Michigan football secures a pair of commits over Georgia, Texas, and SMU
Michigan football secured a pair of commits over Georgia, Texas, and SMU. The Wolverines are coming off an uneven season under first-year head coach Sherrone Moore that ended on a high note. Last year's squad certainly did not live up to its preseason ranking of No. 9, but it won its last three games, including stunning upsets over Ohio State and in the bowl game against Alabama. The program has carried that momentum over to the recruiting sphere with the sixth-ranked class for 2025 and the current eleventh-ranked class for 2026.
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The Wolverines have added to the 2026 class first with the commitment of 4-star offensive tackle Malakai Lee. On3 national recruiting/transfer portal reporter Hayes Fawcett confirmed the news. Additionally, Michigan was able to secure the commitment of Class of 2026 linebacker Markel Dabney, who had previously committed to SMU. Both will be critical to the growth of this program, as it looks to return to its championship-contending ways just one season off winning a national title.
It will likely be a new era under center for the Wolverines, with 5-star recruit Bryce Underwood coming in. The Belleville, Michigan native was the No. 1 overall prospect in his class and projects to be a superstar on the college level. Underwood went through some growing pains during the Spring Game, but his talent is undeniable, and it'll be a tall task to beat him out in this quarterback competition.
Sherrone Moore's team struggled at this position in 2024 and will need more production to become a Big Ten contender again. The conference is projected to be stacked once again, with teams like Ohio State, Penn State, and Oregon entering 2025 with championship-caliber rosters. Out of those three, the Wolverines will only take on the Buckeyes in their annual showdown.
Another game that stands out on the schedule includes an early-season clash at Oklahoma. The Sooners are set to be much-improved from last year's team after adding highly coveted transfer quarterback John Mateer. Overall, on paper, this slate of games gives Michigan a good chance to increase its win total from last season. And the more victories that Sherrone Moore and company can pick up, the more coveted recruits like Malakai Lee will commit to the program.
Related: Tennessee football laps SEC rivals on recruiting scene with pair of key commitments
Related: Clemson football's Cade Klubnik reflects on return to Manning Passing Academy
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New York Times
a minute ago
- New York Times
Carlos Correa had many reasons to approve trade back to Houston, including a position change
HOUSTON — Every offseason, Carlos Correa organizes a game night. Some of his closest friends gather at his Houston home for fellowship and maybe some fierce competition. A new attendee this winter brought Correa's career full circle. Correa met Jeremy Peña during his final season with the Houston Astros and helped groom him as his heir apparent, but the two men never got much closer than that. Advertisement This offseason, though, the two shortstops started training together, a partnership Peña credits for a breakout season that has put him on the precipice of superstardom. Part of their bond included Correa inviting Peña to play some games. 'We had a great time,' Correa told The Athletic on Thursday night. 'We're great friends. We've built a great relationship.' Now, after a transformational trade on Thursday afternoon, the two men are teammates. Peña is expected to be activated off the injured list and start at shortstop on Friday night at Fenway Park. To his right could be Correa, the man he once replaced at shortstop and, now, one with whom he will share the left side of the infield. Correa's stunning return to Houston is another accentuation of owner Jim Crane's aggression at the trade deadline and a jolt for a clubhouse that needed it. The Astros and their depth-starved lineup lost 12 of the 19 games that preceded the deadline, finally unable to withstand the weight of a major-league high 17 players residing on the injured list. General manager Dana Brown entered the trade deadline 'prioritizing the bats' to reinforce an offense missing five of the nine players from its Opening Day lineup. Other hitters with more encouraging statistics or lower salaries were available, but none had Correa's cachet or contagious presence. 'He (will) give our clubhouse a charge, give the city a charge,' Brown said on Thursday. A seller's market meant trouble for an Astros team that, according to Baseball America's most recent update, has zero top-100 prospects. Infielder Brice Matthews is still among MLB Pipeline's top 100, but it's difficult to envision Brown parting with the first draft pick of his tenure as Houston's general manager. 