We Got Our Brady-back, Brady-back, Brady-back.

January 27, 2026·58 min·5 clips

Sam Darnold outplays the probable MVP to lead the Seahawks to the Super Bowl after being cast off by multiple teams.

A Super Bowl is set. New England and Seattle are headed to Santa Clara, so the panel gets one clean football headline before the labor story takes over. It does not stay clean for long. Trinity Rodman's Washington Spirit contract becomes the sharper example of a growing league running into rules it has already outgrown. The NWSL had a simple problem. Rodman was leaving her Spirit deal with seven-figure European offers waiting, and losing her would have looked awful for a league gaining ground. The salary cap was just $3.5 million. Washington first tried a backloaded deal that would fit now and pay more later, but commissioner Jessica Berman rejected it as outside the spirit of the rules. So the league changed the menu. In late December, the Board of Governors created the high impact player rule, which allows up to an extra million dollars above the cap for elite, marketable talent. That handled the Rodman problem right away. Her new three-year deal, at a bit over $2 million per year, makes her the NWSL's highest-paid player and puts her among the highest-paid female athletes. It also picked a bigger fight. The players union filed a grievance, saying the new program is not creative cap management so much as a labor issue. That is the useful tension. The Spirit keep their star, the league protects its momentum, and everyone can call the workaround a plan until the grievance tests it. Baseball gets a sideways glance too. The Mets, owned by the richest guy in baseball, come off as a team finally being asked to turn spending into results. Even the outro fits the mood. A Slate Plus bonus about Alex Honnold climbing a building in Taiwan turns the spectacle into a small mystery about why the host could not stop watching.

As heard by us

Rodman's contract becomes a sharp look at who gets to bend the rules.

Hang Up and Listen frames a busy sports week as a series of leverage battles: New England and Seattle headed for the Super Bowl in Santa Clara, Trinity Rodman's historic NWSL contract under a new high impact player rule, and the Mets facing pressure to justify one of baseball's…

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Want Super Bowl stakes alongside a messy fight over Trinity Rodman's new NWSL deal?

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