Checking the Maple Leafs panic meter heading into Game 2 vs. the Panthers
-
Kristen Shilton, ESPN NHL reporter
New NHL playoff round. Same Toronto Maple Leafs?
There was a certain air of déjà vu Tuesday when the Leafs dropped Game 1 of their Eastern Conference second-round series 4-2 to the Florida Panthers. Toronto had just closed out Tampa Bay in Game 6 of their first-round matchup to finally advance in an NHL postseason for the first time since 2004, a two-decade stretch that included six consecutive first-round exits (and 11 straight prior losses in potential elimination games).
The Leafs didn’t start that Lightning series on a high note. In fact, they were downright embarrassed on home ice, losing Game 1 7-3. That result alone was enough to elicit groans of “here we go again” from fans and media alike who’d seen promising Toronto teams of the past wilt under the pressure of postseason expectations.
There was more of that to go around in the opening of the second round.
The Panthers whipped into Toronto on a heater, an 8-seed Cinderella team that had just dismissed the No. 1-ranked, President’s Trophy-winning Boston Bruins in an unforgettable — and unpredicted by most — first-round upset. Florida pounded its way to a 2-0 lead in Game 1 against Toronto, wasn’t rattled when the Leafs rallied at 2-2 and was opportunistic in taking control of the series from there.
The Panthers play with abandon. They’re fast, feisty and full of an energy that the famously business-wear-clad crowd at Scotiabank Arena might find unpleasant. And Florida beat the Leafs on their turf — and at their own game — to put Toronto right back where it was to open the first round: down 1-0, and now lacking home-ice advantage.
What all went wrong for the Leafs in Game 1? And how worried should Toronto be about addressing — and ultimately overcoming — those roadblocks to prevent the Panthers from pulling off another surprising series victory?
Let’s break out the first panic meter of the playoffs to dissect where the Leafs stumbled and how exactly they can thrive again.
Trouble with Tkachuk
Problem: Matthew Tkachuk is dominating all over the ice
Panic meter reading: 9/10
The Leafs must be seeing a lot of Matthew Tkachuk on video, because Florida’s first-rate forward was on Toronto like a swarm of bees in Game 1.
Tkachuk’s line with Sam Bennett and Nick Cousins is emerging as a playoff powerhouse, and that was the case Tuesday. At even strength, Tkachuk was on the ice for 26 of the Panthers’ shot attempts to only eight against. His unit controlled 75% of expected goals.
Shots on goal with Tkachuk present? 13-5. Scoring chances? 11-4. It’s no shock Tkachuk & Co. outshone John Tavares and Mitchell Marner in their matchup. Tkachuk dangled right around Marner to set up a rebound goal by Cousins to open the Game 1 scoring after the Leafs’ blown chances to do it themselves.
And that’s not all Tkachuk accomplished.
He pocketed three assists on the night and paced all skaters with nine hits. By comparison, Marner, Calle Jarnkrok, Auston Matthews, Michael Bunting and William Nylander combined for six hits. Overall, Toronto couldn’t match what the Tkachuk line was bringing whether in pace or physicality. At least not until coach Sheldon Keefe went back to the drawing board.
By the second period, Keefe had reunited Marner on a line with Matthews — dropping Nylander onto Tavares’ wing — to try tackling Tkachuk together. That combination might have slowed Tkachuk but certainly didn’t shut him down. Tkachuk still goaded Leafs’ defenseman Jake McCabe into taking a penalty late in the third period — making McCabe seemingly so focused on crunching Tkachuk into the boards he did so about 200 feet from his own net — which put the Panthers at an advantage when Brandon Montour scored their fourth insurance goal with less than eight minutes to play.
Tkachuk exemplifies all that Florida did well to keep Toronto off course: He’s fast, fierce and strikingly skilled. That combination was as potent for the Panthers in Game 1 as it proved to be drowning the Bruins. Add in a relentless forecheck that left little to no breathing room through the neutral zone and it’s not difficult to pinpoint why Toronto was frequently stymied.
Tkachuk isn’t going away, either. Keefe didn’t show his hand on lineup changes after Wednesday’s practice but did admit he wouldn’t rule out putting Marner on Matthews’ wing again to start Game 2.
“How we deal with the matchups is part of it,” Keefe said. “We spent the morning here more so going through the video and talking through things as a staff, and we’ll move on to some debates about the lines and stuff, and we’ll sort through that. We’ll probably go back and forth a bunch before tomorrow.”
Powerless power play
Problem: Leafs go 0-for-4 on the man advantage
Panic meter reading: 6/10
Toronto had a glorious chance to pounce on the Panthers. It wound up rolling over.
