Yahoo Sports AM: 9 weeks down, 9 to go

Yahoo Sports AM is our daily newsletter that keeps you up to date on all things sports. Sign up here to get it every weekday morning.

🚨 Headlines

🏈 Trade deadline recap: Four-time Pro Bowl CB Marshon Lattimore’s trade from the Saints to the Commanders headlined Tuesday’s NFL trade deadline action. Overall, 19 players changed teams, including eight on Tuesday alone. Winners and losers.

🏀 $1 million shove: The NBA suspended Joel Embiid three games for shoving a reporter. The suspension will cost the 76ers’ center, set to make $51.4 million this season, a little over $1 million in lost pay.

⚾️ Ohtani undergoes surgery: Shohei Ohtani’s shoulder injury in the World Series resulted in a partially torn labrum, and he underwent successful surgery on Tuesday. He’s expected to be ready for spring training.

🏒 Scary moment: Blues winger Dylan Holloway was stretchered off the rink and taken to the hospital after taking a puck to the throat. The team later announced he was alert and in stable condition.

🏈 NFL playoff picture: 9 weeks down, 9 to go

The NFL regular season has reached its midway point, with nine of 18 weeks — and 138 of 272 games — in the books.

Playoff picture: If the season ended today, the undefeated Chiefs and one-loss Lions would earn a first-round bye, and both of their divisions (AFC West, NFC North) would be sending three teams to the postseason.

AFC:

1. Chiefs: 8-0 (>99% playoff probability, per Next Gen Stats)

2. Bills: 7-2 (98%)

3. Steelers: 6-2 (83%)

4. Texans: 6-3 (96%)

5. Ravens: 6-3 (92%)

6. Chargers: 5-3 (74%)

7. Broncos: 5-4 (53%)

In the hunt: 4-5 Colts (29%); 4-5 Bengals (36%); 3-6 Jets (24%)

Need a miracle: 2-6 Titans (4%); 2-6 Dolphins (4%); 2-7 Browns (2%); 2-7 Jaguars (3%); 2-7 Raiders (<1%); 2-7 Patriots (<1%)

NFC:

1. Lions: 7-1 (97%)

2. Commanders: 7-2 (86%)

3. Falcons: 6-3 (89%)

4. Cardinals: 5-4 (46%)

5. Vikings: 6-2 (84%)

6. Eagles: 6-2 (86%)

7. Packers: 6-3 (62%)

In the hunt: 4-4 Bears (9%); 4-4 49ers (54%); 4-4 Rams (24%); 4-5 Bucs (42%); 4-5 Seahawks (12%); 3-5 Cowboys (8%)

Need a miracle: 2-7 Panthers (<1%); 2-7 Saints (1%); 2-7 Giants (<1%)

Midseason report: Team grades, QB storylines, 5 best games so far, and more

🏀 Elite 8: Hoopers to watch

The men’s college basketball season tipped off on Monday. Below are 10 players that we expect to define the next five months, courtesy of Yahoo Sports’ Jeff Eisenberg:

1. Cooper Flagg: The last time a celebrated freshman siphoned mainstream attention away from the NBA or NFL, Zion Williamson was dunking his way onto America’s TV screens and social media feeds. This season, another must-see Duke freshman has a chance to entice casual college basketball fans to tune in before March.

2. Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey: It’s no mystery why Rutgers is ranked in the preseason top 25 for just the second time in 45 years. The Scarlet Knights welcome a pair of McDonald’s All-Americans in Harper, a playmaking guard, and Bailey, a 6-foot-9 athletic wing. Both have flashed the talent to be selected in the top five of next year’s NBA draft.

3. Mark Sears: Sears already helped the Crimson Tide make their first Final Four last spring (24.2 ppg in five NCAA tournament games). Now, the 6-foot-1 preseason All-American has a chance to lead a loaded team two victories further this season and cement himself as the player who proved Alabama was more than just a football school.

4. R.J. Davis: The reigning ACC Player of the Year — and the lone returning 2023-24 First-Team All-American — announced that he was pulling out of the NBA draft last May with the simple Instagram caption: “I’m back.” While North Carolina has perimeter talent aplenty surrounding Davis this season, he’s the player that the Tar Heels will lean on most.

5. Great Osobor and Coleman Hawkins: The highest-paid players in college basketball could be a pair of coveted transfers. Osobor reportedly received $2 million to follow coach Danny Sprinkle from Utah State to Washington, and Hawkins reportedly received slightly more than that in return for pulling out of the draft and transferring to Kansas State.

6. Alex Karaban: Had he remained in last June’s NBA draft, Karaban might have come off the board as early as the late first round and almost certainly would have been the fifth UConn player selected. The 6-foot-8 stretch forward instead chose to return to the Huskies and spearhead Dan Hurley’s chase of a potential national title three-peat.

7. Hunter Dickinson: The Kansas 7-footer might be the captain of this year’s “Wait, he’s still in college?” team. Dickinson averaged 17.9 points and 10.9 rebounds last year en route to being named an All-American for the second time, and his return for a fifth collegiate season is a big reason why the Jayhawks are ranked No. 1.

8. Trey Kaufman-Renn: As Purdue seeks to figure out its post-Zach Edey identity, the biggest reason for optimism is a player who has long been overshadowed by the skilled 7-foot-4 giant. Matt Painter says he’d be “shocked” if Kaufman-Renn doesn’t evolve from promising role player to all-league standout now that more playing time is available for him.

