MILAN — Olympic Gold is in sight for the ‘Quad God’ of figure skating. 

Men’s singles at the 2026 Winter Olympics is concluding today, and 21-year-old Ilia Malinin is hunting down the top prize to add to his long list of accolades he’s already earned in his young and already epic career. The U.S. star is sitting in first place — by a comfortable margin of five points — entering the free skate. His program is expected to be stunning, featuring both the quad Axel and the backflip.

Watch Olympics figure skating on Peacock

What time is Olympics figure skating today?

The men’s free skate begins at 1 p.m. ET.

Where to watch Olympics figure skating, Ilia Malinin

Men’s figure skating is airing on USA Network beginning at 1 p.m. ET before the competition switches to NBC starting at 3 p.m. Peacock is steaming it live.

When does Ilia Malinin skate?

There are five groups of skaters, and Malinin goes last in Group 5. He’s set to take the ice around 4:48 p.m. ET.

What makes Ilia Malinin so great? Skaters marveled by the ‘Quad God’

These are the few ways to describe Ilia Malinin, and none of them are an exaggeration. Every sport gets an athlete that redefines everything you know about it. Basketball had Michael Jordan. Football had Tom Brady. Baseball has Shohei Ohtani. 

Now, figure skating has its phenom, and it’s not just fans that are amazed by the 21-year-old. Those who have championed the sport and been through the grind are just as flabbergasted by how he’s turned figure skating upside down.

‘All the skaters that I sit with in the audience, they throw up their hands, and they think, ‘Oh, my God, this guy’s just so amazing,’” 1988 Olympic champion Brian Boitano said on USA TODAY’s Milan Magic podcast.

Now, the entire world has its chance to be the next spectators wowed at the 2026 Winter Olympics. It’s been a journey four years in the making, and in his Olympic debut, Malinin is out to show why he is the present and future of figure skating. 

He already did it in the team event, and now it’s time for him to do it in the men’s singles to become the next great American figure skating champion.

Are backflips allowed in figure skating?

They are now. For nearly 50 years, the backflip was banned in figure skating, after American skater Terry Kubicka became the first one to execute it at the 1976 Innsbruck Games. French skater Surya Bonaly did it at the 1998 Winter Olympics, landing it on one blade, but the move was illegal and she was deducted for it. 

The International Skating Union reversed course and made the move legal in 2024, paving the way for it to be done at the 2026 Winter Olympics, 50 years after it was first done.

Men’s figure skating order

Here is the starting order for today’s free skate.

Group 1

• Yu-Hsiang Li (Chinese Taipei)
• Donovan Carrillo (Mexico)
• Kao Miura (Japan)
• Vladimir Samoilov (Poland)
• Adam Hagara (Slovakia)
• Lukas Britschigi (Switzerland)

Group 2

• Aleksandr Selevko (Estonia)
• Deniss Vasiljevs (Latvia)
• Matteo Rizzo (Italy)
• Nika Egadze (Georgia)
• Maxim Naumov (United States)
• Boyang Jin (China)

Group 3

• Petr Gumennik (Individual neutral athletes)
• Kyrylo Marsak (Ukraine)
• Stephen Gogolev (Canada)
• Shun Sato (Japan)
• Andrew Torgashev (United States)
• Kevin Aymoz (France)

Group 4

• Junhwan Cha (Korea)
• Mikhail Shaidorov (Kazakhstan)
• Daniel Grassl (Italy)
• Adam Siao Him Fa (France)
• Yuma Kagiyama (Japan)
• Ilia Malinin (United States)

In college basketball, about the only thing certain is uncertainty. The final NCAA men’s tournament bracket still won’t be announced for over a month, and it will in all likelihood look quite different from this latest projection from our USA TODAY Sports team of bracketologists.

In just the last few days since our most recent effort, we’ve seen half the teams that were projected as top two seeds lose. That includes Arizona, though the Wildcats are still comfortably on the first line. Iowa State, which lost to a TCU team much farther down the Big 12 standings, will slip back to a No. 3.