'That was probably part of the reason we didn't do much more on the pitching side,' Brown said. 'We thought some of the prices were high. We didn't want to mortgage the future. Pound what we could pound with the bats and allow what we have coming back from the pitching side to be a part of it.' Advertisement In lieu of mortgaging the future, Crane absorbed all but $30 million of Correa's contract. To acquire Jesús Sánchez, Houston did part with touted infield prospect Chase Jaworsky, whom The Athletic's Keith Law ranked No. 7 in his preseason organizational rankings, but otherwise kept its precious few top-end prospects within the organization. Sánchez profiles as a left-handed hitting platoon partner with rookie Cam Smith in right field. Starting Sánchez against most righties makes sense with the roster in its current state. At full strength, though, Smith will continue to get a majority of the playing time. Finding a more permanent lineup fixture felt mandatory. Finding one with an .860 OPS across 358 postseason plate appearances only sweetened the deal. 'I always try to operate in the present and in the future because our philosophy here, led by Jim Crane, is that the window is always open,' Brown said. 'We laid focus on that.' Crane's influence in completing the trade for Correa can't be overstated, nor can the Minnesota Twins' state of flux. A salary dump onto an owner willing to take it — and for the only team Correa would waive his no-trade clause to join — created one of the wildest days during a golden era Correa helped to produce. 'I'm very excited to play with this group of guys that I know, to try to win championships every year,' Correa said. Correa is not the dominant player who departed Houston after the 2021 season. According to Baseball-Reference, he finished a 450-game Twins career worth 10.4 wins above replacement. He was worth 7.3 in his final season as an Astro, part of a 34-bWAR career that already cemented him as one of the franchise's most consequential players. Injuries hampered Correa in Minnesota, even until his final days. Correa left Tuesday's game with a migraine and did not start on Wednesday while undergoing imaging for issues related to the headaches. Asked on Thursday how he felt physically, Correa said, 'Great. Perfect. In a great spot.' While with the Twins, Correa spent time on the injured list due to oblique and foot injuries. Both the San Francisco Giants and New York Mets had agreed to sign him for $300 million, only to back out due to concerns about his surgically repaired right ankle. 'This year, he's been posting, so we feel good about that,' Brown said of Correa, who appeared in 93 of the Twins' first 108 games, but with just a 92 OPS+ and .386 slugging percentage. Correa's 29.8 percent chase rate is his highest in a 162-game season since his rookie year. Advertisement Correa has become susceptible to sliders, hitting .184 with a 40.2 percent whiff rate against a pitch he pounded in 2024. Correa hit .389 against sliders last season, one where he saw a higher percentage of the pitch than he is this year. 'Getting him back into a familiar ballpark, which is a hitter-friendly ballpark, and with some familiar faces and familiar coaches, we felt like we were going to get a boost from that and a boost of more energy,' Brown said. Perhaps the change of scenery will spur Correa, who just witnessed a complete collapse in Minnesota while, along with Byron Buxton, existing as the focal point of the Twins' lineup. He isn't going to sneak up on anyone with the Astros, but will be surrounded by the likes of Peña, Jose Altuve and Yordan Alvarez, presuming he ever returns from a fractured right hand. That Correa will play a new position is perhaps the least concerning aspect of this entire ordeal. His transition to third base should be seamless, especially for someone with one of the sport's strongest throwing arms and best range. 'I've been asking the Twins to play third base for the last two years,' Correa said. 'But it was not aligning because of how we were constructed. When (Twins general manager Derek Falvey) told me the Astros wanted me for third base, I was like, that would be perfect.' Perfect for an Astros team with a budding superstar in Peña at shortstop, someone who learned from the man he'll now work alongside. (Photo of Carlos Correa from before Game 2 of the 2021 ALCS: Carmen Mandato / Getty Images)
New York Times
a minute ago
- New York Times
On a trade deadline day that called for action, the Cubs hugged their prospects tight
