in the fifth inning. Then he made contributions to a pair of late rallies as the Giants scored four runs in the eighth inning and three more in the ninth while storming to a 10-7 victory over the Rockies Wednesday night. It was the Giants' 20th come-from-behind win of the season. 'notha comeback in Colorado! — SFGiants (@SFGiants) June 12, 2025 Schmitt drew an eight-pitch walk in the eighth that set up Mike Yastrzemski's tying, two-run double. Then Schmitt scored the tiebreaking run following a replay reversal when he sprinted home on Tyler Fitzgerald's safety squeeze and slid a hand across the plate barely ahead of the tag. At that point, the Giants were set up to win their seventh consecutive game by a one-run margin, which would have matched the 1927 Chicago Cubs for the longest streak in major-league history. But it's a good thing they didn't stop there. They scored three more in the ninth and Schmitt knocked in one of them with a single up the middle. Advertisement Camilo Doval needed the extra cushion in the bottom of the ninth. He served up a solo home run to Hunter Goodman and the Rockies brought the tying run to the plate before Orlando Arcia tapped to the mound to end it. The streak of one-run victories might be over, but the winning habit continues. The Giants are a season-best 12 games over .500, just a half-game behind the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL West, and they will have a theoretical chance to dislodge their archrivals when they arrive at Chavez Ravine this weekend to begin a three-game series. The three-run victory didn't release much pressure, though. 'Well, it still came down to the last pitch,' Giants manager Bob Melvin said. 'So I won't necessarily say this was a laugher.' Every pitch seems to matter more at Coors Field, where attrition is a way of life. Schmitt's defensive play had the underrated impact of saving Beck from throwing more pitches in the fifth inning, which otherwise might have prevented him from completing the sixth and seventh. The Giants dealt with the opposite effect earlier in the game when a missed-catch error on Encarnacion compounded a labor-intensive third inning for Robbie Ray, in which the left-hander was charged with four runs (two earned) and threw 34 pitches. 'It just drains you,' said Ray, who was lifted after throwing 93 pitches in four innings. 'More than at normal altitude. Any time you have to throw that many pitches in an inning, regardless of where you are, it's tough. But when you're here, it just takes more out of you.' So when a defensive gem like Schmitt's ends an inning here and allows everyone to get back to the dugout? 'Oh, a hundred percent, it's huge,' Beck said. 'Any pitcher will tell you what it's like here. Any chance you get to have a ball fielded and make a play like that, it's so important. That's one of the better plays I've seen behind me in my career. We all knew Casey could do that. Obviously, we're a little used to it with Chappy over there on the regular. But we know Casey can, too.' What a play by Casey Schmitt 🤯 — SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) June 12, 2025 Schmitt became the best defensive infielder in the Giants' farm system from the moment the club took him in the second round of the 2020 draft out of San Diego State. But every avenue to playing time on the left side of the infield appeared impassable at the end of last year when the Giants agreed to a six-year, $151 million extension with Chapman and then signed shortstop Willy Adames to a seven-year, $182 million free-agent contract. Both Chapman and Adames pride themselves on playing 150-plus games and have to be cajoled into taking a day off. When spring training began, it was unclear what future Schmitt might have in the organization. Advertisement Schmitt made the opening day roster anyway, in a utility role. Then he added to his value when he turned himself into an above-average first baseman seemingly overnight. Now he's expected to receive an extended run of playing time while Chapman recovers — a process that is likely to extend into July. Even though Schmitt acknowledged that he is merely holding down the fort at third base, there's plenty more at stake for him. It's not impossible to envision Schmitt parlaying this opportunity into unseating Fitzgerald, who is in the midst of an inconsistent season at the plate and ran into another out on the basepaths on Wednesday. While Fitzgerald has played a credible second base, he cannot match Schmitt's arm strength or tagging skills, either. If Schmitt can combine better situational at-bats with his defense, then the Giants will be tempted to find a way to keep him in the lineup even after Chapman returns. 'That was huge, (fouling off) breaking ball after breaking ball and taking a fastball on the last pitch,' said Melvin, describing Schmitt's walk against right-hander Tyler Kinley in the eighth. 'It's a great opportunity for him. He's got a real opportunity to do some good things while Chappy is out. We're lucky to have him.' Does it help Schmitt to relax knowing he'll be in the lineup virtually every day for at least a couple weeks? 'I guess so, but I know my role,' he said. 'We all can't wait for (Chapman) to come back to doing his thing here. We're counting down the days.' The Giants also have been counting the days until Adames began to make an impact at the plate following two slow and challenging months. Perhaps these first two games in Denver will be the start of something. Adames hit a home run for the second consecutive game and finished a triple short of the cycle, singling to ignite the four-run rally in the eighth and doubling to help set up the three-run ninth. Advertisement His two-run home run gave the Giants a quick lead in the first inning. He also contributed a sacrifice fly. Arcia took away a potential fourth hit at third base in the fifth. Whether the margin of victory was one run or three, the Giants continued to do just enough to cover up their mistakes. Encarnacion's error in the third might have been the most glaring, but the coaching staff also blundered when Melvin failed to signal in time for a replay challenge on a blown call that ended the seventh inning. It was the second mea culpa of the series for Melvin, who acknowledged on Tuesday that he shouldn't have sent reliever Spencer Bivens out for a third inning. Maybe it didn't feel like the Giants had breathing room when Doval recorded the final out, but the three-run margin meant that the Giants would not equal the all-time one-run margin of victory record. The Cubs set that mark in a season in which they added a new upper deck above the third base stands at Wrigley Field (one year after the name had been changed from Cubs Park) and became the first National League team to draw 1 million fans. The seventh of those one-run triumphs came June 12, 1927, against the New York Giants when Charlie Root retired Rogers Hornsby to seal a 7-6 victory and delight an overflow crowd that spilled onto the grass and required the use of a boundary rope in the outfield. How long ago did the Cubs fashion that streak? The headline in the New York Times the next morning was: 'New York in Holiday Mood Greets Lindbergh Today' It astounded the nation when Charles Lindbergh climbed into the cockpit of the Spirit of St. Louis and crossed the Atlantic. Bet he couldn't throw a scoreless relief inning at Coors Field, though.
