Inside Spencer Rattler’s tumultuous journey to the NFL draft
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Hallie Grossman, ESPN Staff Writer
SPENCER RATTLER IS not done yet. He’s closing in on an hour for this afternoon’s throwing session, but he’s just sniffed out a challenge. The road to the NFL draft is a slog — the self-seriousness of the combine, the forensic analysis of testing numbers, the sheer quantity of questions asked and answered, then asked and answered again. (“The Patriots f—ing grilled me,” he says in between passing drills.) But for this one moment in late March, one month before some team in the NFL calls his name early in the draft — or not; he’s one of the draft’s most intriguing riddles — Rattler’s just a kid with a ball and the chance to one-up his buddy. He tells Mike Giovando, his longtime personal coach and the man at the helm of today’s training, he’s not ready to call it quits right now.
“I think my arm’s got one more,” he yells out.
He and Jalen Daniels, who spent time at South Carolina and is one of his training partners for the day, have been heaving long balls down the sideline, trying — and so far failing — to overthrow the speedy wide receiver Giovando has enlisted for today’s prep work. “He’s like Flash Gordon!” Giovando raves.
Daniels has just given it his best, but the receiver screams out a taunt from far downfield: “I had to slow down to catch it!”
Rattler, as he often does, has thoughts: “Watch this,” he says, ribbing Daniels. “Let me show you how to throw it to a fast guy.”
On cue, Shawn Charles, said fast guy, streaks down the right sideline. He’s a blur, like when the road, from a distance, goes wavy on a hot day. Rattler plants his right foot square on the 20-yard line, dances for a few steps, then launches one last moon shot.
The throw is hardly out of his hands before Giovando hollers his approval. “That’s it, right there!” The rest of the group — Daniels; an old teammate of Rattler’s from his high school days in Phoenix; and a hotshot quarterback in the Phoenix prep scene — lets out a collective gasp. This particular moon shot is easily 65 yards (70? 75? It all seems plausible) and Charles catches it over his shoulder, in the nick of time.
“He had to accelerate,” Giovando says, laughing, giddy from Rattler’s arm strength. The preposterousness of it. “He had to accelerate to it!”
Rattler is 23 years old, and it feels like he’s been a part of the public discourse for just as long. In that time, he’s been: the prodigy; the punk; the Heisman favorite; the flameout; the presumptive No. 1 NFL draft pick; the draft’s dead-man-walking; the comeback hero. But it’s this, right here — sublime, tantalizing arm talent — that keeps people coming back for more. It is tough to quit Spencer Rattler, even when it’s not quite clear who Spencer Rattler is. Or who he’ll be next.
IN THE SHADOW of some rolling Arizona mountains, Rattler ponders the climb before him.
He’s worked out with teams (Falcons, Broncos) and interviewed with teams (Seahawks, Patriots) and trotted out his best sales pitch for why all these prospective employers ought to hire him. But here, miles away on a high school football field in Scottsdale, it’s Denver that gnaws at him. He’s tossing a football to himself, waiting for the day’s throwing session to get in full swing, daydreaming aloud.
“They’d be smart to take me over Nix,” he says to his coach. Bo Nix, he means, the quarterback from Oregon. If Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels and Drake Maye are this draft’s holy triumvirate of passers, with J.J. McCarthy right on their heels, Nix and Michael Penix Jr. are the quarterbacks most often coupled with Rattler. The next-best tier. The could-be-a-starter-one-day tier.
“They’re not getting you in the third,” Giovando says.
The Broncos, who are in the quarterback market this draft, have the 12th overall pick but none in the second round, so they’re all dabbling in a bit of NFL draft game theory at the moment.
“Hope not,” Rattler says.
Three years ago, a conversation like this would’ve been unfathomable. The notion of Spencer Rattler trying to separate himself from the pack? At odds with logic. He was the pack. Lincoln Riley had assembled a revolving door of Heisman quarterbacks at Oklahoma — Baker Mayfield (winner), Kyler Murray (winner), Jalen Hurts (finalist). Rattler was the next man up, except he’d be homegrown in Norman, not a transfer finishing out his college football string there, like his three predecessors. In the early days of Rattler’s recruitment, when Giovando first got on the phone with Riley, he told the Oklahoma coach at the time: “This guy is going to be like those guys.”
“This kid’s special,” Riley concurred. “I see it.”
He was both technician and showman, practically from the moment his father, Mike, realized his 2-year-old could skillfully throw and catch a Nerf football. “I would just look and go, ‘Wow, that’s not normal,'” he says. “And so then I knew, ‘OK, we got something going on here.'”
Rattler, the technician, perfected his back shoulder throw as an eighth-grader, according to his high school coach, Dana Zupke, which is hard enough to do as an NFL quarterback, let alone a middle-schooler still clumsy in a growing body. Rattler the showman could park himself at the 50-yard line, and sitting on the field cross-legged, throw the ball 60 yards and straight through the goalposts.