CHICAGO — If you were looking for a blockbuster trade deadline, you came to the wrong city. Try San Diego or Houston. On Thursday, the Cubs played it safe, while the White Sox tried to muster some enthusiasm about another season of Luis Robert Jr. Meanwhile, Chicago just collectively shook its head and asked when the Bears' first preseason game is. Advertisement All that time spent coming up with fake trades was wasted. It's fair to say the best addition by either team at the deadline was when Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer swung a deal for 'super-utilityman' Willi Castro. The White Sox, who have used a hot streak to vault from the second-worst record in baseball to the second-worst record in baseball, made just two deals in the last two days. The Cubs made a handful of moves but didn't address their most obvious need: starting pitching. Sox general manager Chris Getz's only real trade chip was rental starting pitcher Adrian Houser. While he apparently had conversations with his friend Hoyer about another crosstown deal, it didn't happen. The Cubs and Sox almost had a trade for Adrian Hauser. ' We worked really hard but didn't quite get there.'Hoyer told me. Getz confirmed that they had conversations up to 30 min before the said he thought they were close for the prospects they asked for. — Bruce Levine (@MLBBruceLevine) August 1, 2025 Once I saw that Getz traded Houser to the savvy Tampa Bay Rays, I figured he probably lost the deal. In return for Houser, Getz got a former top prospect in Curtis Mead and two Triple-A relievers. The Charlotte Knights improved with this deal, but I'm not so sure about the White Sox. The easy comparison, and one Getz himself made, was to his deadline deal last year when he picked up Miguel Vargas from the Los Angeles Dodgers. Vargas looked like he had never previously hit a baseball last season. This season, he is only slightly below average offensively, which is a massive improvement. Another year, another project. (Getz also got a minor-league pitcher from the Yankees for outfielder Austin Slater.) The big news on Thursday was that Getz couldn't swing a trade of Robert, his former All-Star. It wasn't that big of a surprise considering how Robert has played for most of the season. Though he has heated up lately, no smart GM would trade top prospects for such an unsure thing. Unfortunately for Getz, most of the dumb ones aren't running teams in playoff contention. Advertisement In the wake of this failure, Getz tried to express his utmost faith in Robert, who has been unreliable and unproductive for the past two seasons. 'It starts with Luis and how we feel about him,' he said. 'You look at what he's done in the last month or so and he's impacting the game in so many different ways, which speaks to the talent he has. We believe in Luis Robert.' We believe in Luis Robert … until next season, when we try desperately to trade him again. First, they have to pick up his $20 million option, which might give Jerry Reinsdorf some agita, but it's a bet they have to make. OK, that's enough White Sox. The Cubs were the team with the most to gain this week and their results are mixed at best. At worst, this was a failure. If we can meet in the middle, it was a missed opportunity. Hoyer got swingman Michael Soroka on Wednesday and added relievers Andrew Kittredge and Taylor Rogers on Thursday. And if they weren't going to swing for the fences with Eugenio Suárez, Castro was a perfect addition for their needs. He can play multiple positions in the infield and outfield. He's the kind of guy that playoff teams get at the deadline. As for the pitchers, well, we'll see. Relievers are a volatile bunch. I trust the Cubs' pitching department, but none of these guys are Mason Miller or Jhoan Duran. And aside from Soroka, who will probably be slotted into the bullpen down the stretch, they aren't starters. Early Thursday evening, Hoyer walked into a second-floor conference room where the media was holed up to address his trade deadline moves and lack thereof. He wasn't thrilled to see a news conference setup. If he landed a top starter, he would've done cartwheels to the backdrop and lectern. Instead, Hoyer had to address his missed opportunity to find a starter for a beleaguered rotation. Sure, Jameson Taillon and Javier Assad could be close to returning from their injury rehabs. But this is a team that desperately needed a proven starter not only for October, but also to help hold off the Brewers, who are currently in first place in the NL Central. 