San Francisco Chronicle
2 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Stanford, Cal eye ‘the end of amateurism' in new revenue-sharing era
Nearly three months before the start of college football season, on May 31 and June 1, two sellout crowds totaling about 90,000 people flooded into Stanford Stadium. They came to see Coldplay, the first live concert ever held at the on-campus facility. The timing was hardly coincidental. One week later, last Friday, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken formally approved the long-anticipated House settlement. That $2.8 billion agreement, to settle three antitrust lawsuits against the NCAA and Power Five conferences, officially ushered in a new era of major-college sports, with schools now permitted to directly share revenue with student-athletes. And sharing revenue for the first time means finding new revenue. That helps explain how Coldplay landed on stage at Stanford, bringing its 'Music of the Spheres' world tour to the same venue where John Elway, Andrew Luck and Christian McCaffrey once performed. 'It was an inspiring example of what our campus can pull off,' Stanford interim athletic director Alden Mitchell said in a Chronicle interview Wednesday. 'And it's a great positive from a financial perspective.' Cal and other Bay Area athletic programs no doubt will also try to tap fresh revenue streams, in one form or another. Donor fundraising, rising the past four years with the proliferation of name, image and likeness (NIL) deals for college athletes, can stretch only so far. The new expenses are significant: Friday's landmark approval allows schools to share up to an estimated $20.5 million in revenue in the 2025-26 fiscal year, starting July 1. That limit initially will rise by 4% annually, to $21.3 million the next year and $22.2 million the year after that. Cal and Stanford are not required to spend the maximum amount, essentially a salary cap. But they realistically must hit the cap to compete with their Atlantic Coast Conference opponents. This leaves athletic department leaders expanding already-strapped budgets, with a full menu of sports (36 for Stanford and 30 for Cal). Mitchell, who joined Stanford last year as chief operating officer, hopes to implement a new structure in ways 'that keep college sports special for student-athletes, and distinct from pro sports.' That's a challenging quest on a landscape now dominated by chatter about money, money and more money. 'It is fair to say we're living through the end of amateurism as we know it,' Mitchell said. The transformation creates more questions than answers on the Bay Area scene. Will revenue-sharing make it even more difficult for Cal and Stanford to keep pace with their ACC rivals in football and basketball? How much will San Jose State spend at a time when one CSU campus (Sacramento State) is ramping up and another (Sonoma State) is eliminating athletics entirely? And how will St. Mary's, USF and Santa Clara — schools without football programs but Division I in basketball and other sports — compete with deeper-pocketed foes from larger conferences? The Gaels offer an interesting case, given their perpetual and uncommon success in men's hoops. They made the NCAA Tournament again this past season, beating Vanderbilt in the first round before falling to Alabama, another SEC team, in the round of 32. Mike Matoso, vice president of intercollegiate athletics at St. Mary's, acknowledged his school is prepared to participate in the revenue-sharing era — but not with the resources of bigger schools, which figure to quickly reach $20.5 million. Matoso described St. Mary's as more of a 'Moneyball' operation, trying to find undervalued assets the way former Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane once did. 'I don't want to go into numbers, but we're not knocking on the door,' Matoso said of the $20.5 million ceiling. 'Nobody at our level (size) is coming close to numbers like that.' One question the Power Five commissioners addressed this week, in a video news conference with reporters, was the expected distribution of revenue sharing. They suggested each school will decide how to allocate revenue to its various sports programs. Most are expected to devote approximately 75% of their spending to football (pending any Title IX challenges), given the outsized money it generates in media contracts. About 20% would go to men's and women's basketball, and 5% to other sports. Neither Cal deputy athletic director Jay Larson nor Stanford's Mitchell specified how they plan to divide revenue-sharing among their various teams. Mitchell called the information 'proprietary' and Larson said Cal has a framework 'within the national norm.' Make no mistake: The norm revolves around football, the economic engine fueling this whole revolution. 'I think everyone realizes how critical it is for there to be investment in football and basketball programs,' Larson said. 