The technician: In ninth grade, he’d go to his high school field to throw alongside NFL hopefuls prepping for the combine; a nearby training facility would often have their college kids use Pinnacle High’s field. One time a college coach came over to marvel to Zupke: “Well, the best quarterback out here is your freshman.”
The showman: A few years later, he stood at the top of Tempe Butte — a literal mountain — on Arizona State’s campus, then fired footballs toward a trash can some 1,500 feet away and below, just because he thought he could. He nailed it on his eighth try.
Those who witnessed his feats say he’d preface them with a verbal wink. Watch this.
And we have. We were glued to the Spencer Rattler Experience, first for the come-up, and then when everything suddenly cratered. The only thing the masses love more than a conquering hero is to watch that hero’s downfall.
FOR A SPELL, Rattler’s story unfolded exactly as designed.
By the time he played his redshirt freshman season at Oklahoma — a COVID-shortened one in 2020 — he earned a 92.6 grade from Pro Football Focus. Only Mac Jones, Zach Wilson and Justin Fields, all top 15 quarterbacks in the 2021 draft, bested him, and the talk (and betting odds) turned loftier, inevitable. Rattler was at once the face of college football and the sport’s most formidable marketing power. The Heisman favorite. The presumptive No. 1 draft pick.
Then, in less than one year, he was not.
He was decidedly tolerable to start the 2021 season — a decent haul for touchdowns (10), probably a few too many turnovers (five interceptions) — but the offense looked disjointed and the team was winning tight games that didn’t need to be tight at all. Rattler wasn’t lighting the world on fire, but there was a quarterback waiting just behind him who might. Midseason and still undefeated, he was cast aside just before halftime of the Texas game for Williams, who’d go on to capture everything that once seemed preordained for Rattler. A Heisman (at USC, where Williams followed Riley after the 2021 season). The top overall draft pick, too (barring some sort of shift in the tectonic plates, Williams will be called first next week).
In short order, he faded to college football afterthought, relegated to national punching-bag status (Oklahoma fans once chanted midgame for Williams to take Rattler’s job), the transfer portal and the long, chastening road to starting over.
It was a dizzying paradigm shift. But for all that cratering going on around him, Rattler, himself, did not.
Just before the Texas game and the benching that ensued, his mother, Susan, was diagnosed with cancer. She underwent chemotherapy and was declared cancer-free, and when Rattler thinks about that time, he is clear on which battles were real. “That’s real-life adversity,” he says. “Having to push through that.”
He kept pushing through in football because Susan wanted him to, but he did so with a new kind of clarity. His father wanted to yank him out of OU the second he was benched; Rattler chose instead to ride out the year as a second-stringer before seeking a new homebase. The narrative imploded — Spencer Rattler, QB1 since the time he first held a football — but the story Rattler told himself did not. He was still a starter. Still a star. He was just someplace else’s starter; someone else’s star. It was simply a question of finding where, and for whom, he could “kill it.”
“I’m built different,” he says, explaining how he could lose his job but not his sure-footing. “I truly feel like that.”
He thinks of his bottoming out as something of a résumé-padder, instead. He had to learn three offenses (two of which were pro-style) at his two stops, and that counts for something. He was demoted and humbled in excruciatingly public ways. But he survived. Thrived, he’d tell you.
“I wouldn’t change a thing,” he says. “I wouldn’t change a thing because I’m more ready than ever because of the things I’ve had to go through.”
It helps, of course, that he started over — and started games again — for two years at South Carolina, where he, by and large, helped to revive the Spencer Rattler brand. He reestablished his credentials — by 2023, he was ninth among FBS quarterbacks with a 79.4% adjusted completion rate, per PFF. And at times, as he foretold, he flashed an undeniable ability to kill it. See: the November 2022 game against Tennessee, when he threw for six touchdowns and dispatched the Volunteers who, at the time, were ranked fifth in the country and generally looked like world-beaters.
South Carolina had never had a former No. 1 quarterback recruit — even a bruised and battered one — to call its own. Rattler had had masses fawning over him before, but he had lost them too, and it was a relief to feel valued again. To feel liked again, at all. At his throwing session, he pulls up to the parking lot next to the field in his G-Wagon that showcases a decal of the South Carolina emblem — a palmetto tree beneath a crescent moon. He steps out wearing a black T-shirt with the faces of Gamecocks legends — Jadeveon Clowney, Marcus Lattimore, Stephon Gilmore. Beneath that tee, he sports a Block C tattoo on his left arm, for the university that reclaimed him and that let him reclaim his place in the football world order. A different place, maybe a less exalted one than he once envisioned. But a place all the same.
“I’ve had a lot of NFL people tell me this. That’s one of the reasons they’re buying stock in Spencer Rattler,” says Jim Nagy, who oversees the Reese’s Senior Bowl, college football’s de facto all-star game and unofficial kickoff to the draft process.
“He has come out the other side.”
RATTLER’S YOUTH COACH loves to tell this one story.