The Leafs earned two power plays in the first 4:46 of Game 1, when Bennett and Gustav Forsling took back-to-back penalties. Toronto generated a couple fine looks on Florida netminder Sergei Bobrovsky but got nothing past him. A potentially tone-setting start fizzled, knocking the wind right out of Toronto’s sails.
“The power play needs to come through,” Keefe said Wednesday. “You get two opportunities to score early in the game like we did, that’s a big difference. Not only because we’re [eventually] down a goal going into the third period, but you’re chasing the game versus us getting off to a good start early and everything sort of settles in from there. Because we were chasing it, it’s harder to manage their best players the way that we needed to win.”
Poor power-play production is rapidly becoming a trend for Toronto. The Leafs were 6-for-14 with the extra man through their first four games against Tampa Bay; that deteriorated to 0-for-4 in their final two games. It’s a small sample — even adding in the most recent Game 1 total — but a playoff series is short and sweet for a reason. Every element of what a team does (or fails to do) becomes amplified.
Florida’s penalty kill hasn’t been a juggernaut in the postseason either (64.5%), which makes the Leafs’ inability to capitalize against it all the more perplexing. Given how little open ice Toronto had to work with overall in Game 1, those man advantage moments are critical. The Leafs can’t afford another night coming up empty on special teams.
One way to avoid that is cracking the code on Bobrovsky.
Sensational Sergei
Problem: A revitalized Sergei Bobrovsky is showing Vezina Trophy-winning form
Panic meter reading: 5.5/10
Bobrovsky is back on the case in a big way.
Florida’s $10 million-per-year netminder suffered through a brutal start to the regular season that put him at 8-12-1 with an .894 save percentage and 3.32 goals-against average on Jan. 1. Bobrovsky fought from there to a better finish (16-8-2, .907% and 2.86 GAA) only to fall ill in late March and see Alex Lyon take over the crease.
Well, Lyon struggled mightily in the first round against Boston, and Bobrovsky returned to the starter’s role in Game 4 of that series. He and the Panthers haven’t looked back. The two-time Vezina Trophy winner gets stronger in every outing, and Bobrovsky put on his best playoff performance to date in Game 1 with a 36-save effort. That also marked Bobrovsky’s fourth straight win, making it his longest stretch of consecutive victories all season.
That’s potentially bad news for the Leafs.
Bobrovsky could just be hitting his stride now, fueled by his personal ups and downs and the general underdog story Florida is wielding to perfection. Toronto has been choked up in past playoff series by spectacular goaltending (Andrei Vasilevskiy did it in Game 7 last year and Game 5 this time around) and is seeing remnants of it again now from Bobrovsky. It’s also possible Bobrovsky will regress in the face of Toronto’s (anticipated) adjustments.
What the Leafs eventually did well in the first round was create havoc around Vasilevskiy and take away his eyes. It’s easier said than done, of course, to make a goalie uncomfortable — particularly when Florida is physical boxing out around the net. Still, that’s the task awaiting Toronto in Game 2 (and beyond). In order to beat Bobrovsky, the Leafs must ensure there’s not much to see in front of him.
Self-inflicted struggles
Problem: Toronto made too many unforced errors in Game 1
Panic meter reading: 4/10
Toronto need not do its streaking opponent any favors. And yet, the Leafs couldn’t help coughing up some costly plays in the series opener.
Take TJ Brodie‘s pinch gone bad that allowed Carter Verhaeghe — a 40-goal scorer in the regular season — to run free on a second-period breakaway. Boom. Suddenly it was 3-2, after Toronto had just fought back from a 2-2 hole to tie the game. That can’t happen.
“We give a breakaway to the one guy we definitely don’t want to give a breakaway to,” Keefe said after the game. “We cannot make that mistake when it’s 2-2. That’s a tough one.”
0:49
Carter Verhaeghe restores Panthers’ lead before end of 2nd period
Carter Verhaeghe gets in behind the Maple Leafs’ defense and finishes the one-on-one opportunity.
It wasn’t the Leafs’ only unfortunate miscue. Toronto was credited with 12 giveaways on the night — to Florida’s 10 — and some were especially glaring (cross-ice pass attempts intercepted in front of the Leafs’ own net). The neutral zone was a battle ground throughout Game 1, and it was Toronto often on the losing end.
“I thought we made mistakes,” Keefe said. “Credit to Florida, because of how they play, they force you to make mistakes. But I thought we made some mistakes tonight that we didn’t make in the last series. … When you make a mistake, the recovery time, it’s not really there. I think that caught us. I think our guys will adjust to that.”
Leafs’ defenseman Luke Schenn agreed with Keefe’s assessment, and acknowledged Toronto would have to clean up its own bad habits to perhaps start revealing more of Florida’s.
