CHICAGO – Between the last World Cup and the one that starts in a matter of days, the U.S. men’s national team have truly tested the power of positive thinking, and 11 days into a pre-tournament training camp defined by good vibes, they seemed ready to undergo another batch of trials and tribulations. Two minutes after a sold-out Soldier Field crowd gave them as much encouragement as they possibly could, Germany’s Kai Havertz had a free header and the visitors were up a goal before everyone could even settle into their positions.

“I was upset, of course,” head coach Mauricio Pochettino said as he remembered the less-than-ideal start to Saturday’s 2-1 loss to Germany. “But after that, I said it’s lucky because I think it’s good for us to see the reaction of the team. The reaction was amazing, was really positive and that is why it’s good that some things [that are] not so good happened to see the reaction to create the atmosphere that we can deal with these types of situations that we can find in the future and during the competition, the World Cup.”

The scoreline was a fair reflection of a game in which Germany were the better side – their 12 shots totalled 1.47 expected goals, while the USMNT came up with 16 shots that amounted to 0.99 expected goals. It means they enter the World Cup with a losing record to European sides, which maybe does not bode well for their group stage finale against Turkiye on June 26. It is hard not to see their outing against Germany as a sign of progress, with their World Cup opener against Paraguay just six days away at SoFi Stadium in the Los Angeles suburbs.

Between Saturday’s outing, the 3-2 win over Senegal a week earlier, and Pochettino’s historic tendencies as a coach, the USMNT seem to have decided that their greatest defense is a strong offense. It did not quite pan out against Germany – the early goal was an example of making things a little too easy for the opposition – but there is credence to the idea, especially with defender Chris Richards still battling back from an ankle injury. The U.S. did not hesitate to create chances and got back into the game before the hydration break in the 23rd minute and did not waver in their resolve even after the visitors scored a second in the 57th minute through Leroy Sane.

“Sometimes when you get punched in the mouth, you got to stand back up and punch back,” captain Tim Ream said. “Just all the conversations, the work, the messaging from the staff. We all always talk about things are going to happen. Mistakes are going to happen. Sometimes things don’t go the way you want them to. It’s about the next play. What do you do next? How do you respond next? That’s a big message that Mauricio and his staff have hammered home over the past almost two years. It was just a matter of we don’t have a choice. If we don’t respond. If we don’t punch back, the game’s going to get out of hand.”

It helped that an example of a game that went out of hand was not a distant memory – March’s 5-2 defeat to Belgium started well, the USMNT actually taking the lead and entering the halftime break level, before things unraveled quickly in the second half. A full embrace of the attack was hard to miss, just as it was against Senegal. Antonee Robinson, the USMNT’s goalscorer on Saturday, fully embraced the attack-minded skillset outside backs frequently boast, down to his exuberant celebration. Pochettino joked afterwards that the cramps he suffered midway through the second half might have been the result of his overexertion.

“I think all the energy was in his shot and that goal because after, cramps,” Pochettino said in jest. “Maybe we spend too much energy. We were so excited in the presentation of the players before the game. They were sometimes overexcited and we know very well that you drain the energy in these moments but I think it’s a great opportunity and to live that experience for sure helps in the first game of the World Cup.”

Robinson downplayed the issue despite the fact that he limped off the field, though the team is not certain about the specifics just yet.

“Not 100% sure but it feels fine now,” Robinson said. “More just really didn’t feel like I could continue so I just needed to get off the pitch and try to get it right.”

The real embrace of the all-out attack, though, came in Pochettino’s selection of Malik Tillman in the midfield. Tyler Adams remains the go-to pick at the base of midfield, the only true defensive midfielder in the squad, while the multitalented Weston McKennie was more advanced. Tillman, another player with plenty of range, was their go-between and much like Robinson, though, his standout quality is his attack-focused tendencies. Pochettino cited October’s UEFA Champions League game between Tillman’s Bayer Leverkusen and his former club PSV as an example of why he selected the player for a best-of-both-worlds role.