Matt Frazier was unnerved, paralyzed over what play to call with six seconds left in the state championship game and his team, the Firebirds, down by five points. He called a timeout, visited the huddle — coaches were allowed in the huddle for kids that age; 9- and 10-year-olds — and looked at his quarterback. “Spence,” he said. “I want to run quarterback counter.”
They’d never run the play before, but Rattler looked at Frazier — Frazier swears this part is true — and promised him: “I got this, Coach.”
He did, in fact, have it. Rattler scored; the Firebirds won by a point.
The long span of Rattler’s career is littered with intoxicating anecdotes where he’s got this. Gauzy memories of telling his coaches, or his teammates, or strangers on the street to watch this. Take eighth grade: He’d regularly throw a pass and before the ball even got to its intended target, he’d throw up his hands. “Touchdown,” he’d say. And it would be.
“That was really the time that I got to see firsthand the moxie,” Zupke says. “OK, this kid knows he’s good. He lets everybody know he’s good. But he backs it up every time.”
Rattler is filled to bursting with moxie, Zupke will tell you. Or swagger, his friends will say. Or confidence, his father will offer. And because we’ve been exposed to him for so long, the perception of that moxie (or swagger, or confidence) has soured into something more distasteful. Arrogance. Worse, maybe. Entitlement.
He keeps a tight circle, but those inside it offer their theory of the case, and a culprit: “QB1: Beyond the Lights,” Season 3. Rattler spent his senior year of high school at Pinnacle trailed by cameras in service of the Netflix show; he was cast as the villain, and so the villain he became, to legions of people he didn’t know but who thought they knew him.
He had big dreams and was loud about them — “two Heismans,” he crowed in one episode. In another, he pointed fingers at his No. 2 quarterback, but never himself, according to that quarterback. Was he being deliberately over the top? Was it just two quarterbacks and friends bickering? It was simpler, more satisfying, to not ask those questions.
“Eyes were always on him,” Zupke says. And they weren’t just watching, he goes on. They were searching for proof of his divahood or his dearth of team spirit or some sin not yet dreamt up.
“I was like everybody else,” says Marcus Satterfield, Rattler’s offensive coordinator for his first year in Columbia. “All I could envision was the Netflix documentary, and when I met him, he was totally the opposite. Not an a–hole. He was grateful. Considerate.”
Austin Stogner started his college career at Oklahoma, transferred to South Carolina alongside Rattler, then repeatedly found himself on the receiving end of this conversation with their new teammates: He’s … awesome? I … didn’t think he would be like that?
Rattler has a mop of tightly coiled blond hair and a pair of diamond studs in both ears on any given day. A lot about him flashes, but his personality is best described quietly. He’s kind, according to most everyone around him. Thoughtful, even, which is why he does things like beeline for a South Carolina freshman running back who picked up a blitz, just to pay his respects. “It’s a little thing, but it’s a big thing too,” says Shane Beamer, his head coach at South Carolina. “We were 4-6 at that point. It’s Game 11 and a hotshot NFL quarterback is going out of his way to lift that freshman up.”
It is hard to hold two things at once sometimes. Rattler can be decent, and he can have outsized confidence. He can show love for an unheralded freshman running back and be a showman.
Back in his “QB1” days, the cameras settled on Rattler in the middle of a game. As he often did back then, he was hearing it extra from his opponents.
“I don’t even know your name, bro,” he told one such opponent. “You know mine.”
That was a person who knew who he was. Knew you did too. And if you hated him for it, all the better because that hate gave him the chance to do what he loved.
“He likes to hush the crowd,” his father says.
When he replays the tape of that moment, hears his own words all these years later, he doesn’t grimace. That was a young version of himself, he says. He probably wouldn’t say it again, but he’s not ashamed of it, either.
Because he still knows who he is. And if the rest of us have forgotten or disagree or don’t even register him at all, well, that’s fine too. It’s just another crowd he can hush; one more chance to make everyone tune in.
In the days before his pro day in Columbia, Rattler was at home in Phoenix and bumped into his old high school coach. “I got pro day coming up,” Rattler told Zupke. “Man, I’m so fired up for it. I’m going to kill it.”
SPENCER RATTLER HAS spent the months leading up to Thursday’s draft proving why he has been impossible to quit.
At South Carolina’s pro day, he zipped 65-yard moon shots again, this time for contingents from the Falcons and Broncos, the Panthers and Raiders. At the combine, he atoned for his 4.95 40-yard dash with a throwing exhibition where he showed his command of velocity and touch. And at the Senior Bowl, he spent the week racking up plaudits as the best quarterback of the week (Williams, Daniels, Maye and McCarthy were not in attendance; Nix, Penix, Sam Hartman and Michael Pratt were) and, eventually, the MVP.
“If he continues on this trajectory, I think you’re going to really like what you get,” says one NFL scout.
The question, of course, is who will get him, and when.
