For a little while, safety has been a key Vikings position. Leaning on an all-time great in Harrison Smith can do that. Plus, Brian Flores happens to have a proclivity for the position since it often boasts versatile talents.

Is there enough in-house depth?

The current outlook is suddenly looking a bit dicier. Losing veteran Jamal Adams for the season hurts. So, too, is it at least somewhat concerning to see rookie Jakobe Thomas missing some time due to a minor back issue. Can the remaining talent be leaned on to shoulder the load for the Vikings?

A Key Vikings Position Now Feeling Thin

To begin, there’s some merit in the recognition that corner is looking as deep as it has ever been with Coach Flores as the DC.

Both of CB1 Byron Murphy Jr. and CB2 Isaiah Rodgers are returning. Solid start. There’s then CB3 James Pierre (free agency add) alongside CB4 Chuck Demmings (5th Round draft selection) to further shore up the position. Adding these long-and-strong options for the boundary helps to give the defensive playcaller options when opting for nickel and dime packages.

Better yet, sophomore Zemaiah Vaughn has generated some hype due to building up his body. And then there’s still Dwight McGlothern hanging around. Getting to a solid crew of five CBs shouldn’t be too difficult.

Go ahead and consider what the safety depth currently looks like post-Adams injury:

• Josh Metellus
• Theo Jackson
• Jay Ward
• Jakobe Thomas
• Tavierre Thomas
• Kahlef Hailassie
• Jacob Thomas

Quite possibly, that’s going to be enough to get the job done. After all, the corner talent is deeper than in years past. Furthermore, the linebacker position sits in a nice spot with all of Blake Cashman, Eric Wilson, Jake Golday, and Ivan Pace around. Seeing these positions stuffed with options helps to insulate the defense more broadly.

But then there’s another factor: Metellus and Jackson are coming off down seasons. Ward is promising but hasn’t been a full-time starter since going pro. Jakobe Thomas is battling a small health ailment that will hopefully remain so: small. Assuming the best with health, does Thomas become a strong player as a rookie?

Generally speaking, finding safety talent isn’t particularly difficult. Adams had just been added at the beginning of training camp, coming to the Twin Cities for cheap. Could something similar occur with a different player? Or, perhaps, is there a willingness to dip into the trade market for somebody?

The wild card all along has been Harrison Smith, the veteran who has gone from excellent down to solid. Where he still adds so much value is as somebody who is incredibly smart and still super versatile.

Rolling with the in-house options at safety could end up being just fine but Minnesota is playing with fire. Essentially, the hope is that nobody at the top gets hurt, but that’s never a sure thing for a sport like NFL football.

Per Over the Cap, the Vikings still have more than $22 million in cap space. The actual amount that’s free and clear is smaller due to the offseason’s top-51 cutoff. Regardless, there’s enough open room to do business.

The Vikings host the Ravens for joint practices this week. Watch for some updates on the safety talent and try not to be too upset about seeing the excellent football that inevitably arises from Kyle Hamilton.

Senior Editor for Vikings Territory & PurplePTSD . Twitter & Bluesky: @VikingsGazette. Email: k.joudry[at]vikingsterritory[dot]com. Canadian. Jude 1:24-25.

Cagliari forward Yael Trepy is out of a medically induced coma and off mechanical ventilation two days after being pulled unconscious from a swimming pool.

Trepy, 20, was airlifted to hospital after the incident at a villa in Sardinia on Sunday afternoon.

His club shared a statement, external on Tuesday evening from the Santissima Annunziata Civil Hospital in Sassari, where Trepy is being treated.

It said his ventilation and sedation was reduced gradually through the day, allowing him to wake from the induced coma.

“Upon awakening, the patient showed a full recovery of consciousness: he is alert and co-operative and, at present, shows no evident neurological deficits,” said Dr Stefania Milia, director of the Emergency and Intensive Care Unit at the hospital.

However, Trepy remains in intensive care and “continues to receive close clinical and respiratory monitoring,” Dr Milia added.

A statement earlier on Tuesday had said Trepy was “fever free” and his “respiratory function” had improved compared with his severe condition when he was admitted, though it added “the prognosis remains guarded”.

BBC Sport has been told the player was in the swimming pool with friends and it is thought he got into difficulty after reaching an area of the pool where he could not touch the bottom.

Cagliari players had the weekend off after they beat Arezzo 1-0 in the Coppa Italia on Friday, in which Trepy played 54 minutes.