Plus… The eight most intriguing coaches: John Calipari (Arkansas), Dan Hurley (UConn), Mark Pope (Kentucky), Kyle Neptune (Villanova), Mike Woodson (Indiana), Jon Scheyer (Duke), Pat Kelsey (Louisville), Doug Gottlieb (Wisconsin-Green Bay).

More College Hoops: 68 bold predictions

🏈 The first CFP rankings

There weren’t any surprises in the first set of rankings for the 12-team College Football Playoff, released Tuesday night.

Read: Why a weekly CFP rankings show is dumb (Dan Wetzel, Yahoo Sports)

⚾️ The Ohtani effect

Shohei Ohtani struggled in the World Series, particularly after injuring his shoulder in Game 2, but his mere presence helped fuel excellent ratings — especially in his native Japan.

By the numbers: The 2024 Fall Classic averaged 15.8 million viewers in the U.S., the most since 2017. And it drew nearly as many in Japan (12.1 million) despite that country having roughly one-third the population of the U.S. (123 million vs. 346 million) and games beginning at 9am.

The Ohtani effect: Japan has a rich baseball history, but they’ve never had a player break through in the majors quite like Ohtani has. Hideo Nomo, Ichiro Suzuki, Yu Darvish and others have dazzled in decades past, but Sho-Time is something else entirely.

• MLB obviously can’t plan for Ohtani to be in every World Series (though with the Dodgers’ roster and willingness to spend, who knows). But the league can still capitalize on his global stardom, and that’s exactly what it’s doing.

• This past season began with the Dodgers and Padres playing a series in South Korea, which drew a whopping 18.7 million viewers in Japan. And next season will begin with Dodgers-Cubs in Tokyo (and by then, Ohtani could be back on the mound).

The last word: “For the first time, Japanese fans can credibly argue that the most talented baseball player of all time is from Japan,” writes The Athletic’s Rustin Dodd ($). “He makes people proud to be Japanese,” says Robert Whiting, an American author living in Tokyo.

📆 Nov. 6, 1869: The first game

155 years ago today, Rutgers beat Princeton (then called the College of New Jersey), 6-4, in the first college football (and soccer) game ever played.

‌Soccer and football? The game was played based on the London Football Association’s 1863 rules, which prohibited carrying or throwing the ball. Therefore, it closely resembled soccer and is considered the first college soccer match. Because college football was developed from those same rules, it’s also widely considered the first college football game.

The backdrop: John W. Herbert, who took the field for Rutgers that day, describes the events leading up to the game…

To appreciate this game to the full you must know something of its background. The two colleges were, and still are, of course, about 20 miles apart. The rivalry between them was intense. For years each had striven for possession of an old Revolutionary cannon, making night forays and lugging it back and forth time and again.

Not long before the first football game, the canny Princetonians had settled this competition in their own favor by ignominiously sinking the gun in several feet of concrete. In addition to this, I regret to report, Princeton had beaten Rutgers in baseball by the harrowing score of 40-2. Rutgers longed for a chance to square things.

Six years later… On June 4, 1875, Tufts and Harvard played the first college football game that actually looked like football.

📺 Watchlist: NBA coast-to-coast

Tonight’s NBA doubleheader on ESPN features a recent NBA Finals rematch in Boston and a reunion in Los Angeles.

• Warriors at Celtics (7:30pm ET): Jayson Tatum, who’s off to a torrid start,* leads the defending champs against the team that took them down in the 2022 Finals.

• 76ers at Clippers (10pm): Paul George, who put up 15 points, 5 rebounds and 4 assists in his Sixers debut on Monday, returns to Los Angeles to face his former team.

More to watch:

• ⚽️ Champions League: Matchday 4 (12:45-3pm, Paramount+) … Inter vs. Arsenal headlines the nine-game slate.

• 🏒 NHL: Red Wings at Blackhawks (8pm, TNT)

• 🏈 NCAAF: Ohio at Kent State (7pm, ESPNU); Northern Illinois at Western Michigan (7pm, ESPN2) … More midweek #MACtion!

• 🎾 Tennis: WTA Finals (7:30am, Tennis)

• 🏒 Women’s Hockey: USA vs. Canada (10pm, NHL) … The first of five games in the annual Rivalry Series.

*Pregame reading… Tatum making early case for MVP (Dan Devine, Yahoo Sports)

⚾️ MLB trivia

Juan Soto’s free-agency sweepstakes could see the slugger earn north of $600 million, just shy of the MLB record but easily the second-biggest contract in baseball history.

Question: Can you name the five MLB players who’ve signed a contract worth at least $350 million?

Hint: They all play in New York or California.

Answer at the bottom.

📸 Pic du jour

Really cool photo of runners crossing the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge during Sunday’s New York City Marathon.

Trivia answer: Shohei Ohtani, LAD (10 years, $700M); Mike Trout, LAA (12 years, $426.5M); Mookie Betts, LAD (12 years, $365M); Aaron Judge, NYY (9 years, $360M); Manny Machado, SD (11 years, $350M)

We hope you enjoyed this edition of Yahoo Sports AM, our daily newsletter that keeps you up to date on all things sports. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.