Nagy thinks there’s a case to be made that some eight or nine quarterbacks from this class project to be starters in the NFL. Rattler sits squarely in those ranks, but he’ll almost assuredly hear four of those quarterbacks’ names called before his own. Maybe five. Perhaps six, or — gasp — seven. His highs are so high: Flashes of excellent pocket movement, a knack for making throws from any conceivable angle, that lightning-quick release and effortless delivery. But his lows can be so low: A tendency to take bad sacks, a propensity for interceptions, the uncanny ability, as Mel Kiper Jr. has said, to look like a first-rounder one game and a late-rounder the next. He can make teams at once squeamish and starry-eyed, all which makes his draft projection as clear as mud.
That’s far from those dreamy days filled with top-draft-pick prognostications, but he is no draft afterthought, even after a fall from grace. That’s not nothing.
For one: “It seems like every couple years, there’s a guy that comes outside of the first round and ends up being a really good starter,” Nagy says. “And I think Spencer’s got a chance to be that guy.”
For two: Rattler, as ever, is sure of what lies ahead for himself, even if — especially if, if he’s being honest — not everyone else is too. Where would he draft himself?
“Shoot,” he says, then smiles just a little. “First round.”
He is settled in a lounge chair in the courtyard of his apartment building in Scottsdale. It’s a sprawling complex that looks like it deserves its own zip code, but in his small patch of shade, he gets a brief respite. There has been so much noise these past few months. NFL teams asking questions and scouts projecting and talking heads talking. But for now, there is also quiet. Rattler takes a moment to consider all that distance, from where he started to where he thinks he’ll go next..
“Sleep on me,” he says. “For now.”
He doesn’t say it in this moment, but the idea is there, looming, ever present. Watch this.
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Alden Gonzalez
The Los Angeles Dodgers aren’t just a baseball team these days. They are a symbol. For fans of the other 29 major league clubs, they are a source of either indignation or longing. For rival owners — and the commissioner who answers to them — they exemplify a widening payroll disparity that must be addressed. For players, and the union that represents them, they are a beacon, embodying all the traits of successful organizations: astute at player development, invested in behind-the-scenes components that make a difference and, most prominently, eager to pump their outsized revenues back into the roster.
The Dodgers employ seven players on nine-figure contracts, with five of those deals reached over the past 15 months. They also have the strongest farm system in the sport, according to ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel. Their lineup is loaded and their rotation is decorated, but also their future looks bright and their resources seem limitless. And yet their chief architect, Andrew Friedman, isn’t ready for a victory lap.
“It just doesn’t really land with me in that way,” Friedman, entering his 11th year as the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations, said in a recent phone conversation. “I think once I get fired, once there’s like real distance between being mired in the day-to-day and when I’m not, I will be able to look back at those things. But for us right now, it all feels very precarious.
“We’ve seen a lot of really successful organizations that fall off a cliff and take a while to build back. We don’t take any of it for granted.”
Nothing lasts forever. Every empire has fallen, every dynasty has faded. But what the Dodgers have built feels uniquely sustainable. A glaring reminder came last month, when Major League Baseball’s commissioner, Rob Manfred, was asked whether outrage over the Dodgers’ spending reminded him of how fans felt about the star-laden New York Yankees teams of the early 2000s, commonly referred to as “The Evil Empire.”
The current Dodgers, Manfred said, “are probably more profitable on a percentage basis than the old Yankees were, meaning it could be more sustainable, so it is more of a problem.”
The word “problem” depends on one’s perspective. Dodgers fans certainly wouldn’t describe it as such. As the team prepares to begin its season on Tuesday against the Chicago Cubs in Japan — a country in which they are revered, in a series sponsored by their ownership group — it’s worth understanding how the Dodgers got here.
It was the result of their process, but it also required several monumental steps over the past dozen years.
Below is a look at their biggest leaps.
Jan. 28, 2013: They signed a media megadeal
At the start of 2013, the Dodgers, less than a year into Guggenheim’s ownership, landed a massive local-media deal spanning 25 years and valued at $8.35 billion, or $334 million annually on average. But for the rest of that decade, it qualified as a massive headache. A stalemate between AT&T and Charter Communications meant more than half the Southern California market was unable to access the team’s channel, SportsNet LA, from 2014 to 2020.
As the impasse continued and tensions escalated, the Dodgers’ media deal came to symbolize a growing clash between sports channels that demand higher fees and content distributors wary of making customers pay for content they do not consume. Now — five years after the two sides finally struck a deal, airing Dodgers games on AT&T video platforms and nearly doubling the number of households to more than 3 million — it exemplifies a growing disparity that is rattling the industry.
The Dodgers’ local-media deal runs longer than most and is more expensive than any other, but here’s the kicker, according to a source familiar with the deal: While most regional sports networks are set up as subsidiaries underneath a corporate entity, leaving them in the lurch when they fall into hard times — like Diamond Sports Group, a former Sinclair subsidiary that was forced into bankruptcy when debt mounted and subscribers fell off — the Dodgers have complete corporate backing from Charter, a massive media conglomerate.
