Four months ago, while we wondered in mid-September how far the Red Sox would take us, I never imagined these stories in mid-January:
We would still be watching NFL football, as we did during The Dynasty.
A local boy who made good would be in the conversation for NFL coach of the year.
Women’s college basketball teams from Rhode Island would be establishing tournament credentials.
The two best offensive football players at the University of Rhode Island would forgo the transfer portal and return for a run at a third conference championship.
The president of the university with the most unlikely No. 1 football team in the United States of America would have a Rhode Island connection.
How fortunate we Rhode Islanders are — make that we New Englanders — to have these remarkable stories to follow in the middle of winter.
Drake Maye, Mike Vrabel and the New England Patriots
Anybody who says they expected the Patriots to be 15-3, AFC East champions and a second-round favorite in the NFL playoffs is lying. And anyone who predicted Drake Maye, the 23-year-old second-year quarterback, would be in the MVP conversation and Mike Vrabel a coach of the year possibility is hallucinating.
Remember, this Patriots organization won four games in 2024 and four in 2023. Vrabel, a former Patriots linebacker and Tennessee Titans head coach, is the third Patriots head coach in three seasons. He followed Jerod Mayo, who lasted one dismal season in 2024, and Bill Belichick, The Dynasty’s Super Bowl genius who stayed at least two seasons too long.
So here we are, awaiting the 3 o’clock kickoff Sunday for a second-round playoff game between the Pats and the Houston Texans at Gillette Stadium. New England dispatched the Los Angeles Chargers, 16-3, last Sunday night, and the Texans eliminated the Pittsburgh Steelers, 30-6, Monday night.
Maye is playing like the young Tom Brady. He is unflinching, throwing darts and long balls and can run.. Vrabel is coaching like the early Belichick — motivating, scheming. He is a strong candidate for coach of the year. Offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels has connected with Maye and drawn out the best of the rest of the offense. The defense came to play in the Wild Card game last Sunday night and held the visiting Chargers to a field goal.
The next test? By many accounts the best defense the Patriots will have seen this season.
Liam Coen and the Jacksonville Jaguars
A year ago the Jaguars introduced a rookie as their new head coach. Liam Coen, then 39, had never been a head coach at any level, but he had been around excellent coaches his entire life. His grandfather Phil, a Boston College football captain and coach at Rogers High, Barrington High, Portsmouth Abbey and Brown. His father Tim, who started the football program at Salve Regina University and coached him at La Salle Academy. Mark Whipple, the former Brown quarterback who offered him a full ride to UMass-Amherst as a QB. Phil Estes, who put him in charge of quarterbacks at Brown. Sean McVay of the Los Angeles Rams, who took him to the next level. Todd Bowles at Tampa Bay, where the Bucs scored 500 points in 2024 for only the second time in franchise history with Liam as offensive coordinator.
Earlier college stops at URI, UMass, Maine and Kentucky further burnished his resume. But coaching quarterbacks who became stars and offenses that produced big numbers could not have prepared Liam Coen for the stunning success of his first season with the Jaguars. They won their last eight regular-season games and the AFC South title. Trevor Lawrence, a former No. 1 draft choice, finally approached his potential. Coen became part of the coach of the year conversation.
But for three plays in the fourth quarter of Jacksonville’s 27-24 loss to Buffalo last Sunday — Josh Allen’s 36-yard pass to Brandin Cooks that set up Allen’s short touchdown plunge, and a tipped Lawrence pass for an interception in the last minute — Jacksonville, not Buffalo, would be playing this weekend.
Coen and his team so impressed the Jacksonville community that during the post-game press conference Sunday, Lynn Jones, a 30-year veteran reporter for the weekly Jacksonville Free Press, congratulated him on “a most magnificent season” and wished him and the Jags “much continued success.”
The next day, she told Denny Alfonso of The Athletic why she said what she said.
“When I was given the mic, it just came out. It just came out, the encouragement,” she explained. “This man here was carrying the weight of this city, his team, his family, the players. It was just compassion. Let this man know this is going to be okay. We take this sport so seriously. … Why do I need to ask a question of what happened on the field? The party is over, the season is over.”
Women’s basketball at URI, Bryant and Brown
While the basketball men struggle, the women at the University of Rhode Island, Bryant and Brown are having a ball. Literally.
URI is 15-2, 6-0 in the Atlantic 10, winner of nine straight and tied for first in the A-10 after beating Virginia Commonwealth, 46-41, Wednesday. George Mason is also 6-0. The Rams will play last-place Duquesne Sunday afternoon at the Ryan Center.