“A lot of the goals that were scored were based off self-inflicted [problems],” Schenn said. “We have a lot more to give. They’re a physical bunch. They’re heavy on the forecheck. In the past everyone thought of them as being deadly off the rush, but they have some big bodies out there. Like any playoff series, I expect it to get a little more physical as we go here. That’s expected.”
Assuming Toronto has identified its issues, the good news is they can be overcome. In playoff hockey, it’s adapt or die. Florida is the perfect example of that. Toronto also showed its resilience bouncing back from that Game 1 flub against Tampa Bay to win three of the next four and advance.
There’s no reason the Leafs can’t do the same things now, at least when it comes to avoiding these mistakes.
Searching for star finish
Problem: Florida (mostly) blanks Toronto’s top scorers
Panic meter reading: 3/10
What the Leafs’ core lacked in Game 1 hits it made up for in shots.
Nylander led the team with seven. Matthews put six on net. Tavares had five. The only one of those three who came away with a point, though, was Matthews, who had a terrific setup on Matthew Knies‘ beauty of a goal (the rookie’s first in the NHL).
Toronto’s other scorer was Bunting. No disrespect to either him or Knies, but if the Leafs are going to match the Panthers’ production, they’ll need those aforementioned star players to finish.
Florida’s best players were their most impactful ones in Game 1. Beyond Tkachuk’s three helpers and goals from Bennett, Cousins and Verhaeghe, the Panthers were boosted by the continued excellence of Montour. Florida’s top blueliner is having a career-best season that includes his sixth playoff goal in eight games — tied for third most ever by a defenseman in that long a stretch — to ice the Panthers’ win.
Florida knows how to slow down a team’s top-flight talents, too. In its series against Boston — in which Florida fell behind in 3-1 — the Bruins had multiple goals from Taylor Hall (4), Jake DeBrusk (3), Brad Marchand (3), Tyler Bertuzzi (2) and David Pastrnak (2) through the first four matchups.
In the final three? Pastrnak (3) and Bertuzzi (3) were the only Bruins with multiple goals.
The Leafs’ low star wattage is most likely a one-and-done situation, though. It all comes full circle on finding ways to challenge Bobrovsky and capitalize on missed chances (see: the power play). None of Matthews, Marner or Tavares scored in the Leafs’ first game against Tampa Bay either, and all three rebounded with impressive — and timely — offensive contributions the rest of Toronto’s way.
That’s one positive trend the Leafs should be able to count on continuing, as their long-awaited second-round experience rolls on.
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — A combination of severe hurricane damage to Tropicana Field and political delays on financing means it is highly unlikely the Tampa Bay Rays‘ planned new stadium will be ready for the 2028 season, if at all, the team said Tuesday.
Rays top executives said in a letter to the Pinellas County Commission that the team has already spent $50 million for early work on the new $1.3 billion ballpark and cannot proceed further because of delays in approval of bonds for the public share of the costs.
“The Rays organization is saddened and stunned by this unfortunate turn of events” said the letter, signed by co-presidents Brian Auld and Matt Silverman, who noted that the overall project was previously approved by the County Commission and the City of St. Petersburg.
“As we have made clear at every step of this process, a 2029 ballpark delivery would result in significantly higher costs that we are not able to absorb alone,” the letter added.
The tumultuous series of events came after Hurricane Milton ripped the roof off Tropicana Field on Oct. 9, forcing the Rays to play the 2025 season at the spring training home of the New York Yankees, 11,000-seat Steinbrenner Field in Tampa. Then, the Pinellas County Commission postponed a planned Oct. 29 vote on the bond issue that the Rays said has thrown the new 30,000-seat ballpark timeline off.
The commission was meeting again Tuesday on the bond issue, but its chair suggested a vote could be delayed again.
“We know we’re going to be in Steinbrenner in 2025 and we don’t know much beyond that,” Auld said in an interview.
Asked if Major League Baseball can survive long-term in the Tampa Bay area, Rays Principal Owner Stuart Sternberg said the outlook is “less rosy than it was three weeks ago. We’re going to do all that we can, as we’ve tried for 20 years, to keep the Rays here for generations to come.”
The team’s contract with the city of St. Petersburg requires that the Rays play three more seasons at Tropicana Field assuming it is repaired. The cost of fixing the ballpark in time for the 2026 season is pegged at more than $55 million for a building scheduled to be torn down when the new facility is ready.
Under the original plan, Pinellas County would spend about $312.5 million for the new ballpark and the city of St. Petersburg around $417 million including infrastructure improvements. The Rays and their partner, the Hines development company, would cover the remaining costs including any overruns.
It isn’t just baseball that is affected. The new Rays ballpark is part of a larger urban renovation project known as the Historic Gas Plant District, which refers to a predominantly Black neighborhood that was forced out by construction of Tropicana Field and an interstate highway spur.