Trepy scored once in eight Serie A appearances last season after being a Cagliari youth player.

He joined the club’s academy in 2022, having started his youth career with Parisian side US Creteil-Lusitanos.

Not much has gone the way of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers over the last 10 months. Between a tremendously disappointing second half of the 2025 season, key personnel departures, questions about the coaching staff’s future and a contract standoff involving the team’s starting quarterback, there is not much room for optimism heading into 2026. Unless you ask Baker Mayfield.

Baker Mayfield still has his sights set on a prolific year. Perhaps every blow the Buccaneers suffered and all of the noise surrounding them will fuel him to deliver just that.

“I think we’re going to shock a lot of people this year,” Mayfield said Tuesday after practice. “I’m excited to just get on the road and do that.”

Mayfield is deeply familiar with critics and regularly proves them wrong. He has done so at every stage of his football career.

After finishing high school as an underrecruited prospect, Mayfield at Texas Tech became the first FBS walk-on true freshman quarterback to start a season opener. At Oklahoma, be shined as the only former walk-on to ever win the Heisman Trophy. While some said his antics and physical shortcomings would prevent him from finding professional success, he flew off the draft board as the No. 1 overall pick in 2018 and is now a two-time Pro Bowler.

The moral is to count Mayfield out at your own risk. He seems to thrive on adversity, and he and the Buccaneers face no shortage of it ahead of the 2026 season.

Skepticism for Buccaneers’ upcoming season abounds

Everything that plagued Tampa Bay from the middle of last season onward led to widespread pessimism for their 2026 outlook. Good luck finding many pundits who foresee the Buccaneers doing anything beyond treading water in the NFL’s weakest division.

“You can’t avoid it,” Mayfield said of the negative discourse. “There’s TVs everywhere.”

From their Week 9 bye last season onward, the Buccaneers went just 2-7 and sustained losing streaks of three and four games. The offense regressed into being far too schematic and predictable, and the defense was not strong enough to bail it out. A team that seemed destined for the postseason limped across the finish line in a division where no team logged a winning record.

Then came a slew of moves that, in aggregate, seem to lower the Buccaneers’ ceiling. An offensive coordinator change makes Zac Robinson the fourth different play-caller Mayfield will have operated with in four years in Tampa Bay. Franchise legends Lavonte David and Mike Evans are gone following the former’s retirement and the latter’s exit in free agency.

Even some of the players who remain on the roster are discontented. In addition to Mayfield’s own contract gripes, standout defensive tackle Vita Vea is at odds with the front office. The Buccaneers faced a concerning start to training camp when Vea requested a trade, and he has yet to practice as he conducts a hold-in while in search of a contract extension or a move out of town.

Yet, amid all the turmoil, Mayfield said he is confident his team will catch people by surprise.

“Hell yeah, I am,” Mayfield said. “Everybody’s picking us probably to have a losing record. We’ll see.”

How Baker Mayfield’s own adversity sparks bounce-back year

Last year was Mayfield’s worst since joining the Buccaneers in 2023. After he earned the first two Pro Bowl selections of his career, finished third in Comeback Player of the Year voting and even emerged as an MVP dark horse over his first two years in Tampa Bay, he logged the lowest completion rate and fewest passing yards and touchdowns of his tenure in 2025.

Baker Mayfield by year in Tampa Bay

The front office clearly wants to see Mayfield turn things around before it invests in his long-term future. This is the final year of his contract, and while he wants an extension, the team did not meet his demands in time to get a deal done. The quarterback wanted the contract finalized before training camp, said he would not negotiate during the season, and is now set to play out his final year with no future guarantees.

Mayfield wants to join the $50 million-per-year club, and he said the offers he received from the team were “pretty far” from that echelon. In the weeks since training camp opened, Mayfield has been outward with his frustration. He said he feels “disrespected” and that the team is undervaluing what he brings to the table as a franchise quarterback.

Time and time again over the last decade and a half, Mayfield disproved his detractors. To give him a multi-million-dollar chip on his shoulder — in addition to the one that exists because of the team’s perceived weakness — is like feeding raw meat to a starving wolf. It could give him the kindling he needs to blaze his way to a bounce-back campaign.

Ryan Garcia and Conor Benn are scheduled to square off next month, and ‘King Ry’ has reacted to news that this will be the Briton’s final bout at welterweight, following a difficult weight cut.