Bryant is 14-4, 4-1 in the America East after losing for the eighth consecutive time at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, 55-47, Thursday afternoon. The Bulldogs had won seven in a row and were in first place. They will return home to the Chace Center Saturday afternoon against New Jersey Tech.
Brown is 10-4, one of three teams with a 2-0 Ivy League record, and winner of four straight. Next up for the Bears is the long road trip to Cornell Saturday and Columbia Monday.
Marquis Buchanan, Devin Farrell and the URI Rams
The 2026 football season at the University of Rhode Island got off to a dramatic start earlier this month when coach Jim Fleming announced that two All-America players are returning to chase a third consecutive Coastal Athletic Association championship.
First-team wide receiver Marquis Buchanan, the pride of Providence and Classical High School, and third-team quarterback Devin Farrell from Stockbridge, Ga., resisted the lure of the transfer portal to go where no URI football team has gone in more than a century of football: three consecutive championships.
Buchanan caught 78 passes for 1,337 yards, the most in the Football Championship Subdivision in 2025. He has 202 career receptions, third all-time at URI, and has a chance to pass Aaron Parker (216) and Brian Forster (282) in 2026.
Farrell has 5,474 passing yards and a career completion percentage of 62.7 percent, second in URI history.
“In an ever-changing world of college athletics, to have their collective commitment to Rhode Island football is refreshing and speaks to the quality of young man that they both are,” Fleming said at the time. “Both Marquis and Devin are fantastic representations of the kind of young men we have in our program.”
The Indiana-Rhode Island connection
The biggest story in college football this season — the biggest story in sports, period — is Indiana football. A perennial Division I doormat — the Hoosiers all-time record is 508 wins, 692 losses, 38 ties — Indiana is 15-0 and one victory from a perfect season and a national championship.
Indiana has never had a perfect season. The only other unbeaten season was 80 years ago. The 1945 Hoosiers were 9-0-1.
Thank you, Curt Cignetti. The former James Madison coach arrived in 2024 with 13 transfers from JMU and more from the transfer portal. They finished 11-2 and lost in the first round of the College Football Playoff. Cignetti signed an 8-year, $90-million contract extension.
Quarterback Fernando Mendoza arrived for the 2025 season after three years at Cal-Berkeley and all he did was lead the 2025 Hoosiers to the brink of immortality. Oh, he also won the Heisman Trophy.
The Indiana-Rhode Island connection? We have two. Pamela Sasse Whitten is the Indiana University president. Her father is Gary Sasse, a prominent financial expert, former president of the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council, director of the state Department of Administration and Revenue, founder of the Hassenfeld Institute for Public Leadership at Bryant University, and political advisor and commentator. As a young man he played football for Florida State.
Pamela Sasse attended high school in Rhode Island and graduated from the former St. Xavier Academy in Providence.
And Fernando Mendoza, father of the Heisman Trophy winner, was a rower at Brown before graduating in 1991. He is a pediatric emergency director at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami.
Bonus: Michael King and Bishop Hendricken
San Diego Padres pitcher Michael King returned to Warwick with his family Monday to see Bishop Hendricken retire his number 14. King is a 2013 Hendricken graduate.
“We were excited and thrilled to have the opportunity to have Mike come back to the school. We’ve been trying to do this for some time. I’m grateful it worked out this year,” athletics director Jamal Gomes told me.
King led the Hawks to the 2012 state championship and in 2013 was the Gatorade player of the year in Rhode Island. He pitched for Boston College, was drafted by the Miami Marlins, pitched for the New York Yankees and in December, 2023, was traded to the Padres in the deal that sent Juan Soto to the Yankees. Last month, King signed a three-year, $75 million contract with the Padres.
“We’re extremely proud of Mike,” Gomes said. “I talked about what he meant to the school as a student, as a multi-sport athlete, as a great pitcher. He was respected by his teachers and his teammates. ”
King met with students after the ceremony.
“It was great for our boys at Hendricken to hear what it takes to become an elite athlete. The level of preparation, how he studies hitters,” Gomes said. “It was a great day, a special moment for Mike and his family and a special moment for Bishop Hendricken.”
Joining King were his wife Shiela, their 6-month-old daughter Gracie, his parents James and Michelle and his sister Olivia and brother-in-law David.
The best part of the day? Gracie slept in her mother’s lap the entire ceremony.