So not only do the Dodgers generate far more in local media than any of their competitors, but at a time when the linear-cable model is drying up and teams face increasing uncertainty with RSN contracts that represent about 20% of revenues, their deal is relatively iron-clad. That is especially valuable considering they’re in a division where three teams — the San Diego Padres, Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies — have lost their local media deals.
Dec. 21, 2018: They swung a trade that streamlined their payroll
Four days before Christmas in 2018, the Dodgers executed a rare salary dump. Matt Kemp, Yasiel Puig, Alex Wood, Kyle Farmer and cash were sent to the Cincinnati Reds for Homer Bailey, who was promptly released, and two young players who would later help trigger blockbuster acquisitions, Jeter Downs and Josiah Gray. The prospect component was secondary; the real benefit was the money saved, which gave the Dodgers additional wiggle room under the luxury-tax threshold and helped them remain debt-service compliant the following year.
In a bigger sense, it was the culmination of a multi-year effort by the front office to rid the Dodgers of bloated contracts and streamline a payroll that ultimately became burdened by massive deals for players like Kemp, Andre Ethier, Carl Crawford and Adrián González. The Dodgers’ luxury-tax payroll dropped by about $50 million from 2017 to 2019, by which point only two players — A.J. Pollock and Kenta Maeda — were signed beyond the next two years. In Friedman’s mind, the Dodgers were now free to be aggressive.
“For our first four to five years, it was as much about trying to be as competitive as we could be while getting our future payroll outlook in a better spot,” he said. “At the end of the 2019 season was the first time we had reached that point and were in position to be more aggressive at the top of the free-agent class.”
Gerrit Cole and Anthony Rendon headlined that offseason’s free-agent class. The Dodgers didn’t come away with either of them.
They would soon make up for it.
Feb. 10, 2020: Mookie Betts became available — and they pounced
The Dodgers engaged in initial trade conversations around Betts leading up to the trade deadline in 2019, but then the Boston Red Sox won five of seven against the Tampa Bay Rays and the New York Yankees near the end of July, and suddenly Betts was unavailable. A tone was set nonetheless.
“We knew, with him going into his last year of control, that there was a chance they would look to trade him going into that offseason,” Friedman recalled. “There was a switch in their baseball-operations department, and Chaim Bloom was hired, who I have a good relationship with. I spent a lot of time talking to him in the beginning. For him, it was about getting his feet on the ground and understanding the organizational direction of what they were doing. And it wasn’t until January where he opened the door to engage.”
Friedman, who gave Bloom his first front-office job in Tampa, ultimately landed Betts and David Price for Alex Verdugo, Downs and another position-player prospect in Connor Wong on Feb. 10, 2020. Friedman had long coveted Betts not just for his supreme talent, but for his work ethic and competitive edge and how those qualities seemed to elevate those around him. Within five months, Betts agreed to a 12-year, $365 million extension, eschewing free agency.
March 17, 2022: Freddie Freeman became a surprise free agent addition
When Freeman hit free agency after winning the 2021 World Series with the Braves, Friedman assumed he would simply return to Atlanta. So did everyone else — Freeman included. He was a homegrown star poised to someday get his number retired and have a statue outside Truist Park. But initial conversations barely progressed, and the Dodgers saw an opening.
On the afternoon of Dec. 1, moments before the sport would shut down in the midst of a bitter labor fight, Dodgers players, coaches and executives gathered for Betts’ wedding in L.A. Friedman, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts and then-third baseman Justin Turner briefly stepped away to call Freeman. They wanted to leave a lasting impression before an owner-imposed lockout would prohibit communication between teams and players. They wanted to be the last club he heard from.
The message, essentially: Don’t forget about us.
Friedman said he “got off the call feeling like it was incredibly unlikely” that the Dodgers would land Freeman. But when the lockout ended on March 10, the Braves and Freeman’s then-agent, Casey Close, still couldn’t bridge the gap, either on length or value. Four days later, the Braves traded for another star first baseman in Matt Olson, leaving Freeman stunned. Three days after that, he pivoted to the Dodgers, coming to terms on a six-year, $162 million contract.
2022-23 offseason: They sat out the shortstop market
When Corey Seager became a free agent at the end of the 2021 season, the Dodgers had a ready-made replacement in Trea Turner, who had been acquired with Max Scherzer the previous summer in a deal that sent Gray and three other minor leaguers to the Washington Nationals. But when Turner himself became a free agent a year later, the Dodgers did nothing to shore up one of the sport’s most important positions.
Turner became part of a historic class of free-agent shortstops, along with Carlos Correa, Xander Bogaerts and Dansby Swanson. The Dodgers didn’t pursue any of them, even though they didn’t have a clear replacement. The Dodgers could have avoided years of uncertainty at this position by locking in a proven star, but doing so was hardly entertained.
The reason is now obvious.
“With where we were commitment-wise,” Friedman said, “and with Shohei [Ohtani] coming up the next offseason, it was just a higher bar to clear for us to do something that would have any negative ability for us to pursue Shohei.”