The Big Ten shook things up as well. Purdue replaces Nebraska on the No. 2 line as the Boilermakers outlasted the Cornhuskers in overtime. Also falling back is Illinois to a No. 3 seed after the Fighting Illini lost in overtime for the second consecutive game.

In the ACC, Virginia is back in the top 16 as a No. 4 seed, while North Carolina slides a line after losing at Miami. Virginia Tech inched closer to the bubble with a win at Clemson but still has work to do to make the field.

Bracketology: Latest NCAA tournament projection for March Madness

March Madness Last four in

Miami (Fla.), Southern California, San Diego State, UCLA.

March Madness First four out

: New Mexico, Virginia Tech, TCU, Missouri.

NCAA tournament bids conference breakdown

Multi-bid leagues: Big Ten (11), SEC (10), ACC (8) Big 12 (7), Big East (3), West Coast (3), Mountain West (2).

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy – Rich Ruohonen, 54, remembers when curlers smoked cigarettes on the ice.

“All we did was throw rocks and think we could be better,” he said. 

That was a few decades ago, when the oldest American Winter Olympian first started throwing and sweeping stones in Minnesota. Today, curlers rebuff their longstanding reputation as dads with brooms and the bods to match by embracing gym-rat status. The proof is in their clingy jerseys.

Mixed doubles silver medalist Korey Dropkin got catcalled during Team USA’s final game against Sweden. “Show us your biceps!” someone in the stands cried. Dropkin smiled and flexed in their direction.

Not the purpose of Dropkin’s workout regiment, but surely an added bonus for viewers so inclined.

Fitness has become an important aspect of curling over the last decade. It’s especially crucial for sweepers, who pump brooms across the ice to influence a stone’s path to the house. Curling is a game of inches. Millimeters even. So whatever those athletes can do for the most  marginal edge, they will. And fitness is part of that.

“If you don’t look like these guys, this guy in particular,” Ruohonen said, gesturing at front-end player Aidan Oldenburg, “and Korey Dropkin, you aren’t going to win at this level anymore. And you’ll see it in these guys. Every one of them is ripped, and every one of them sweeps their butt off.”

Dropkin is proud to be known as the buff curler who huffs and puffs his way down the ice, sweeping whatever stone his mixed doubles teammate Cory Thiesse threw toward the button.

“Curling isn’t thought to be a very physical sport, and what I’ve really enjoyed is kind of trying to turn the thought process of that,’ Dropkin said. ‘I want to be able to display and demonstrate how physically demanding the sport is, especially the sport of mixed doubles curling.”

Think about it. A stone is thrown, and the sweeper can spend 20-25 seconds clearing its path of tiny bumps on the ice. That work, Dropkin said, can elevate one’s heart rate from double-digit resting to 170 or 180 beats per minute.

Then it’s time to slide or walk to the opposite end of the sheet. Before the next stone is thrown, that heart rate has to fall below 120 again. Or else sacrifices are being made to the precision of the next stone.

“It’s really a high intensity interval workout,” Dropkin told USA Today, “and that’s how I train.”

During the offseason, Dropkin and Oldenburg said the men of USA Curling lift weights about four days a week. Full-body workouts are the focus. They build strength from the legs to the core to the upper body, so curling for a full week at a high level is doable.

Dropkin adds three days of cardio or HIIT (high-intensity interval training) workouts to that. “Just to make sure that I’m covering all my bases,” he said. 

That’s a far cry from the early days of the sport.

Ruohonen’s first Olympic Trials was 1988. Cortina is his first Winter Games.

“I think the physical aspect hasn’t changed across my career as much as it has across Rich’s career,” Oldenburg said, poking fun at his older teammate, “but for me, as a front-end player, sweeping is one of the biggest parts of the game. … The front-end players, they’re all athletes now.

“… There’s so much that we can do with sweeping now. We can make the rocks curl a little bit extra, carry the rocks further, and it affects so much. It allows us to be that… 1-2% better as a team.”