The broader $6.5 billion project would transform an 86-acre (34-hectare) tract in the city’s downtown, with plans in the coming years for a Black history museum, affordable housing, a hotel, green space, entertainment venues, and office and retail space. There’s the promise of thousands of jobs as well.
-
Bill Connelly, ESPN Staff Writer
It was easy to wonder if there might be a little bit of a hangover this season. Mike Norvell weathered a strange, stair-stepping climb to greatness with Florida State — his Seminoles went 3-10 in his first 13 games, then 9-6 in the next 15, then won 19 in a row — but endured one of the most gut-wrenching season finishes you’ll ever see. First, the unbeaten Noles were snubbed out of a spot in the final four-team College Football Playoff; then, with a number of starters having either opted out or opted for season-ending surgery, they got completely humiliated 63-3 by Georgia in the Orange Bowl.
Norvell said all the proper things in spring ball, and despite 14 new starters, his reputation for finding difference-makers in the transfer portal got FSU ranked 10th in the preseason AP poll. But instead of a hangover, or a slow start, his Noles have completely no-showed in 2024.
Florida State’s win percentage has fallen by 82.9 percentage points at the moment, from 0.929 to 0.100. In the history of top-division college football, there have been 14,788 teams; only three have had their win percentage fall by more than that, and two played during World War I: 1917 Colorado State (from 6-0-1 to 0-7-1), 1919 Colorado Mines (from 4-0 to 0-4-2) and 2012 Southern Miss (from 12-2 to 0-12). The Seminoles are likely to finish 2-10, beating Charleston Southern this coming weekend and then losing to rival Florida. Those results would drop them to merely the eighth-largest win percentage collapse ever, behind four more teams from 1950 or earlier.
If you prefer advanced stats, FSU has also cratered by that measure: The Seminoles finished ninth in SP+ last season but are currently 92nd. In terms of percentile ratings, they’ve fallen from 94.1% to 33.0%. Granted, there’s still a sliver of friendly preseason projections impacting the current ratings, so the Noles could fall even further over the last couple of games, but that 61.1% drop is still the 40th largest on record and the fourth largest of the 2000s behind 2018 Louisville (from 87.8% to 15.1%), 2012 Southern Miss (from 73.1% to 4.5%) and 2009 Ball State (from 75.6% to 12.5%).
Like FSU with Jordan Travis, all three of those 21st century peers lost star quarterbacks from breakthrough teams — Southern Miss lost Conference USA-winning Austin Davis, Ball State lost Nate Davis and Louisville lost Heisman winner Lamar Jackson — and both BSU (Brady Hoke) and Southern Miss (Larry Fedora) had lost their respective head coaches to bigger jobs. Louisville, meanwhile, ended the Bobby Petrino era 10 games into 2018, as his Cardinals kept getting worse and worse.
Norvell isn’t a first-year coach, and by all accounts it appears he will keep his job into 2025, even if it has required the jettisoning of assistants. I like turning to the history books to get an idea for what might happen in the future, but this one’s tricky: When a team collapses with this level of force, it’s usually at either the start or end of a coach’s tenure (or, in the case of Southern Miss’ Ellis Johnson in 2012, both).
Acknowledging both the uniqueness of the coaching situation and the severity of the fall, however, I did find 10 reasonably decent comps. Here are 10 postwar, major-conference teams (or major independents) that (a) collapsed by at least 50.0% in terms of both SP+ percentile rating and win percentage, (b) did so with a coach that was not in his first season and (c) kept that coach for the following season. How long did it take each program to rebound? Did it happen under the same coach? Let’s take a look.
1946 Oklahoma State
Head coach: Jim Lookabaugh (eighth year)
Change in record: from 9-0 to 3-7-1
Change in SP+ ranking: from seventh to 82nd
What happened: Like Mike Gundy, Lookabaugh was a former OSU player who thrived as the Cowboys’ head coach. In 1944-45, they went 17-1, winning a Cotton Bowl and a Sugar Bowl and claiming a share of the 1945 national title. But in the postwar years, his program fell back to where it was prewar. Following their collapse in 1946, they went 3-7 again in 1947 before rebounding to go 6-4 with a Delta Bowl bid — they lost 20-0 to William & Mary — in 1948. Following a 4-4-2 season in 1949, Lookabaugh retired and moved into real estate.
The Cowboys’ next good season: 1953. Jennings Whitworth led the Pokes to a 7-3 campaign and parlayed that into the Alabama job a year later.