Dec. 11, 2023: Ohtani chose them
By the time Ohtani became a free agent in November of 2023, the Dodgers’ roster was loaded but their payroll was manageable, with only Betts and Freeman guaranteed beyond the next two seasons. The Dodgers could boast a contending team — with two franchise pillars and a wealth of young talent — but also pitch Ohtani on the promise of adding other impact players around him, regardless of his monstrous contract. It worked.
Now, Dec. 11, 2023, stands as one of the most monumental dates in Dodgers history. Ohtani not only joined the Dodgers that day, but he agreed to defer more than 97% of his 10-year, $700 million contract. The Dodgers have become infamous for their propensity to defer money, a mechanism to provide players with a higher guarantee but, given the ability to invest deferred commitments, is mostly beneficial to the Dodgers (though perhaps not as much as one might think).
Ohtani’s deal was followed by the addition of two frontline starters — Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who landed a contract worth $325 million, and Tyler Glasnow, who was acquired via trade and subsequently signed a five-year extension worth close to $140 million. Ohtani didn’t pitch in 2024, but he put together one of the greatest offensive seasons in baseball history, starting the 50/50 club and becoming the first full-time designated hitter to win an MVP.
Just as important, from the Dodgers’ perspective: He generated massive amounts of revenue.
Ohtani had MLB’s top-selling jersey by a wide margin. With him on the roster, the Dodgers struck sponsorship agreements with 11 different Japanese companies during the 2024 season. Two Ohtani bobblehead giveaways prompted fans to line up outside Dodger Stadium up to 10 hours before the first pitch. Japanese guided tours through the ballpark — a twice-a-day, four-day-a-week addition — never relented. The gift shops frequently had lines out the door.
The Dodgers won’t disclose how much additional revenue they generated from Ohtani last year, but team president Stan Kasten has repeatedly said it blew away even their most optimistic projections.
Oct. 9, 2024: They survived Game 4 of the NLDS
It’s amazing, given the space the Dodgers currently occupy, that five months ago they carried a reputation as, well, chokers. Their championship at the end of the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season had been thoroughly dismissed for its unconventionality. More prevalent in the general public’s mind was 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2023, seasons that ended with talented teams getting eliminated early by inferior opponents.
The 2024 season was quickly headed in that direction. On Oct. 9, the Dodgers trailed a Padres club that was widely considered more well-rounded two-games-to-one in the best-of-five National League Division Series. Their depleted rotation had run out of starters. They would stage a bullpen game with their season on the line. And they would survive. The Dodgers shut out the Padres in Game 4, shut them out again in Game 5, then cruised past the New York Mets and Yankees to capture their first full-season championship since 1988.
What followed was a second straight offseason in which the Dodgers added practically every player they wanted. That included a frontline starter (Blake Snell), two corner outfielders (Teoscar Hernandez and Michael Conforto), three premium bullpen pieces (Tanner Scott, Kirby Yates and Blake Treinen), two fan favorites (Clayton Kershaw and Kiké Hernández) and one of the most alluring pitching prospects in a generation (Roki Sasaki). A key utility player (Tommy Edman) was also extended. The cost: another $466.5 million in guaranteed money, immediately after an offseason in which they guaranteed close to $1.4 billion in signings and extensions.
Roberts, fresh off a record-setting extension, has talked about how he might have been fired had he not navigated his Dodgers past the Padres last fall. Friedman acknowledged that the Dodgers probably don’t spend as much if they don’t win the World Series and generate the extra revenue that comes from it, though he called that “a lazy guess.”
Still, when asked how often he has thought about how life would be different if the Dodgers hadn’t won Game 4 of the 2024 NLDS, Friedman said: “Zero minutes.”
“We have been on the good side of those games and on the bad side of those games,” he added, “and I’ve spent zero minutes thinking about what the world would look like if the outcome had been different.”
All that matters now is a reality that exhilarates their fans and infuriates everyone else: The Dodgers look about as insurmountable as a franchise can be in this sport.
The Boston Bruins‘ approach to the trade deadline indicated that perhaps management thought this wasn’t their year, and they would add some future assets for a quick reload this offseason.
But as the chips fall on Monday, the Bruins still have a chance to make the playoffs.
That all begins with a game against the lottery-bound Buffalo Sabres Monday night (7 p.m., ESPN+). A win in that one closes the gap between Boston and the current first wild card, the New York Rangers. The Rangers have 72 points and 30 regulation wins through 68 games, while Boston is at 68 and 23 through 68.
After Buffalo, it’s a road trip through Nevada and California (Golden Knights on Thursday, Sharks on Saturday, Kings on Sunday and Ducks on Wednesday, March 26). All told, the Bruins will play teams currently in playoff position in six of the final 13 games after the matchup with the Sabres; the final five, in particular, could be a spot to make up ground, with two against the injury-struck Devils along with single games against the Sabres, Blackhawks and Penguins.