“It was him in front [of] the back four,” he recalled. “He’s a player that can because his physical condition, his technical condition, his capacity to go in different spaces, go higher, I think he’s a player that can play in every space on the pitch. Today, I am happy with him. He finished a little bit tired because it’s normal. He suffered a little bit in the last few months, didn’t play too much, didn’t compete but now I think he’s doing well and I am happy with his performance and in the evolution after not to play too much in the last few months in his club, in Leverkusen.”

Tillman, deeply introverted in off-pitch settings but fully in his element on the field, made a noticeable difference and remains as well-positioned as any to be a secret key as the USMNT target an impressive World Cup run.

“It’s good because we get another attack-minded player on the field.” Adams said. “I think that he helps us break lines, find solutions. Him and Weston had a good balance there as well. There’s probably some things that we need to tune up a little bit defensively to not get as exposed but when you play against Germany, where they overload the midfield, it’s always difficult against teams like that. They have so many guys that can play in those pockets so I think he did really well.”

The game marked one final experiment of the Pochettino era, a batch of 26 games building up to the World Cup that have been defined by tinkering – sometimes simply for the sake of it. Saturday’s team, though, looked as close to a World Cup starting lineup as he might have been able to envision considering Richards’ injury specifically. After 18 months of wondering what exactly Pochettino’s version of the U.S. team might look like, we seem to finally have our answer. The team has trended much like a group project that was assigned well in advance but was only completed right before the deadline, which is perfectly fine for an assignment in which the destination matters much, much more than the journey.

As Pochettino put it shortly before the team began their trip to their World Cup base of Irvine, Calif., “We are going to go [into] a decisive week.”

The 2026 French Open has been defined by surprises, but after two weeks filled with shocking upsets, the women’s final on Saturday was dominated by the favorite. No. 8 seed Mirra Andreeva outclassed Maja Chwalinska on Court Philippe-Chartrier, cruising to a straight set victory (6-3, 6-2) to capture the first grand slam title of her young career.

Both players seemed to feel the weight of the moment early in the match, as there was sloppy tennis on both sides and multiple early breaks with the wind whipping around Roland-Garros. But it was the 19-year-old who settled in first and asserted her dominance. Andreeva was able to dictate points and consistently put Chwalinska on the run, dominating points with her combination of power and movement to overwhelm her opponent.

Chwalinska put up a game effort early, but just did not have the gears to keep up with Andreeva over the course of the match. The Parisian crowd tried to urge her on and will the match into another thriller, but Andreeva was simply too good on this day and steamrolled the Polish 24-year-old in the second set en route to the title.

Andreeva produced 25 winners to 26 unforced errors, playing a high quality of tennis that demanded Chwalinska produce her best to match it. Chwalinska, meanwhile, only managed 10 winners to 29 unforced errors, which is decidedly not the formula for pulling off a major upset. After the slow start, the young Russian was solid on serve and then consistently prodded at her Polish counterpart’s serve and asked questions that Chwalinksa simply didn’t have the answers to.

For the match, Andreeva won an incredible 34-of-54 points on the Chwalinska serve, and fittingly ended things by breaking Chwalinksa at love in the final game of the match to seal her victory.

Andreeva’s win continues an incredible run of parity in women’s tennis over the past two years, as she’s the sixth consecutive different winner in a grand slam event. The 19-year-old is the 12th teenage women’s winner at Roland-Garros, and fully confirmed herself as one of the sports rising stars with her first grand slam title.

Quarterback projections are usually wrong for one simple reason: We spend too much time talking about the quarterback and not enough time talking about everything around him.

Every spring, evaluators obsess over arm strength, athleticism, release mechanics and highlight-reel throws. Then September arrives, and we’re reminded that rookie quarterbacks don’t enter the NFL in a vacuum. They enter ecosystems. Some inherit stable organizations, proven play-callers and ascending offensive lines. Others walk into rebuilding projects where every dropback feels like an exercise in survival.