'The goal is to be good every year … the goal is not to have massive up-and-down cycles.' – Jed Hoyer — Marquee Sports Network (@WatchMarquee) August 1, 2025 Like a lot of baseball execs did Thursday, Hoyer noted the bold-faced names, the starting pitchers with years of control left, weren't traded at all. The teams that kept them wanted the farm in return, so to speak, and Hoyer drew a line in the dirt. 'I think that we obviously worked hard on some guys that I feel like could provide significant impact,' he said. 'In the end, the asking price on those guys would have been so detrimental to our future that we've obviously decided against it.' Advertisement You might call it prospect-hugging, Hoyer calls it responsible stewardship for a franchise he'll be running for the foreseeable future. His contract extension was announced Monday. All that talk about timing to help him at the trade deadline was just more wasted breath. Going into a lame-duck season, Hoyer made a win-now move in the winter when he traded his 2024 top pick, Cam Smith, to Houston for one year of Kyle Tucker. On one hand, it has worked out for both teams. Smith went from prospect to starter for the Astros, and Tucker was looking like an MVP until the last month. But if the Cubs don't do anything this postseason and Tucker walks, it will no longer be looked at as such a win-win deal. That's why the conventional wisdom was that Hoyer would take a couple more big swings at the deadline to try to improve his odds. Now, if Hoyer had to deal multiple top prospects for starters with years of control, and if teams were really asking for Matt Shaw and Cade Horton, you can see why that's a nonstarter for him. 'Whether it's in this offseason or in the past, I think, certainly we've moved top prospects, but the calculus that we have to make is ultimately what is the impact this is making and how many wins are we losing going forward,' he said. But all logic that doesn't make the Cubs' situation any more enviable now or in the future. The Cubs are going to need some luck to make a run in the postseason, and they'll still need to spend money — not chairman Tom Ricketts' favorite thing to do — in the offseason to keep this train moving. It all comes back to money. If the Cubs had paid up for Alex Bregman in the offseason or spent more money on pitching — aside from Matthew Boyd's bargain of a deal — then Hoyer wouldn't be in the position to worry about the price of deadline poker. Advertisement But that's not the Cubs' reality, and Hoyer is left trying to toe the line between the present and the future. 'I think the job is to make the best decisions for the organization,' he said. 'And there's times that's focused on just right now and there's times that's focused on the future. And those are the conversations we have every day. So we try to be as unemotional about those as possible.' In related news, the Cubs DFA'd former closer Ryan Pressly to make room for Rogers, the aforementioned reliever acquired from the Pirates. In his last outing in Milwaukee on Tuesday, Pressly gave up a grand slam to Andrew Vaughn to break open a close game. Pressly was one of Hoyer's big acquisitions this offseason, but he didn't pitch up to his reputation and lost his job to Daniel Palencia. Now he's looking for a new place to pitch. Can Rogers and Kittredge help the bullpen survive? Can those two, along with Soroka, be the kinds of 'out-getters' that manager Craig Counsell needs? Will any of the prospects they didn't trade, like Owen Caissie, Kevin Alcantara and Moisés Ballesteros, be the reinforcements the team needs down the stretch? On a day when the Cubs were supposed to get some answers, a lot of questions remain. The most important one — 'Did the Cubs do enough?' — will be answered over the next two to three months. (Photo of Kyle Tucker: Benny Sieu / Imagn Images)
New York Times
a minute ago
- New York Times
Roger Goodell addresses NYC office shooting in emotional interview ahead of NFL Hall of Fame game
As the NFL begins what's annually regarded as one of the premier celebratory weekends of the year, a cloud of sadness hangs over the league during Hall of Fame weekend. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell did not make the trip to Canton, Ohio, for Thursday evening's Hall of Fame Game between the Detroit Lions and Los Angeles Chargers. Instead, he stayed back in New York to attend the funeral of Didarul Islam, the NYPD officer who was one of four people killed earlier this week when Shane Tamura opened fire at the Midtown Manhattan high-rise that houses the NFL headquarters and several other prominent companies. Advertisement 'Tremendous loss,' Goodell said prior to the game in an interview on NBC. 