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Aaron Rodgers' potential Steelers visit is mired in conflicting reports as Pittsburgh's OTA deadline looms. Breece Hall signed a three-year, $45.75 million extension with the Jets, while Jeremiyah Love's rookie deal set a record for guaranteed money
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Welcome to The Sports Hangover Daily, I'm Michael Benatar. Today on the show: the Rodgers-Steelers saga is somehow getting MORE confusing, Breece Hall gets a bag from the Jets, Jalen Brunson just ended Philly's season, and Wemby did something only Shaq, Hakeem, and Kareem have done. Let's get into it.
Alright, Pittsburgh. The Aaron Rodgers situation has officially entered the Twilight Zone. So on Thursday, Ian Rapoport reports that Rodgers is expected to visit the Steelers this weekend. The plan is for him to come back, play under Mike McCarthy, and get rolling toward twenty twenty-six. Sounds great. Sounds like progress. Then Friday morning, beat reporter Mark Kaboly drops this — the organization has not been informed of this development. I'm sorry, what? Rapoport says the visit is happening. The team's own beat guy says nobody in the building knows about it. That is genuinely wild.
And look — Rodgers earned the right to have conversations. He went ten and six in sixteen starts last year. Twenty-four touchdowns, seven picks. That's a good season. The Steelers made the playoffs because of him. But this communication limbo is becoming a problem. Pittsburgh has OTAs starting May eighteenth. They've already bumped his tender to fifteen and a half million. They've got Will Howard and Drew Allar on the roster — neither has taken a single NFL snap. McCarthy needs to install his offense. And the forty-two-year-old quarterback might or might not be showing up this weekend depending on which reporter you believe.
Here's what bugs me. The Steelers are building their entire twenty twenty-six plan around a guy who hasn't committed to playing. Every day this drags is a day Howard and Allar aren't getting real reps with the ones. At some point, you gotta pick a direction. May eighteenth is the deadline. If Rodgers doesn't walk through that door for OTAs, Pittsburgh needs to move on and build around the young guys. Period.
Breece Hall got PAID. The Jets locked him up for three years, forty-five point seven five million dollars. That's fifteen and a quarter million per year, making him the third-highest-paid running back behind Saquon Barkley and Christian McCaffrey. Twenty-nine million guaranteed. Hall finally cracked a thousand rushing yards last season, and New York decided they'd seen enough. No more franchise tag drama. Smart move by the Jets. Hall's twenty-four, he's explosive, and in a league where running backs keep getting devalued, this is New York saying — nah, this guy's worth it.
Also on the rookie contract front — Jeremiyah Love officially signed his deal with the Cardinals. Four years, fifty-three million. That's the most guaranteed money ever given to a running back in NFL history. Love won the Doak Walker Award at Notre Dame, averaged six point nine yards per carry, and went third overall. Arizona is betting big on this kid. And the Titans locked up Carnell Tate, the fourth overall pick, on his slotted deal — fifty-one million. So picks two, three, and four are all signed. Fernando Mendoza, the first overall pick to the Raiders, is the last man standing.
One more NFL nugget — the league schedule drops Thursday, May fourteenth. Mark your calendars. NFL Network, ESPN2, eight p.m. Eastern. We're getting close to real football content, people.
Now the NBA. Jalen Brunson went into Philly and dropped thirty-three points with nine assists. Knicks won one oh eight to ninety-four. New York leads three to nothing. And honestly? This series is over. No team in NBA history has come back from down three to nothing. That's zero for one sixty-one. Philly is cooked.
The crazy part is Brunson started two of eight from the floor. Looked human for about six minutes. Then he finished eleven of twenty-two and just buried them. Mikal Bridges had twenty-three. Landry Shamet — who had fourteen points this ENTIRE postseason before last night — went off for fifteen. Even the bench guys are feeling it.
Philly's problems are everywhere. Joel Embiid came back after missing Game two and had eighteen points with six assists — but only five rebounds. Paul George scored fifteen in the first quarter and then went scoreless the rest of the game. Zero points on zero for nine shooting after the first. That is brutal. Kelly Oubre had twenty-two and Maxey had seventeen, but when your two max guys can't sustain anything, what are you even doing?
Out West, Victor Wembanyama was unreal in Minnesota. Thirty-nine points, fifteen rebounds, five blocks. He became just the fourth player in NBA history with thirty-five-plus points, fifteen-plus rebounds, and five-plus blocks in a playoff game. The other three? Shaq. Hakeem. Kareem. That's it. That's the list. The Spurs won one fifteen to one oh eight and lead the series two to one. Anthony Edwards had thirty-two, fourteen boards, and six assists — a monster line — and it still wasn't enough. Wemby is just a different species right now.
Time for the Hangover Take. I wanna talk about Jeremiyah Love and what his contract means for running backs. Fifty-three million guaranteed to a running back taken third overall. Notre Dame's first Doak Walker Award winner ever. This kid averaged nearly seven yards a carry in college. And Arizona didn't blink — they paid him like a franchise cornerstone.
For years, the NFL has been telling us running backs don't matter. Don't draft them early. Don't pay them. Let them walk. Saquon proved that wrong. McCaffrey proved that wrong. And now Love is getting top-three pick money before he's taken a single NFL snap. I think we're watching a real correction happen. The pendulum swung too far toward devaluing the position, and now teams are swinging back. If Love hits in Arizona — and I think he will — every team with a top-ten pick next year is gonna look at running backs differently. The running back market isn't dead. It just got shocked back to life.
That's your hangover. Go hydrate. I'll see you tomorrow.