The data back that up.

To see which factors actually mattered most, I ran a model using college and rookie quarterback data from 2015-2025. The goal wasn’t to predict the future; quarterback evaluation is too messy for that. The goal was to identify the traits and circumstances that best correlate with early NFL success.

Five variables consistently emerged: collegiate starts, time to throw, pressure rate, screen-game dependency and first-down rate. Collegiate starts matter because experience matters. Time to throw and pressure rate help reveal whether a quarterback has a feel for the pocket or is creating some of his own problems. Screen rate and first-down rate help separate easy production from meaningful production.

Put them together, and you get a pretty good sense of how a quarterback is likely to respond when the picture changes after the snap and he has to solve the problem himself.

One of the clearest themes in the data was something that sounds obvious until you see it appear over and over again: Quarterbacks drafted first often inherit the hardest jobs. Quarterbacks selected near the top of the draft historically take more sacks and are asked to shoulder more responsibility than quarterbacks selected later. The reason isn’t complicated. The worst teams pick first. Draft capital buys opportunity, but it often comes attached to weaker rosters, shakier protection and coaching staffs under pressure to win immediately.

That’s important because these five quarterbacks enter the league under dramatically different circumstances.

Fernando Mendoza was the No. 1 overall pick and is expected to become the face of the Raiders franchise. Carson Beck landed in Arizona, where the Cardinals invested significant resources in rebuilding the offense around him. Drew Allar joins one of the league’s most stable organizations. Cade Klubnik enters a Jets team still searching for answers. Ty Simpson walks into perhaps the ideal developmental situation behind Matthew Stafford and Sean McVay.

Their talent levels are different. Their developmental timelines are different. And their environments are very different. Which raises a simple question:

What does the best-, worst- and most likely version of each rookie season look like?

One theme kept showing up in the data. First-down rate emerged as the strongest predictor. Experience mattered. Pocket management mattered. But once these quarterbacks reached the NFL, the biggest variable often became the environment around them. Put differently, talent helps get quarterbacks drafted. Environment often determines how quickly they develop.

How reliable is this model?

Before projecting rookie numbers for the 2026 quarterback class, I wanted to know whether the model was actually identifying signal or simply fitting noise.

To test that, I removed Cam Ward, Jaxson Dart and Tyler Shough — the 2025 rookie quarterbacks who played significant snaps in their first NFL seasons — from the training data. I then reran the model to see how its estimates compared to the real-world results: the actual numbers Ward, Dart and Shough produced as rookies.

The results were encouraging.

Testing the model without the 2025 rookie QBs

The model appears to do a good job identifying realistic ranges of outcomes and the factors most likely to push a quarterback toward the high or low end of those ranges.

So let’s get to it.

Fernando Mendoza: The burden of being No. 1

Fernando Mendoza

LV • QB • #15

Heisman Trophy winner who led Indiana to a 16–0 record and CFP National Championship

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If this were based solely on college performance, Fernando Mendoza would be the easy favorite — and it’s not hard to understand why. His 37.6% first-down rate ranked in the 91st percentile despite facing pressure on more than 32% of his dropbacks. Unlike many modern quarterbacks, he wasn’t propped up by a screen-heavy offense. Just 23.1% of his throws came behind the line of scrimmage.

That’s why Mendoza enters the NFL with arguably the cleanest analytical profile in the class. The problem is that he landed behind one of the weakest offensive lines in the league.

Las Vegas ranked near the bottom of the league in pass protection in 2024 and somehow got worse in 2025. Sack rate ballooned from 7.3% to 11.1%, the worst mark among the teams discussed here. Pressure rate climbed from 35.8% to 40.5%, while the running game remained one of the least efficient units in football.