Benn has not fought at 147lbs since a knockout victory over Chris van Heerden back in April 2022, but he was installed as the WBC’s mandatory challenger for the welterweight division earlier this year, after revealing his intentions of returning to the weight.

Reality seems to have hit home for ‘The Destroyer’ during this camp though, as he has already announced that this will be his last contest in the division following a brutal weight cut, regardless of the outcome, signalling that he has outgrown the weight.

In a clip captured by Ring Magazine, Garcia responded to Benn’s announcement and declared that his upcoming opponent is already making excuses ahead of their meeting.

“We know you can’t make weight. This is why Conor Benn said this is his last time at 147lbs. My guy is making excuses before he loses, who says that, ‘this is my last fight at 147’. 

“My guy, you gonna go backwards just to get that a** whooped? Oh my gosh, bro. It’s fine, bro, he is just going to run into it. F**k that dude.”

Garcia-Benn takes place on Saturday, September 12, at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, with Zuffa Boxing cruiserweight champion Jai Opetaia poised to take on current WBC cruiserweight titleholder Noel Mikaelian – although he may no longer be champion come fight week.

Parkour may conjure images of rowdy teenagers swinging from building to building in urban landscapes, but since 2017, coach Tan Shie Boon has been using these techniques to improve Singaporean seniors’ strength and agility. Tan’s Movement Singapore classes have gone viral online, showing people in their 60s and 70s climbing structures, vaulting over railings, rolling down slanted surfaces and jumping off platforms. 

Quarterbacks are usually not involved in training camp fights, but Broncos quarterback Bo Nix was today. And he said afterward that he enjoyed it.

Nix grabbed Broncos pass rusher Nik Bonitto by the leg and pulled him out of a pile, which infuriated Bonitto, who had to be held back by teammates. Prior to that, Nix had been pushed down on a sack — despite the rule that quarterbacks are not to be touched in practice — and got up angry about it, throwing the ball. Other offensive and defensive linemen scuffled, but Nix said afterward that it was all good.

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“I love it. It’s football,” Nix said. “It’s getting me ready for the games coming up. It’s a physical practice played by physical people. So it got intense and we were really enjoying it, and sometimes in the dog days of summer, practice gets long and the intensity gets high.”

Nix may have loved it, but Broncos defensive coordinator Vance Joseph acknowledged afterward that his players were wrong to hit Nix, saying, “We don’t want anyone near Bo.”

Ric Flair has once again become the talk of the town in the world of professional wrestling. For the past few days, a rumor surrounding The Nature Boy has been making the rounds, claiming that he is planning to marry someone and start a new family. Well, the legend himself stepped up online to clear the air about all such fake news around him.

The former WWE star has been linked with several women throughout his life. His most recent marriage was to Wendy Barlow, whom he wed in a closed ceremony in 2018. However, they chose to part ways in 2024, and Ric Flair has been single since then. But over the years, the internet has witnessed rumors of The Nature Boy trying to get married for the sixth time.

Taking to Instagram, Ric Flair called out an online wrestling news page by sharing a screenshot of their news about him. Sarcastically, he asked to meet the new Mrs. Flair if the page is sharing the news with such confidence. Besides, the 77-year-old clearly denied any such rumors, saying he is not marrying anybody at this age.

“Good To Know I’m Still The Breaking News Headline At 77 Years Old! Can Someone Please Introduce Me To The Next Mrs. Flair Because, To My Knowledge, We Haven’t Met Yet! Obviously, I’m Not Starting A New Family. To Be Such A Legend…WTF!” Flair wrote.

Ric Flair shared a heartwarming post with his fans

Ric Flair is a legend of professional wrestling. He has been a 16-time World Champion in WWE in his career. Many consider him to be a trailblazer in making it to the mainstream media from the wrestling industry. Recently, Flair shared a heartwarming message with his fans that expressed his love for wrestling even after all these years.

Taking to X, Ric Flair shared a picture of himself in the ring. It looked like it was a photo taken after a training drill. He called the squared circle his “forever home,” expressing a sense of gratitude for the ring.

“My Forever Home! The Years May Have Passed, But The Ring Still Feels Like Home. A Nostalgic Feeling Like No Other! WOOOOO!” Posted Flair.

Check out the X post HERE.

Flair’s last match in professional wrestling was on 31st July 2022. He teamed up with Andrade to take on Jay Lethal & Jeff Jarrett. Besides, his last WWE match was against Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania 24, where he lost his career.