1956 Notre Dame
Head coach: Terry Brennan (third year)
Change in record: from 8-2 to 2-8
Change in SP+ ranking: from 12th to 84th
What happened: A star halfback for Notre Dame in the postwar years, Brennan was rushed into the head-coaching role at age 25 following Frank Leahy’s health-related retirement. He steered the ship well for a while, going 17-3 in 1954-55, but things fell apart during a massive youth movement in 1956 (albeit one in which Paul Hornung still won the Heisman). The growing pains produced improvement in the coming years, and Notre Dame was talented enough to end Oklahoma’s famed 47-game winning streak with a 7-0 upset in 1957 and finish 10th in the AP poll. But for the most part, the Irish were merely solid in 1957-58, beating poor teams, mostly losing to good ones and going 13-7 overall. Brennan was fired with a 32-18 record and replaced by NFL coach Joe Kuharich, who went just 17-23.
The Fighting Irish’s next good season: 1964. Granted, 1957 was pretty good under Brennan, but the Irish were mediocre for quite a few years under Kuharich and Hugh Devore before first-year coach Ara Parseghian engineered a 9-1 charge and No. 3 AP finish in 1964. They would win the national title two years later.
1960 SMU
Head coach: Bill Meek (fourth year)
Change in record: from 5-4-1 to 0-9-1
Change in SP+ ranking: from 34th to 91st
What happened: After landing his first head-coaching job at age 30, Bill Meek was 36 when he took over at SMU in 1957, with the team less than a decade removed from back-to-back top-10 finishes. Led by Dandy Don Meredith’s passing, the Mustangs finished 18th in the AP poll in 1958, and they began 1959 ranked fourth. But they went just 5-4-1 against a brutal schedule (they were 1-4 against ranked opponents), then totally collapsed in 1960 following Meredith’s graduation.
Meek stayed for 1961 but went just 2-7-1 and moved on to front office roles with the Denver Broncos and Dallas Cowboys. SMU replaced him with Hayden Fry.
The Mustangs’ next good season: 1966. Fry’s tenure began with four straight losing seasons, but he brought the Mustangs back to the Cotton Bowl, with a No. 10 AP finish, in Year 5.
1961 Illinois
Head coach: Pete Elliott (second year)
Change in record: from 5-4 to 0-9
Change in SP+ ranking: from 36th to 103rd
What happened: An All-America quarterback at Michigan, Elliott led Cal to the Rose Bowl in 1958 before returning to the Big Ten to succeed Ray Eliot in 1960. Eliot had gone just 32-35-5 since a Rose Bowl bid in 1951, and Elliott went just 5-4 in his first season before an absolute collapse in Year 2. He was building something, though. After going just 2-7 in 1962, a talented Illini squad led by All-Americans Dick Butkus and Archie Sutton charged to 8-1-1 and won the Rose Bowl. They were above .500 in 1964 and ’65, too, but Elliott resigned in 1967 when Illinois became embroiled in a slush fund scandal.
The Illini’s next good season: 1963. The Illini beat two top-five teams (Northwestern and Michigan State) and topped Washington 17-7 in the Rose Bowl. This collapse actually had a happy ending of sorts. As long as you ignore that whole “slush fund” thing.
1985 Boston College
Head coach: Jack Bicknell (fifth year)
Change in record: from 10-2 to 4-8
Change in SP+ ranking: from 11th to 62nd
What happened: We’ve heard a lot about the “Flutie effect” through the years, where a school that enjoys sudden football success sees a burst of notoriety, higher application rates and so on. The initial effects of losing Flutie, however, weren’t great for Boston College. Following Flutie’s Heisman run and BC’s 10-win campaign and top-five finish in 1984, the Eagles quickly fell back to earth with poor Shawn Halloran behind center in 1985. After a wobbly 3-3 start, they lost five in a row and finished 4-8.
BC began 1986 in poor form again, starting just 1-3, but Halloran and the Eagles won eight straight from there, eventually beating Georgia 27-24 in the Hall of Fame Bowl.
The Eagles’ next good season: 1986. The rebound was swift. It was also short-lived. Bicknell would average just 3.5 wins over the next four seasons and, in 1991, he moved on to become head coach of the World League of American Football’s Barcelona Dragons, and in 1992-93 the Eagles surged briefly under Tom Coughlin.
1991 Louisville
Head coach: Howard Schnellenberger (seventh year)
Change in record: from 10-1-1 to 2-9
Change in SP+ ranking: from 32nd to 103rd
What happened: I’m including Louisville here even though there was nothing “major” about the Cardinals program before Schnellenberger got a hold of it. They had finished ranked only once — they went 9-1 under Lee Corso in 1972 and finished 18th as part of the Missouri Valley — but finished under .500 every year from 1979-87. After going 14-8 under Schnellenberger in 1988-89, however, they charged to 10-1-1 and walloped No. 25 Alabama 34-7 in the Fiesta Bowl. It was a miraculous building job, but with quarterback Browning Nagle off to the pros and replacement Jeff Brohm injured early in the season, the Cardinals fell apart in 1991. They would rebound to 5-6 with a healthy Brohm in 1992, then broke through the following season.