That’s a problem because Mendoza wins from the pocket. He’s not going to erase protection issues with athleticism (though he’s certainly not a bad athlete). His game is built on anticipation, timing and a willingness to stand in against pressure.

Klint Kubiak’s offense can manufacture opportunities through motion and play-action. But even the best scheme eventually requires functional protection. That’s what makes Mendoza such a difficult projection. The most NFL-ready quarterback landed in the least QB-friendly environment.

And unlike Beck, Allar, Klubnik or Simpson, he probably won’t have the luxury of sitting and learning. If Mendoza is going to succeed early, he’ll likely have to do it while overcoming many of the same structural issues that have made life difficult for young passers before him.

Range of outcomes for Fernando Mendoza’s rookie season

The numbers tell the story. Mendoza may have the strongest analytical profile in the class, but his most likely outcome lands much closer to the middle of the distribution than the ceiling. That’s not a reflection of talent. It’s a reflection of where he landed. The model repeatedly penalized quarterbacks entering poor pass-protection situations, and no rookie faces a steeper challenge than Mendoza.

That said, this projection is also one of the most sensitive to environmental changes. The Raiders spent the offseason trying to address the offensive line, signing one of the top free agents available in Tyler Linderbaum and drafting Trey Zuhn III, who brings versatility across the interior. If those additions help stabilize the protection and Las Vegas moves closer to league average up front, Mendoza’s outlook changes considerably. More than any rookie quarterback, his projection may depend on whether everything around him improves as much as he does.

Fernando Mendoza watch: Predicting when Raiders will start No. 1 overall pick; QB’s Rookie of the Year odds

Garrett Podell

Carson Beck: The safest QB in the class?

Carson Beck

ARI • QB • #19

2025: Led ACC in passer efficiency rating (157.0), completion percentage (72.4%) and completions (338)

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If you’re looking for the safest quarterback in this class, it just might be Carson Beck. The question is whether “safe” also means limited. The numbers explain why the model liked him so much: He started 43 games, got the ball out faster than anyone in this class and moved the chains at an elite level. His 38.6% first-down rate ranked in the 95th percentile among draft-eligible quarterbacks from 2015-2026.

He played efficient football, protected the ball and consistently kept his offense on schedule. But he also entered the NFL after playing behind one of the cleanest pockets of any quarterback in the data. Beck’s profile has always been built around avoiding pressure rather than overcoming it, and the challenge for Arizona isn’t helping him play faster — it’s determining how much of his collegiate success carries over when things aren’t quite so clean.

The biggest change since his time at Georgia is that Beck isn’t entering the NFL carrying the expectations that come with being a top-five pick. And that means Arizona can afford to be patient.

That’s important because Beck faced pressure on just 19.1% of his collegiate dropbacks, the lowest figure among these quarterbacks, and more than 32% of his throws came on screens. The problem is that Arizona’s offensive line regressed dramatically in 2025. Sack rate jumped from 5.2% in 2024 to 8.3%, while pressure rate allowed climbed from 29.4% to 39.3%.

The good news for Beck is that the Cardinals spent much of the offseason trying to fix it. They selected Jeremiyah Love third overall, drafted interior offensive lineman Chase Bisontis in Round 2 and signed veterans Isaac Seumalo, Elijah Wilkinson and Matt Pryor. Those moves directly address several of the weaknesses that surfaced during a disappointing 2025 season.

And then there’s the new coach. Mike LaFleur comes from the Shanahan-McVay tree, where quarterbacks are often given answers before the snap and asked to make quick decisions after it. That’s exactly how Beck won at Georgia.

Range of outcomes for Carson Beck’s rookie season

Beck’s projection looks exactly like what you’d expect from arguably the safest quarterback in the class. The model consistently rewarded his experience, quick processing and ability to stay on schedule. Even if the ceiling isn’t what it is for Mendoza – or even Allar (more on that in a second), Beck may have the highest floor.