To be clear, this would be a long shot; in addition to going on a hot streak, the Bruins will need to jump ahead of four teams (which would all need to get cold, in this hypothetical). Stathletes isn’t so sure all of that will fall into place, giving the Bruins a 2.4% chance of making the postseason. But stranger things have happened in recent seasons!
There is a lot of runway left until April 17, the final day of the regular season, and we’ll help you track it all with the NHL playoff watch. As we traverse the final stretch, we’ll provide details on all the playoff races, along with the teams jockeying for position in the 2025 NHL draft lottery.
Note: Playoff chances are via Stathletes.
Jump ahead:
Current playoff matchups
Today’s schedule
Yesterday’s scores
Expanded standings
Race for No. 1 pick
Current playoff matchups
Eastern Conference
A1 Florida Panthers vs. WC1 Ottawa Senators
A2 Tampa Bay Lightning vs. A3 Toronto Maple Leafs
M1 Washington Capitals vs. WC2 New York Rangers
M2 Carolina Hurricanes vs. M3 New Jersey Devils
Western Conference
C1 Winnipeg Jets vs. WC2 Vancouver Canucks
C2 Dallas Stars vs. C3 Colorado Avalanche
P1 Vegas Golden Knights vs. WC1 Minnesota Wild
P2 Edmonton Oilers vs. P3 Los Angeles Kings
Monday’s games
Note: All times ET. All games not on TNT or NHL Network are available to stream on ESPN+ (local blackout restrictions apply).
Buffalo Sabres at Boston Bruins, 7 p.m.
Philadelphia Flyers at Tampa Bay Lightning, 7 p.m.
New Jersey Devils at Columbus Blue Jackets, 7 p.m.
Calgary Flames at Toronto Maple Leafs, 7:30 p.m.
Los Angeles Kings at Minnesota Wild, 8 p.m.
Sunday’s scoreboard
Detroit Red Wings 3, Vegas Golden Knights 0
Colorado Avalanche 4, Dallas Stars 3 (OT)
Edmonton Oilers 3, New York Rangers 1
New York Islanders 4, Florida Panthers 2
St. Louis Blues 7, Anaheim Ducks 2
Utah Hockey Club 3, Vancouver Canucks 1
Winnipeg Jets 3, Seattle Kraken 2 (OT)
Expanded standings
Atlantic Division
Points: 85
Regulation wins: 35
Playoff position: A1
Games left: 14
Points pace: 102.5
Next game: @ CBJ (Thursday)
Playoff chances: 99.9%
Tragic number: N/A
Points: 81
Regulation wins: 33
Playoff position: A2
Games left: 16
Points pace: 100.6
Next game: vs. PHI (Monday)
Playoff chances: 99.9%
Tragic number: N/A
Points: 81
Regulation wins: 31
Playoff position: A3
Games left: 16
Points pace: 100.6
Next game: vs. CGY (Monday)
Playoff chances: 99.9%
Tragic number: N/A
Points: 77
Regulation wins: 27
Playoff position: WC1
Games left: 16
Points pace: 95.7
Next game: @ MTL (Tuesday)
Playoff chances: 98.8%
Tragic number: N/A
Points: 71
Regulation wins: 23
Playoff position: N/A
Games left: 16
Points pace: 88.2
Next game: vs. OTT (Tuesday)
Playoff chances: 20.2%
Tragic number: 32
Points: 70
Regulation wins: 24
Playoff position: N/A
Games left: 15
Points pace: 85.7
Next game: @ WSH (Tuesday)
Playoff chances: 5.3%
Tragic number: 29
Points: 68
Regulation wins: 23
Playoff position: N/A
Games left: 14
Points pace: 82.0
Next game: vs. BUF (Monday)
Playoff chances: 2.4%
Tragic number: 25
Points: 58
Regulation wins: 21
Playoff position: N/A
Games left: 17
Points pace: 73.2
Next game: @ BOS (Monday)
Playoff chances: ~0%
Tragic number: 21
Metro Division
Points: 96
Regulation wins: 37
Playoff position: M1
Games left: 15
Points pace: 117.5
Next game: vs. DET (Tuesday)
Playoff chances: 99.9%
Tragic number: N/A
Points: 86
Regulation wins: 36
Playoff position: M2
Games left: 15
Points pace: 105.3
Next game: @ SJ (Thursday)
Playoff chances: 99.9%
Tragic number: N/A
Points: 78
Regulation wins: 32
Playoff position: M3
Games left: 14
Points pace: 94.1
Next game: @ CBJ (Monday)
Playoff chances: 95.7%
Tragic number: N/A
Points: 72
Regulation wins: 30
Playoff position: WC2
Games left: 14
Points pace: 86.8
Next game: vs. CGY (Tuesday)
Playoff chances: 53.2%
Tragic number: N/A
Points: 70
Regulation wins: 23
Playoff position: N/A
Games left: 16
Points pace: 87.0
Next game: vs. NJ (Monday)
Playoff chances: 16.7%