Reach USA TODAY Network sports reporter Payton Titus at ptitus@gannett.com, and follow her on X @petitus25.

There’s a long history in basketball between Duke and North Carolina, the Tobacco Road rivals separated by less than 11 miles.

In women’s basketball, the recent rivalry between the Blue Devils and Tar Heels has been defined by defense. In the last eight meetings between these two teams — where the average margin of victory has been seven points — the winner has scored less than 70 points. In four of those games, the winner has scored less than 50 points.

Last season, fans of women’s basketball were treated to a Sweet 16 meeting between Duke and UNC in Birmingham, Alabama. Instead of a high-scoring, highlight-filled clash, viewers were treated to a rock fight won by the Blue Devils, 47-38.

Fans might see that same sort of intense defensive effort on Sunday (1 p.m., ABC) at Cameron Arena, when the two put their winning streaks on the line in front of a national audience.

This season, both Kara Lawson’s Duke and Courtney Banghart’s North Carolina rank in the top 10 of defensive rating and top 35 in effective field goal defense. Duke has held its last seven opponents under 60 points, while North Carolina has done that to six of its past seven opponents.

Duke has won 15 in a row, while North Carolina has won eight straight.

Here’s the other games to watch in women’s college basketball over the next few days:

Game that could shake up national rankings: South Carolina at LSU

8:30 p.m. ET, Saturday (ABC)

It’s been one-sided, with the Gamecocks winning 17 straight against the Tigers, but this is the premier rivalry in women’s basketball in the SEC. Both programs are led by iconic coaches and have won national championships within the past three seasons. This year, the game has a new wrinkle as a former Gamecock — junior guard MiLaysia Fulwiley — is now playing for the Tigers.

This game is also getting the College GameDay treatment from ESPN, which will feature the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee’s first top 16 seed reveal of the season. Expect South Carolina and LSU to be near the top of the seed list.

Must-watch player matchup: Indiana at UCLA

3 p.m. ET, Saturday (Peacock)

Most women’s basketball fans know all about Lauren Betts, Kiki Rice and the host of other talented players featuring for the Bruins this season, but Shay Ciezki has emerged as one of the top scorers in the country for Indiana. The senior guard is averaging 24.1 points per game, which ranks fifth nationally. She’s also fourth nationally in 3-point shooting, making 46.6% of her attempts from behind the arc. UCLA will put its 18-game win streak on the line as it tried to contain Ciezki.

Mid-major matchup worth watching: Princeton at Columbia

6 p.m. ET, Friday (ESPNU)

The Lions snapped the Tigers’ 15-game win streak two weeks ago by winning 73-67 at Princeton. Currently, Princeton is the only Ivy League team with a realistic shot at getting an at-large bid in the NCAA Tournament, but Columbia is climbing up in the metrics and a second win over the Tigers would be a resume booster. Riley Weiss is a player to watch for the Lions, as she’s averaging 28.2 points per game over her last four outings.

Big stakes for a bubble team: Arizona State at Arizona

2 p.m. ET, Saturday (ESPN+)

Molly Miller’s Sun Devils picked up their 20th win of the season on Wednesday by getting a 10-point victory over Utah, a fellow bubble team. Arizona State needs to keep stacking wins to improve its resume for the NCAA Tournament. The Sun Devils are 48th in NET and 33rd in WAB entering the weekend. They can’t afford a loss to Arizona, which is 132nd in NET.

Sickos game of the week: Northwestern at Penn State

4 p.m. ET, Sunday (BTN)

Since a win over Abilene Christian on Nov. 28, Northwestern has won two games. The same is nearly true for Penn State, which has two victories since a Nov. 30 win over Yale. These teams are not good, but a few players are worth watching: Northwestern’s Caroline Lau leads the nation in assists with 8.8 per game, while Penn State’s Kiyomi McMiller is 15th nationally in scoring with 20.6 points per game.