'But many schools around the country have a proud tradition of Olympic sports programs, and Cal is one of them. We want and need those programs to succeed.' Stanford also boasts a long history of success in Olympic sports. That means school officials must balance the need to resuscitate their sagging football program — see Luck's appointment as general manager — with the desire to support swimming, water polo and other 'non-revenue' sports. As Mitchell put it, 'Ensuring we're not depriving those sports of oxygen is incredibly important.' Larson and other Cal athletic department leaders met with their head coaches several times over the past two months, in anticipation of Friday's news. They learned most coaches of Olympic sports desire new scholarships more than NIL funding or revenue to share. That's another notable element of the new world order: NCAA scholarship limits vanish July 1. Baseball, for example, could offer only 11.7 scholarships in the old system, divided among all players. Now the scholarship cap will increase to 34. This doesn't mean Cal, Stanford or St. Mary's — fresh off its first NCAA Tournament baseball victory in school history — will immediately offer 34 full scholarships in baseball. But they need to 'strategically' add scholarships in sports other than football and basketball, to borrow Mitchell's word, to stay competitive in recruiting. There are a lot of mouths to feed, so to speak, with more than 850 athletes at Stanford and an estimated 820 at Cal. Larson and Mitchell both welcomed the establishment of the new College Sports Commission, led by former MLB executive Bryan Seeley. That independent group will oversee enforcement of the reshaped rules governing college sports, to make sure schools aren't circumventing the salary cap by arranging outside deals for athletes. At least it's an effort to monitor the marketplace, after a chaotic stretch while those antitrust cases worked their way through the legal system. 'An unregulated market tends to favor those with the most resources, and I think we saw that play out the last couple of years,' Larson said. 'A regulated market allows for more competitive balance, and many people in our enterprise want to see it get there. … 'We'd like to see games decided on the field, by players and coaches, and not necessarily by who's writing the biggest checks. That's why the enforcement part of this is so critical.' Friday's approval of the House settlement not only marginalizes the NCAA on enforcement, it also shifts the NIL burden from 'collectives' to the schools themselves. Kevin Kennedy, president of the California Legends Collective — which raised money to benefit Cal athletes — announced his group will suspend operations at the end of June. So now it falls on Cal officials to find and spend more than $20 million to keep pace. That will include exploring new avenues to generate revenue, one source said, including potentially trying to better monetize Memorial Stadium. Worth noting: The school is still paying off its massive debt on the seismic retrofit and renovation of the stadium in 2010-12. That plunged the athletic department more than $440 million into debt, though the campus took over about $238 million in 2018. Cal's rival down the road monetized its stadium with Coldplay, and Mitchell said Stanford officials are working on booking more concerts. They're not alone: Last month, the University of Toledo's football stadium hosted its first major concert in 31 years. Clearly, the new reality in college sports is forcing campus leaders to think in a new way. 'Concerts are the most extreme example, but our competitive venues are often empty,' Mitchell said. 'That's something we're thinking about a lot.'
USA Today
2 hours ago
- USA Today
The 'church pew' bunker at Oakmont for the U.S. Open, explained: History, facts
The 'church pew' bunker at Oakmont for the U.S. Open, explained: History, facts Oakmont is setting up to be a tough U.S. Open test that, as always, will make golfers suffer through some of the gnarliest rough and beyond. That includes one of the quirkier challenges you'll see at this tournament: the "church pew" bunker that's between the third and fourth fairway at the Pennsylvania course that's hosting golf's toughest test. You're going to hear about it all week and stare at it, wondering how the heck someone came up with a bunker that has little hills built into it. Hit it in there and you might be facing disaster. What's the history? What's with the name? All of that will be explained for you: What is the church pew bunker at the U.S. Open? Again: it's between the third and fourth fairway. Here's more from Golfweek: This beast of a bunker spans 26,000 feet, 109-yards long and 42- yards wide, three-feet tall and 550 tons of sand. And for the 125th U.S. Open, there will be 13 pews. What are the church pews at Oakmont made of? They're berms of dirt and grass. Who built the church pews at Oakmont? What we do know: back in 1903, there were six bunkers on the left at No. 3, but those were then converted into one giant bunker with six "pews." Over the years, the bunker has expanded and pews were added. More from The Athletic: With the pews tracing back to the years between the 1927 and 1935 U.S. Opens, there is a working theory that they were not a creation of [founder] Henry Fownes himself, but rather his son, William C. Fownes. At the time, W.C. was one of the best amateurs in Western Pennsylvania, competing frequently. Every year, he teed it up in one particular tournament in Atlantic City, New Jersey. And en route to that event, either traveling via the turnpike or the train, he would stop in Philadelphia and stay with his sister, Amelia. How hard is it to hit a shot out of the church pews? For that, we need Johnson Wagner to show you: So, uh, good luck with all that, golfers.