Tragic number: 31
Points: 68
Regulation wins: 24
Playoff position: N/A
Games left: 16
Points pace: 84.5
Next game: @ PIT (Tuesday)
Playoff chances: 6.4%
Tragic number: 29
Points: 66
Regulation wins: 19
Playoff position: N/A
Games left: 13
Points pace: 78.4
Next game: vs. NYI (Tuesday)
Playoff chances: 0.8%
Tragic number: 21
Points: 64
Regulation wins: 17
Playoff position: N/A
Games left: 14
Points pace: 77.2
Next game: @ TB (Monday)
Playoff chances: 0.5%
Tragic number: 21
Central Division
Points: 98
Regulation wins: 38
Playoff position: C1
Games left: 14
Points pace: 118.2
Next game: @ VAN (Tuesday)
Playoff chances: 99.9%
Tragic number: N/A
Points: 87
Regulation wins: 35
Playoff position: C2
Games left: 16
Points pace: 108.1
Next game: vs. ANA (Tuesday)
Playoff chances: 99.9%
Tragic number: N/A
Points: 85
Regulation wins: 35
Playoff position: C3
Games left: 14
Points pace: 102.5
Next game: @ TOR (Wednesday)
Playoff chances: 99.9%
Tragic number: N/A
Points: 79
Regulation wins: 29
Playoff position: WC1
Games left: 15
Points pace: 96.7
Next game: vs. LA (Monday)
Playoff chances: 91%
Tragic number: N/A
Points: 73
Regulation wins: 24
Playoff position: N/A
Games left: 14
Points pace: 88.0
Next game: @ NSH (Tuesday)
Playoff chances: 32.5%
Tragic number: 29
Points: 71
Regulation wins: 22
Playoff position: N/A
Games left: 15
Points pace: 86.9
Next game: @ EDM (Tuesday)
Playoff chances: 17%
Tragic number: 29
Points: 58
Regulation wins: 21
Playoff position: N/A
Games left: 16
Points pace: 72.1
Next game: vs. STL (Tuesday)
Playoff chances: ~0%
Tragic number: 18
Points: 49
Regulation wins: 17
Playoff position: N/A
Games left: 15
Points pace: 60.0
Next game: vs. SEA (Tuesday)
Playoff chances: ~0%
Tragic number: 7
Pacific Division
Points: 86
Regulation wins: 36
Playoff position: P1
Games left: 15
Points pace: 105.3
Next game: vs. BOS (Thursday)
Playoff chances: 99.9%
Tragic number: N/A
Points: 82
Regulation wins: 28
Playoff position: P2
Games left: 15
Points pace: 100.4
Next game: vs. UTA (Tuesday)
Playoff chances: 99.8%
Tragic number: N/A
Points: 81
Regulation wins: 31
Playoff position: P3
Games left: 17
Points pace: 102.2
Next game: @ MIN (Monday)
Playoff chances: 99.8%
Tragic number: N/A
Points: 73
Regulation wins: 24
Playoff position: WC2
Games left: 15
Points pace: 89.3
Next game: vs. WPG (Tuesday)
Playoff chances: 41.1%
Tragic number: N/A
Points: 71
Regulation wins: 24
Playoff position: N/A
Games left: 17
Points pace: 89.6
Next game: @ TOR (Monday)
Playoff chances: 18.7%
Tragic number: 33
Points: 65
Regulation wins: 21
Playoff position: N/A
Games left: 15
Points pace: 79.6
Next game: @ DAL (Tuesday)
Playoff chances: 0.1%
Tragic number: 23
Points: 63
Regulation wins: 23
Playoff position: N/A
Games left: 14
Points pace: 76.0
Next game: @ CHI (Tuesday)
Playoff chances: ~0%
Tragic number: 19
Points: 45
Regulation wins: 13
Playoff position: N/A
Games left: 14
Points pace: 54.3
Next game: vs. CAR (Thursday)
Playoff chances: ~0%
Tragic number: 1
Race for the No. 1 pick
The NHL uses a draft lottery to determine the order of the first round, so the team that finishes in last place is not guaranteed the No. 1 selection. As of 2021, a team can move up a maximum of 10 spots if it wins the lottery, so only 11 teams are eligible for the No. 1 pick. Full details on the process are here. Matthew Schaefer, a defenseman for the OHL’s Erie Otters, is No. 1 on the draft board.
Points: 45
Regulation wins: 13
Points: 49
Regulation wins: 17
Points: 58
Regulation wins: 21
Points: 58
Regulation wins: 21
Points: 63
Regulation wins: 23
Points: 64
Regulation wins: 17
Points: 65
Regulation wins: 21
Points: 66
Regulation wins: 19
Points: 68
Regulation wins: 23
Points: 68
Regulation wins: 24
Points: 70
Regulation wins: 23
Points: 70
Regulation wins: 24
Points: 71
Regulation wins: 22
Points: 71
Regulation wins: 23
Points: 71
Regulation wins: 24
Points: 73
Regulation wins: 24
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