Also watch…

• UConn at Marquette: 1 p.m. ET, Saturday (FS1)
• Rhode Island at George Mason: 3 p.m. ET, Saturday (ESPN+)
• Maryland at Ohio State: 2 p.m. ET, Sunday (FS1)
• Ole Miss at Kentucky: 2 p.m. ET, Sunday (SEC Network)
• Michigan State at Michigan: 4 p.m. ET, Sunday (FS1)

The Seattle Seahawks emerged the ultimate winner of the 2025 NFL season, but other teams, players and personnel scored some moderate victories of their own.

Only one team typically emerges happy from any given NFL season, as that squad gets to hoist the Lombardi Trophy and enter the offseason as the No. 32 team in the NFL draft order. But not every team enters every season as contenders.

Some are looking to build a foundation, hoping victories will come, as the Tennessee Titans did entering 2025. Of course: man plans and the football gods laugh.

Others enter the season with Super Bowl-or-bust expectations – and end up with a big-time bust instead, as the Buffalo Bills unfortunately found out this season.

There are plenty of winners and losers for any such NFL season. USA TODAY Sports’ NFL experts weigh in on who is the biggest winner and the biggest loser from 2025 below.

Winner: John Schneider

What’s the common denominator between the 2013 Seattle Seahawks, the first team in franchise history to capture the Lombardi Trophy, and the 2025 Seahawks? It wasn’t Pete Carroll. Or Russell Wilson. Or the Legion of Boom … or any player on Seattle’s current roster for that matter. It wasn’t even former owner Paul Allen, who died in 2018. No, the correct answer is GM John Schneider.

Two years ago, he had the foresight to hire defensive-minded head coach Mike Macdonald to combat an offense-centric division. In the past four drafts alone, Schneider has imported starters like G Grey Zabel, S Nick Emmanwori, DT Byron Murphy, TE AJ Barner, DB Devon Witherspoon, WR Jaxon Smith-Njigba, LT Charles Cross and RB Kenneth Walker III, Super Bowl 60’s MVP, among many others. How about the trade deadline deal in November for WR/KR Rashid Shaheed?

But Schneider’s master strokes may have come last March, when he got rid of QB Geno Smith and WR DK Metcalf and brought in WR Cooper Kupp and QB Sam Darnold – hugely important cultural fits and, in Darnold’s case, a massive positional upgrade. Not only are the new-look Seahawks now Super Bowl champions, they appear set up to contend for years to come. Win one more, and maybe Schneider supplants Bo Duke atop your search engine of choice. – Nate Davis

Winner: Sam Darnold

No player has changed their public perception more than Darnold over the last two seasons. He went from draft bust to Pro Bowler to Super Bowl champion. Darnold’s rise from a disappointment early in his career to a Super Bowl champion is a lesson for us all, especially NFL teams. A lot of times, teams give up on quarterbacks prematurely. Additionally, the surrounding circumstances and the coaching staff’s ability to develop quarterbacks greatly affect a QB’s success. We’re quick to place the blame on underperforming QBs, but what about the coaching staff and the environment they’re in? – Tyler Dragon

Winner: Matthew Stafford

Look, picking a non-Sam Darnold or Seahawks winner is hard. Plenty of guys had great seasons, but most of them ended bitterly with playoff losses.

That’s certainly true of Stafford, whose Los Angeles Rams came up just short of beating the Seahawks in the NFC championship game. Still, the veteran quarterback enjoyed the best season of his career in 2025, leading the NFL in both passing yards (4,707) and passing touchdowns (46) while completing 65% of his passes and tossing just eight interceptions.

Stafford’s elite-level performance helped him edge New England Patriots quarterback Drake Maye to earn his first NFL MVP award. The race was the closest since Steve McNair and Peyton Manning were named co-MVPs in 2003; Stafford bested Maye by a count of 366 points to 361 and earned just one more first-place vote than his 23-year-old counterpart.