The Cardinals’ next good season: 1993. Brohm threw for 2,626 yards (a good number for the day), and the Cardinals upset No. 23 Arizona State as part of a 7-1 start. They capped a 9-3 season with an 18-7 comeback win over Michigan State in the Liberty Bowl. Schellenberger would leave for Oklahoma a year later.
1998 Washington State
Head coach: Mike Price (10th year)
Change in record: from 10-2 to 3-8
Change in SP+ ranking: from 14th to 71st
What happened: Mike Price built a cyclical power in Pullman. The Cougars would slowly grow as a roster core matured, break through with a certain level of experience and then start over again. However, following the success of quarterback Ryan Leaf & Co. in 1997 — Wazzu won 10 games, reached the Rose Bowl for just the second time and finished in the AP top 10 for the first time — it took a little while to put the pieces back together. The Cougs went just 10-24 from 1998-2000. But Price’s next awesome quarterback, Jason Gesser, led a charge starting in 2001.
The Cougars’ next good season: 2001. The Cougs started 7-0, lost only to Oregon and Washington, both ranked, and beat Purdue 33-27 in the Sun Bowl. Both Gesser and Wazzu would raise their game further the next year, winning 10 games, reaching the Rose Bowl and finishing in the AP top 10 for the second of three straight seasons. (The third season would take place without Price, who left for an ill-fated stint at Alabama.)
2007 Notre Dame
Head coach: Charlie Weis (third year)
Change in record: from 10-3 to 3-9
Change in SP+ ranking: from 26th to 87th
What happened: Congratulations to Notre Dame, the only team to show up on this list twice.
Following an impeccable 19-4 start as Irish head coach, Charlie Weis’ second season finished in disappointing fashion with blowout losses against both No. 3 USC and No. 4 LSU. Notre Dame lost eight offensive starters, including quarterback Brady Quinn (who was replaced by true freshman Jimmy Clausen), and Weis replaced defensive coordinator Rick Minter with Corwin Brown. The result: a historic collapse.
Like 2024 FSU, Notre Dame began the season 1-9, a run that included the Irish’s first loss to Navy since 1963. Notre Dame lost to three ranked opponents by a combined 96-24, and late-season wins over dire Duke and Stanford teams only redeemed things so much. They would improve in the following seasons, but only to 7-6 and 6-6, and Weis was dumped at the end of 2009.
The Fighting Irish’s next good season: 2012. Brian Kelly replaced Weis and went 8-5 in each of his first two seasons before an experienced squad, led by a strong offensive line and all-world linebacker Manti Te’o, went 12-0 in the regular season and reached the BCS championship game. It was the first of four top-10 seasons for Kelly in South Bend.
2021 Northwestern
Head coach: Pat Fitzgerald (16th year)
Change in record: from 7-2 to 3-9
Change in SP+ ranking: from 31st to 101st
What happened: Like Mike Price, Pat Fitzgerald succeeded in cycles. Between 2011 and 2019, Northwestern combined four losing records with four seasons of nine or more wins, and they likely would have won nine or more with a full season’s work in the COVID-abbreviated 2020 season too. They went 6-1 and qualified for the Big Ten championship game, where they led Ohio State late in the third quarter before succumbing 22-10. A Citrus Bowl win capped the school’s first top-10 finish in 25 years.
In 2021, however, the Wildcats entered the season with the nation’s lowest returning production. It showed. The defense went from great to decent, and the offense went from below average to horrendous. NU would go just 4-20 over the next two seasons, then Fitzgerald was fired for off-field reasons.
The Wildcats’ next good season: 2023. It didn’t turn out to be a sustainable recipe — Northwestern is right back to 4-6 this season with only a 5% chance of winning out to reach bowl eligibility, per SP+ — but under interim coach David Braun, the Wildcats went 6-2 in one-score finishes to reach 8-5 overall. That’s not as good as Fitzgerald’s best years, but it was still a seven-win improvement over the previous season.
2021 Indiana
Head coach: Tom Allen (fifth year)
Change in record: from 6-2 to 2-10
Change in SP+ ranking: from 18th to 94th
What happened: After an 8-5 campaign in 2019, their best season in 26 years, Tom Allen’s Hoosiers took another step forward in 2020, going 6-1 in the COVID-abbreviated regular season, losing only a tight game against unbeaten Ohio State and technically earning a spot in the Big Ten championship game before an emergency rule change left them out.