'You see the officer's family, his young children. It's something that happens in the line of work for police officers but that never makes it easy. (He is) somebody who we see outside the building when we come in most every day and it hits home — the loss, the unnecessary and unexplainable loss. It's something that all of us, as New Yorkers, feel great pride in the NYPD and what they do and all the first responders. So, it was a difficult, emotional afternoon, but also a tremendous, heartwarming service for him.' A moment of silence for the four who lost their lives, including NYPD Officer Islam, and for those who survived and are recovering both physically and emotionally from this horrific tragedy. — NFL (@NFL) August 1, 2025 Goodell said he spent an hour in the hospital on Wednesday with Craig Clementi, the NFL employee who was injured in the attack. Goodell said that Clementi is 'stable and improving.' 'We're optimistic about his recovery and I think that's good news for all of us in the NFL,' Goodell said. 'Obviously, our hearts continue to be in support with his family … I think it's something that's really hard for all of us to understand and deal with.' On Monday, Tamura opened fire at the building at 345 Park Ave., killing four people and injuring a fifth before he shot and killed himself. Authorities found a note in Tamura's wallet that, according to The New York Times, criticized the NFL for concealing the sport's safety issues, particularly regarding chronic traumatic encephalopathy. CTE is a degenerative brain disease associated with repeated hits to the head, most commonly found in athletes involved in contact sports such as football. New York City Mayor Eric Adams said authorities believe that Tamura, who was 27 and did not play football beyond high school, was focused on the NFL. Advertisement Goodell was asked Wednesday about his emotions. 'It's a difficult thing, particularly when you're dealing with a senseless act like this,' Goodell said. 'There are no excuses for those senseless acts. They're hard for all of us to understand when it inflicts pain on people you know and people you care about and people that we deal with on a daily basis. That's particularly hard. 'But as you know, these acts of senseless violence and hatred are happening around our country, and our world, far too often — in schools, in churches and in synagogues, and other places,' Goodell added. 'This should just not be happening, but we all have to continue to be vigilant and do what we can to protect ourselves, and the NFL's going to do that with our employees and our people.' In the wake of the shooting, the NFL temporarily closed its office Tuesday, with Goodell writing in a memo that employees should plan to work remotely at least through Aug. 8. The league did not release a public statement on the tragedy until Wednesday. 'The NFL is deeply grateful for the global outpouring of support following the tragic act of violence at the New York City building that houses our league office among other organizations,' the statement said. 'We honor the four innocent lives lost, including NYPD Officer Didarul Islam, whose heroism will never be forgotten. Our thoughts are with the survivors as they begin the difficult journey of physical and emotional recovery. 'The NFL family is resilient and united, and together, we will find strength in one another as we heal.' The deceased victims include Islam, an off-duty police officer working private security at the time, along with Blackstone executive Wesley LePatner, security guard Aland Etienne and Rudin Management associate Julia Hyman. Goodell acknowledged the difficulty of the situation but said that the outpouring of support from all over the world has been 'heartwarming' for the league. Advertisement 'It's good to know that people are behind us,' Goodell said. 'We do believe that the NFL brings people together, and we are going to continue that … it's something that our employees take great pride in.' He added that Thursday's game is 'beginning that process of making sure people can enjoy the National Football League.' 'We're going to put our employees as our primary focus,' Goodell said. 'But we think we can also continue to bring our country together around our game. I think that will be healing, hopefully for our employees but also remember, this attack is far more than on several individuals. This is an attack on humanity, it's an attack on our communities, it's an attack on New York. This is an attack on our way of life. 'All of us have to do more and make sure we're doing everything to get help to people who need help, and also to take the necessary precautions. I assure you, our employees are going to work hard, we're going to carry on, maybe with broken hearts, but we will carry on.'