That MVP award could go a long way when it eventually comes time to discuss Stafford’s Hall of Fame credentials. He now has both an MVP and a Super Bowl win which, when coupled with his top-10 career marks in passing yards and passing touchdowns, could go a long way toward earning him enshrinement in Canton.

And the best part for NFL fans? Stafford announced at the NFL Honors he will be back for another year in 2026 for his age-38 season. That will give the No. 1 overall pick in the 2009 NFL Draft a chance to build upon his career-best season and perhaps get the Rams over the hump one more time before he calls it a career. – Jacob Camenker

Winner: Parity

It’s often said that anyone can win on any given Sunday in the NFL. While that has been true in the regular season, that hasn’t been the case in the postseason when the cream always rises to the top. Prior to Super Bowl 60, five of the last six Super Bowls featured the Kansas City Chiefs.

Of the top 10 preseason favorites to win the final game of the NFL season, five missed the playoffs, three made it to the divisional round and only the Rams got to the conference championships. Instead, it was the teams with the 19th (Seahawks) and 21st (Patriots) best odds of winning the Super Bowl that competed in it, even though neither made the playoffs in 2024.

Things change quickly and every team is one great offseason away from getting into the playoffs. From there, anything can happen. – Nick Brinkerhoff

Winner: Seahawks WR Jaxon Smith-Njigba

Kubiak pushed the third-year wideout to the outside after he played 69% of his snaps from the slot in 2023 under OC Shane Waldron and 83.6% of his snaps inside under Grubb in 2024. Smith-Njigba’s average depth of target leapt from 6.4 yards in 2023 to 9.2 in 2024, then up to 11.7 in 2025 as Kubiak and the Seahawks allowed him to work all three levels of the field.

The result was massive success for Smith-Njigba and the Seahawks’ passing offense. Seattle finished fourth in the league with its 52.7% dropback success rate, and Smith-Njigba was the leading pass-catcher in the NFL with his 1,793 receiving yards. The Ohio State product was a unanimous first-team All-Pro selection for the first time, and he won the Offensive Player of the Year award at the NFL Honors show last week.

To make matters even better, Smith-Njigba’s third season ended with his first trip to the playoffs – and his first Super Bowl ring. His performance in the big game was a bit underwhelming – four catches for 27 yards – but it also came after an outstanding NFC championship performance that included 10 catches for 153 yards and a touchdown.

Another significant note about Smith-Njigba’s excellent season is that he timed it perfectly. Since he’s just completed his third NFL season, he’s eligible to negotiate an extension this offseason. Coming off the season he had, he’s in a great position to get his bag. – Jack McKessy

Winner: Jacksonville Jaguars 

A new era in Duval is underway and has the potential to become one of the NFL’s most fruitful relationships for years to come. Jacksonville won the AFC South with a 13-4 record in its first season after hiring Liam Coen as head coach. 

Last offseason, Jaguars owner Shad Khan decided to part ways with general manager Trent Baalke and reached out directly to Coen, who had previously been rumored to be uninterested in working with Baalke. Coen quickly accepted the role, bringing one of the league’s bright offensive minds on board to help turn around the fortunes of quarterback Trevor Lawrence. 

Jacksonville then appointed James Gladstone as its general manager, making him the youngest (34) to hold that position in the league.

Coen was nominated for Coach of the Year, and Lawrence was an MVP finalist for the first time in his career. A tremendous turnaround, especially given the team’s 4-13 finish in 2024. Coen became the first rookie head coach in NFL history to win more than 12 games after taking over a team that had four or fewer wins the previous season. 

Lawrence failed to live up to the lofty expectations in his first four seasons after some labeled him the best quarterback prospect since Andrew Luck. However, the 26-year-old delivered his best NFL season to date. He finished third in total touchdowns (38), fifth in passing touchdowns (29), sixth in passing yards (4,007), and tied for second in rushing touchdowns (9).

Jacksonville’s defense finished third in expected points added (EPA) per play allowed in 2025, even without their two-way star rookie, Travis Hunter, for a significant portion of the season. In addition to Hunter, Lawrence has a talented supporting cast, including Brian Thomas Jr., Jakobi Meyers, Parker Washington, and Brenton Strange.

The Jaguars will retain highly sought-after Offensive Coordinator Grant Udinski and Defensive Coordinator Anthony Campanile for the 2026 season, solidifying the team’s status as a legitimate contender. The championship window for the Jaguars is wide open. – Tom Viera

Loser: Jerry Jones

Given the way the team generally responded to rookie head coach Brian Schottenheimer, you’d probably have to admit promoting the former offensive coordinator to replace Mike McCarthy last year was probably a good move. Not a good move, in case you forgot: RB Rico Dowdle led Dallas in rushing in 2024 … and didn’t get even a low-ball offer to re-sign in 2025. The Cowboys got a lot of production out of WR George Pickens, whom Jones traded for last spring, but will he even be on the roster in 2026? DE Micah Parsons, a generational pass rusher, certainly won’t be – Jones stripping him from ousted coordinator Matt Eberflus’ defense before making deals for DT Quinnen Williams and LB Logan Wilson – all so the Cowboys could win seven games. Jones freely admits that much of his rhetoric maintains the relevance of America’s Team from an entertainment perspective … just not sure how entertained its fans ultimately were by the on-field product in 2025. – Nate Davis

Loser: Baltimore Ravens

The Ravens were by far the most disappointing team in the NFL this season. Baltimore went from my preseason Super Bowl 60 pick to not making the playoffs at all. The Ravens had a Super Bowl-caliber roster that drastically underperformed. Baltimore started 1-5, Lamar Jackson battled injuries throughout the season and they had the worst pass defense in the AFC. As a consequence, John Harbaugh was given a pink slip. Maybe Harbaugh’s message wasn’t resonating with the team anymore. But Harbaugh didn’t miss a game-winning field goal with a chance to clinch a playoff berth, didn’t allow roughly 250 passing yards per game and didn’t have an AFC-most 12 lost fumbles. It was a disastrous year all around for the Ravens. – Tyler Dragon

Loser: Tennessee Titans

The Titans decided they would be better off without Mike Vrabel following the 2023 NFL season. They hired Brian Callahan to usher in a new era, but he didn’t even last a season and a half in Nashville.

The Titans went just 3-14 in Callahan’s first season and started the 2025 season 1-5 before deciding to move on from him. In total, he posted a .174 winning percentage during his time in Tennessee, marking the 10th-worst winning percentage all-time by an individual to coach at least 20 NFL games.

Making matters worse for the Titans, they watched Vrabel lead the Patriots to a 10-win improvement and an appearance in Super Bowl 60 in his first season in New England. He won the NFL Coach of the Year Award, which served as a bitter reminder of the talent Tennessee gave up on after firing him.

The Titans had a small silver lining, as quarterback Cam Ward made strides near the end of his rookie season. Still, the team seems more likely to be chasing the success it had under Vrabel as it looks to build up around the talented, young signal-caller.

And Tennessee’s decision to hire Robert Saleh – who, like Vrabel, is an energetic, defensive-minded coach known as a culture-builder – may be a direct sign that the organization is at least slightly rueing its decision to end the Vrabel era when it did. – Jacob Camenker

Loser: Buffalo Bills QB Josh Allen

All the stars finally aligned for Allen and the Bills didn’t get the job done. Patrick Mahomes wasn’t in his way this year. Lamar Jackson wasn’t there either. The Bills had the best quarterback in an AFC that was weak, to be brutally honest, or largely unproven, if you want to be nice.

He couldn’t get the Bills over the finish line in Denver during the divisional round, sending Buffalo to another long offseason, and now the Bills appear to be making changes for the sake of making changes – evidenced by the promotion of Joe Brady to head coach after firing Sean McDermott.

Allen and co. will believe there are better days ahead and maybe that’s true, but it’s hard not to wonder if he’s just the next great athlete to be caught in the wrong era. Maybe he’s more Drew Brees and Aaron Rodgers than Tom Brady and Mahomes. – Nick Brinkerhoff

Loser: Minnesota Vikings

Minnesota appeared to fall for the old sunk-cost fallacy when it let quarterback Sam Darnold walk last offseason. The Vikings had just drafted J.J. McCarthy with a top-10 pick in the 2024 NFL Draft. As McCarthy missed his entire rookie season with a knee injury he suffered in the preseason last year, Darnold led the Vikings on a 14-win campaign before losing in the wild-card round of the playoffs. Rather than try to run things back with Darnold, who was hitting free agency, Minnesota opted to see what they had in McCarthy in 2025.

Things fell apart quickly. McCarthy got hurt again, and when he returned, the second-year was just… fine. He often took too long to make throwing decisions, made more than a handful of turnover-worthy plays and took too many sacks.

It would not have been such a bad year for McCarthy and the Vikings if they hadn’t had to see what Darnold was doing with his new team, the Seattle Seahawks. The former Vikings quarterback threw for 4,000 yards and won 14 games for a second season in a row before helping lead Seattle to a Super Bowl title.

The future is murky in Minnesota as well after the team fired general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah in late January. Executive vice president of football operations Rob Brzezinski will be the head of the team’s decision-making until after the draft, when the Vikings can conduct a search for a GM replacement. Reporting in the wake of Adofo-Mensah’s firing points to a variety of reasons for why the team decided to part ways with their ex-GM, but the timing of the decision – days after Darnold and the Seahawks won an NFC title – was notable. – Jack McKessy

Loser: Vikings WR Justin Jefferson

How can arguably the best wide receiver in the NFL be considered the biggest loser? It all ties back to Sam Darnold’s success in 2025. The Minnesota Vikings let Darnold walk in free agency and decided to rely on their 2024 first-round pick, J.J. McCarthy, as their starting quarterback.

In a conversation with USA TODAY Sports after the season, Justin Jefferson expressed his belief that things would have turned out differently in Minnesota if the Vikings had kept Darnold. 

‘Everyone knows the difficulty of the quarterback position this year, how we were dealt it,’ Jefferson told USA TODAY Sports. ‘But having a quarterback that already had a season under his belt with us, knew the plays, knew the playbook, knew the players, throwing to me, Jordan Addison, T.J. Hockenson, all these guys, I definitely feel like we would have done better.’

The two-time All-Pro struggled to find his footing, but it’s commendable that he still managed to catch 84 passes on 141 targets for 1,048 yards and two touchdowns, all of which were career lows. His previous career lows in a healthy season were 88 receptions for 1,400 yards and seven touchdowns as a rookie.

The Vikings used three different quarterbacks throughout the 2025 season, as McCarthy was limited to just 10 games. The others: Carson Wentz and Max Brosmer.

McCarthy’s struggles were evident, ranking 34th in EPA per dropback (-0.34), completing only 57.6% of his passes, amassing 1,632 yards with 11 touchdowns and 12 interceptions. Meanwhile, Darnold threw for 4,048 yards, while his top target, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, earned the 2025 Offensive Player of the Year honors, leading the league with 1,793 receiving yards, 119 receptions, and 10 touchdowns. 

CORTINA d’AMPEZZO, Italy — Breezy Johnson is multi-talented.

In addition to skiing really, really well, the newly minted Olympic downhill champion has gotten really, really good at knitting. She makes a new headband or hat to wear at each race, and she knit hats for many of her family and friends to wear at the Milano Cortina Olympics.

That includes her now fiancé Connor Watkins, who was wearing one of Johnson’s creations Thursday, Feb. 12, when he proposed following the super-G.

Johnson originally learned to knit from her mother. But she got more into it when she got injured ahead of the Beijing Olympics and had time to kill.

‘I started knitting some headbands for myself. I started watching some YouTube videos of fun knitting stitches and things like that, and then started incorporating those,’ Johnson told USA TODAY Sports. ‘Then, it was shortly after I came back from my injuries that I started doing really well. So then it just became a superstition.’

It’s also a stress reliever.

Johnson said knitting helps calm her down before races — something she has in common with British diver Tom Daley, who went viral during the Tokyo Olympics for knitting between dives. Daley even knit himself a pouch to hold his gold medal.

After Johnson won gold, she got a shoutout from her fellow Olympic champion and knitting enthusiast.

‘He’s obviously a huge inspiration of mine, another queer athlete, huge knitter,’ said Johnson, who came out as bisexual in 2022. ‘So hearing from him was really cool.’

Many of Johnson’s current designs have swirls or diagonal stripes on them. The headband she wore for the downhill, for example, was light blue with red-and-white diagonal stripes. Her hat for the super-G was dark blue with red-and-white stripes.

‘I really like swirls and diagonal stuff,’ Johnson said. ‘Things I haven’t seen before.’

Though Johnson gives her creations to her friends and families as gifts, she hopes to auction off that downhill headband to raise money for charity. She has a few options in mind, including Coombs Outdoors in her hometown of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and the Share Winter Foundation, both of which make snow sparts accessible to underserved kids.

‘There’s so many different places that I’ve thought about trying to do something for,’ Johnson said, ‘so we’ll kind of see what strikes me and we’ll go from there.’

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — Alpine skier Breezy Johnson pulled her Olympic gold medal out of her front right coat pocket. Ribbonless.

“Don’t jump in them,’ she said during her press conference Feb. 8 after winning gold in the downhill. ‘I was jumping in excitement, and it broke. I’m sure somebody will fix it. It’s not crazy broken, but a little broken.”

Johnson was the first, followed by figure skater Alyssa Liu, Swedish cross‑country skier Ebba Andersson, Dutch skater Jutta Leerdam and German biathlete Justus Strelow. Alpine team combined bronze medalist Jackie Wiles had her medal come apart as well, but her boyfriend found a way to repair it. Curlers Cory Thiesse and Korey Dropkin said they’re sleeping with their medals to protect them.

The medal ribbons are made of fabric, which isn’t very thick or wide. Medals from previous Games had loops or grommets to feed the ribbon through. But the medals at the 2026 Winter Olympics instead have a groove at the top. A metal pin resting in a loop at the bottom of the ribbon fits into the groove, securing the medal and ribbon in place. 

But the pin has a spring mechanism, and when the medal or ribbon is pulled or jostled, it activates, and the two separate.

The Italian State Mint and Polygraphic Institute (IPZS) is a company ‘wholly owned by the Ministry of Economy and Finance,’ according to its website, and ‘a European leader in security printing solutions, digital identity, and coin minting.’ The IOC announced IPZS would craft the Olympic and Paralympic medals for Milano Cortina in 2025.

When asked via email about stories of athletes’ medals breaking during the 2026 Games, IPZS told USA TODAY, ‘The medals do not break. For a limited number of medals, the anti-choking safety device activates during celebrations by opening.’

‘Following reports of problems affecting a limited number of medals, the Organising Committee immediately examined the issue, working closely with the State Mint, which produced the medals.’

IPZS also told USA TODAY that, like Johnson, athletes whose medals come apart are ‘invited to return them through the appropriate channels so that they can be promptly repaired and returned.’

The company did not respond to USA TODAY’s questions about whether anti-choking features are common for Olympic medals, whether the feature was mandated by the IOC or Italian law, whether athletes must return their original medals in exchange for intact ones, what ‘solution’ IPZS identified for fixing medals nor what ‘channels’ athletes are using to get affected medals repaired.

IPZS did tell USA TODAY that the safety hook on Paralympic medals ‘will be enhanced’ ahead of those Games, which take place March 6-15.

Reach USA TODAY Network sports reporter Payton Titus at ptitus@gannett.com, and follow her on X @petitus25.