Michael Penix Jr. was brilliant until tearing his ACL in the sixth game, and the Hoosiers finished the season with a bowl loss against Ole Miss. Penix returned in 2021, but he was rusty and inconsistent, and he suffered another season-ending injury in early October. After a 2-2 start, Indiana lost eight straight games. Allen could never right the ship, going just 7-17 in 2022-23, his last two seasons in charge.
The Hoosiers’ next good season: 2024. A coaching change (to Curt Cignetti) and a roster flip have completely reversed IU’s fortunes. The Hoosiers are 10-0 for the first time; they are a modern turnaround story in terms of just how much you can change in a short amount of time. (The changes aren’t guaranteed to work — just ask 2024 Florida State — but there are new opportunities on the table now.)
Obviously an exercise like this is more anecdotal than scientific. Both collapses and rebounds are potentially easier, for better or worse, in an era with greater roster flexibility and potential turnover, and just because it took Hayden Fry a while to get SMU going again in the 1960s doesn’t necessarily mean much for Mike Norvell.
Still, from the old “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme” perspective, it is perhaps noteworthy that of the 10 teams above, only one rebounded immediately (1986 Boston College), but six had bounced back within three years, including six of the seven most recent examples. Only four of those six rapid rebounds happened with the same coach in charge, and each of the two examples from this decade turned around immediately with a new coach. Even Louisville, which crumbled so thoroughly to the ground in Bobby Petrino’s final season, bounced straight back to 8-5 the next season under Scott Satterfield.
Florida State probably isn’t going to be this horrendously awful for long, in other words. It was almost impossible for this to happen once — this genuinely is one of the greatest collapses this very old sport has ever seen — and it probably won’t happen again. But the odds of a full rebound under Norvell aren’t great either. He will bring new assistants and, most likely, another large transfer class to Tallahassee in 2025, but the collapse exposed a level of fragility within the program that might eventually require a head-coaching change to completely fix.
-
Jorge Castillo, ESPN Staff Writer
On the penultimate day of the regular season, the New York Yankees and Pittsburgh Pirates met on a cloudy afternoon at Yankee Stadium for a game of little consequence. The Yankees had already clinched the American League East title. The last-place Pirates were 24 hours from another long offseason.
But the game featured an intriguing matchup within the matchup: two starting pitchers with vastly different backgrounds and histories who happened to be leading contenders for the Rookie of the Year Award in their respective leagues to the mound opposite each other.
For the Pirates: Paul Skenes, the hyped generational talent 14 months removed from college. For the Yankees: Luis Gil, a 26-year-old revelation two-plus years removed from Tommy John surgery.
Nearly two months after that meeting, the two right-handers were recognized Monday as the best rookies in their leagues. Skenes was voted the National League’s Rookie of the Year, beating out a loaded field headlined by outfielders Jackson Merrill and Jackson Chourio after posting one of the best rookie seasons for a pitcher in major league history. Gil edged out teammate and catcher Austin Wells and Baltimore Orioles outfielder Colton Cowser to win the award in the American League in a tight race.
Skenes, who debuted less than a year after being selected with the No. 1 pick in the 2023 draft, surpassed expectations in his first taste of the big leagues to become the second Rookie of the Year award winner in Pirates history (Jason Bay, 2004) with 23 of the 30 first-place votes. With the honor, he earned a full year of service time despite not being called up to the majors until May, making him eligible for free agency after the 2029 season.
“Our goal, first and foremost, was to make all my starts,” said Skenes, a former two-way star at Air Force who became a full-time pitcher his junior season at LSU in 2023. “And then, beyond that, it was basically to see the best version of me that I can be out there. So I felt very good about that this year. Stayed healthy and felt really good the entire year. And then the results, I think, speak for themselves.”
Skenes, 22, went 11-3 with a 1.96 ERA in 23 starts across 133 innings. His 1.96 ERA was the lowest for any rookie with at least 20 starts in the live ball era, dating to 1920, and the lowest in baseball in 2024 among pitchers with at least 130 innings pitched. His 0.95 WHIP was tied for best in the National League. His 170 strikeouts were a franchise rookie record. His 4.3 fWAR ranked 10th among major league pitchers. With the performance, he was selected one of the three finalists for the NL Cy Young Award along with veterans Chris Sale and Zack Wheeler. That winner will be announced Wednesday.
On Monday, Merrill finished second with the other seven first-place votes and Chourio in third. Merrill, a shortstop in the minors through last season, was the San Diego Padres‘ starting center fielder on Opening Day at just 20 years old. He excelled in all facets, finishing the season with a .292/.326/.500 slash line, 24 home runs, 90 RBIs and 16 steals in 156 games while playing above-average defense. His 5.3 fWAR led all rookies.
Chourio, who doesn’t turn 21 until March, signed an $82 million extension last offseason before making his major league debut and, after a slow start, lived up to the investment. Chourio went on a tear after carrying a .201 batting average and .575 OPS through June 1, batting .305 with 16 home runs and an .888 OPS over his final 97 games.
In the American League, Gil tallied 15 of the 30 first-place votes, narrowly topping Cowser, who finished with 13 first-place votes and five points behind Gil. Oakland A’s closer Mason Miller and Cleveland Guardians reliever Cade Smith each earned one first-place vote. The five-point differential marks the second-closest election in an AL Rookie of the Year race since the three-player ballot was introduced in 2003.
“I was focused on having a good year, on helping the team win as much as I could and being focused on my career,” Gil said.
Gil entered spring training an afterthought in the Yankees’ plan, slated to start the season in the minors after being sent to minor league camp in early March. The Yankees had their starting rotation set. Gil had electric stuff but command was a concern and he logged only four innings in A-ball in 2023 after undergoing Tommy John surgery in 2022. Then Gerrit Cole, the reigning AL Cy Young Award winner, was shut down because of an elbow injury shortly thereafter, opening a spot for Gil. He did not relinquish it.
Gil went 15-7 with a 3.50 ERA in 29 starts. He led all AL rookies in wins, innings pitched (151⅔) and strikeouts (171). His 1.82 ERA through 12 starts helped the Yankees navigate the club’s 2½ months without Cole to start the season and solidified his place in the rotation for the remainder of the season. He gave up one or fewer hits in five outings, tied for the most by a rookie since the mound was moved to 60 feet, six inches in 1893, according to ESPN Research. He didn’t giver up an earned run in six of his starts, the most by a Yankees rookie since 1913.
Signed by the Minnesota Twins out of the Dominican Republic in 2015 and traded to the Yankees three years later, Gil is the 10th Yankees player to win the honor. He is the first Yankee to win it since Aaron Judge in 2017 and the first Yankees pitcher since Dave Righetti in 1981. He is the fifth Dominican-born player to win the award.
“He worked so hard to put himself in a strong position heading into spring training after coming back from Tommy John surgery,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said in a statement. “Without a guarantee of a major-league spot, he absolutely kicked in the door this spring and went on to have a phenomenal rookie season. Luis continued to mature and develop all year and was one of the pillars of our rotation.”
Unlike Gil, there was little doubt Skenes was a major league-caliber pitcher out of spring training, but the Pirates chose to not include him on their Opening Day roster. The rationale was simple: Skenes logged just 6⅔ innings as a pro in 2023 after he accumulated 122⅔ innings for LSU. So Skenes was sent to Triple-A for more seasoning and dominated on a limited workload. In seven starts, Skenes posted a 0.99 ERA with 45 strikeouts across 27⅓ innings.
Finally, on May 11, Skenes made his major league debut against the Chicago Cubs. He gave up three runs with seven strikeouts over four innings. He would give up three or more earned runs only twice more over his final 22 starts.
His first 11 outings were so dominant (1.90 ERA, 89 strikeouts to 13 walks in 66⅓ innings and seven no-hit innings in his final start of the first half against the Milwaukee Brewers) that he was named the starting pitcher for the NL All-Star team, setting the stage for an electric first inning in Arlington, Texas, against four of the sport’s best hitters. Skenes, the fifth rookie to ever start the exhibition, threw 16 pitches to Steven Kwan, Gunnar Henderson, Juan Soto and Aaron Judge. He walked Soto in an otherwise clean inning. He touched 100 mph and showcased his splinker — a splitter-sinker hybrid. The sequence, like every one of his starts, was must-watch television.
He pitched into the ninth inning for the first time as a pro in his first start after the All-Star Game, taking a hard-luck 2-1 loss against the St. Louis Cardinals after giving up a run in the ninth. But Pittsburgh, despite adding players at the trade deadline, fell out of the wild-card race down the stretch.
The Pirates, cautious to not overwork Skenes, had him pitch on extra rest — either five or six days — in all of his starts. But he logged at least six innings in 16 of his 23 starts. He threw at least 100 pitches in nine of them. He closed his season strong, giving up only two runs in five September starts. His final outing was brief but spectacular: Two perfect innings at Yankee Stadium, one of the sport’s grandest stages, opposite one of his most talented peers.
The goal next year? To pitch deeper into games more often from Opening Day.
“I think just being able to stay out there for seven or eight innings rather than five or six innings every outing, that’s going to be the biggest thing,” Skenes said. “We’re starting with the end in mind. We’re going to figure out how to do that.”
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports8 months agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Environment1 year agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Sports3 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business2 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway