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All 105 is a Pittsburgh Sports Now series profiling each of the 105 members of the Pitt 2024 training camp roster.
Francis Brewu, a true freshman defensive tackle from Thomas Worthington in Westerville, Ohio
2023 season: Brewu starred at Thomas Worthington as a senior last season, earning All-State honors
Stats: Brewu racked up 28 tackles for loss and 10 sacks at Thomas Worthington last season
Camp outlook: Brewu will benefit from a shallow defensive line room in camp, so I think he will receive his fair share of reps, but it’s so hard to crack the rotation as a true freshman. He’s going to work heavily in the rotation in the summer
Projected role: Brewu is a very talented defensive tackle who has a very bright future in Pittsburgh, but it remains to be seen whether he can make an impact right off the bat. His performance over the summer will be something to watch
Francis Brewu (6-foot-1, 280 pounds) locked in his commitment to Pitt on National Signing Day in December, after initially committing in March, re-choosing the Panthers over late interest from Miami, Michigan State (who made a serious push) and Wisconsin.
He was a crown jewel of the class of 2024 recruiting class, one of the four-star recruits, and he was a major win for the Pitt coaching staff.
“(Myself, Charlie Partridge and Ryan Manalac) really tag-teamed him for the last three days and secured his committed, and I can’t tell you how thankful I am to have him,” Pat Narduzzi said in December. “The mid-year is the key. We’ve got three mid-year D-linemen coming in. But with some of the voids we have in there being able to come in mid-year is critical.
“So, we’re excited to have him. He’s strong. He sent me about a week ago him benching 415 pounds in high school. I mean, you’re gonna need that coming in here. Appreciate his loyalty and staying with us with all the temptations. As we know, there’s a ton of temptations out there. He ignored all that noise and did it the right way and stayed with Pitt.”
Brewu has a lot of potential, and with the uncertainty in the defensive line room, true freshmen like Brewu, Sincere Edwards and Jahsear Whittington have a potential path to immediate playing time.
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Cardinals announce Nolan Arenado news
The St. Louis Cardinals have fallen out of playoff contention in recent weeks, sitting at 58–58, and have shifted toward a clear rebuild after trading All-Star closer Ryan Helsley at the deadline. One name that surfaced in trade rumors but will remain with the club through season’s end is veteran third baseman Nolan Arenado. Now in his fifth season with St. Louis after being acquired from the Colorado Rockies ahead of 2021, the 34-year-old is enduring the worst offensive stretch of his 13-year career. Through 96 games, Arenado is hitting just .235 with a .660 OPS and 10 home runs — all of which are career lows for a full season. Cardinals provide Nolan Arenado update To make matters worse, Arenado was placed on the 10-day injured list on Aug. 1 with a right shoulder injury. Ahead of Wednesday’s series finale against the Dodgers, manager Oliver Marmol announced that Arenado will report to Jupiter, Florida, on Friday to begin a rehab assignment. The club hopes that once his shoulder strengthens, he’ll be able to return to game action soon. Arenado’s legacy remains one of the game's best Despite the down year, Arenado’s career remains incredible. Between his time with the Rockies and Cardinals, he’s earned eight All-Star selections, 10 Gold Gloves — cementing his status as one of the best defensive third basemen ever — and five Silver Slugger awards. Since joining St. Louis five seasons ago, he’s batting .266 with a .779 OPS, 116 home runs and 415 RBI, helping the team reach the postseason in 2021 and 2022.
Padres already demoting one of their trade-deadline acquisitions
The Padres announced they’ve optioned JP Sears to Triple-A El Paso. They recalled reliever Sean Reynolds and will go with a nine-man bullpen in the short term. Sears will spend at least 15 days in the minors unless he’s brought up to replace a player going on the injured list. San Diego acquired Sears alongside Mason Miller in last week’s massive deadline deal. The 29-year-old southpaw made his team debut Monday night. He allowed five runs in as many innings on 10 hits and a walk against the Diamondbacks. Sears took the loss in a 6-2 defeat. He’d carried a 4.95 earned run average over 22 starts with the A’s. Monday's performance pushed his ERA to 5.12 across 116 innings. It’s a bottom-10 mark among pitchers to log at least 100 frames. Sears had the highest home run rate among that group, offsetting his nearly league-average 20.3% strikeout rate and solid 6% walk percentage. This is the first time in two-and-a-half years that Sears heads to the minors. He broke camp with the A’s in 2023 and has been in the majors since then. Sears has also avoided the injured list for that entire time. As a result, he’s tied for fifth in MLB with 87 starts since the beginning of the ’23 season. The durability is the big selling point, as his production (4.62 ERA/4.56 SIERA) over that stretch is that of a fifth or sixth starter. The demotion shouldn’t have any impact on Sears’ service trajectory. He has already surpassed the three-year mark and will qualify for arbitration next winter. He’s under team control for three seasons beyond this one. While he’ll probably be back up at some point this year, it may require an injury elsewhere in the rotation. San Diego optioned Randy Vásquez over the weekend. They have a four-man rotation of Dylan Cease, Nick Pivetta, Yu Darvish and deadline acquisition Nestor Cortes. Darvish and Cortes will get the ball for the next two outings. San Diego is off Thursday and could turn back to Pivetta and Cease on extra rest for their first two games of the weekend series against the Red Sox. That’d point to the series finale on Aug. 10 as Michael King’s return date. King threw 61 pitches in what is expected to be his final rehab start on Sunday, via the MLB.com injury tracker. He’d be on six days' rest for his first MLB appearance since he went on the injured list in late May with a nerve problem in his throwing shoulder.
Cardinals All-Star Addresses Future; Hints Time In St. Louis Is Ending
The St. Louis Cardinals made changes this summer but the winter is going to be even more transformational. Trading away guys like Ryan Helsley, Steven Matz, and Phil Maton certainly hurt. But, these were necessary moves with the Cardinals' chances at a playoff spot just barely hanging on for dear life. The Cardinals are one game below .500 at 57-58 right now through 115 games played as of writing ahead of their showdown with the Los Angeles Dodgers on Wednesday afternoon. Sure, the Cardinals could go on some long winning streak and change the perception around the club once again. That would be great, but right now, the odds of the club making the playoffs are slim and that's why the Cardinals traded the three relievers before they could hit the open market in free agency. Once the season ends, bigger changes are coming, though. Cardinals at crossroads that will start to be answered this winter The Cardinals used the trade deadline to move on from some of the team's players heading to free agency that didn't have no-trade clauses. The Cardinals opted against trading players under team control beyond this season and guys with no-traded clauses made it clear that they wanted to stick around, including Miles Mikolas, Sonny Gray, and Willson Contreras. Nolan Arenado also reportedly didn't expand his list of approved teams from this past offseason. Of the no-trade clause guys specifically, Gray, Contreras, and Arenado still control their destiny beyond the season. Mikolas will be a free agent and spoke about his future and noted he wants to continue pitching, but made it sound like he won't be back with Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "I want to finish strong," Mikolas said. "And I want to do my best to be a good example for the young guys. There are some young guys in here who I’ve seen from their rookie years, seen them mature and get better. Hopefully, I’ve left a little bit of an imprint on them. Show the younger guys what it’s like to go about your work – day in, day out, rain or shine. I’ll be in here tomorrow working out, busting my tail in the gym, getting my work done with the trainers, watching video, trying to get better. Bottom line: I want to finish strong and show teams that I’ve still got a lot of good baseball left in me... "I know teams look beyond that. They’ll look at everything. Teams are going to sign you after they go back and look at all of your starts and go, ‘What was the difference? Can we fix him? Can we help him? Can we do this? Can we do that?’ If my stuff is good – and the ball is coming out of my hand good – and I’m available wire to wire, that’s something. That’s something I take a lot of pride in...I’ll play as long as I can. The ball is still coming out of my hand pretty good for being almost 37. I’ll play as long as they let me." Mikolas has been with the Cardinals since 2018 and has earned two All-Star nods with the team, but his future is in question now.
Seahawks studs & duds from NFL preseason debut against the Raiders
The Seattle Seahawks have just wrapped up their first preseason game of the year against former head coach Pete Carroll and the Las Vegas Raiders, ending in a 23-23 tie. As always, anything that happens in August has to come with an asterisk - and you can only learn so much when the playcalling is as vanilla as the Wisconsin state fair on both sides. Nevertheless, let's try to sort out who had a strong game for the Seahawks and who did not in their first action on the field since January. Here is our first edition of studs and duds for the year. Stud: OC Klint Kubiak It's only preseason and most of the starters weren't out there, but at the outset the Seahawks delivered on their offseason promises of establishing a more physical, run-first identity. While it was a total team effort, new offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak gets the nod for a high-quality run game. On the first drive, George Holani broke off 33 yards on three runs with assists on great blocks from wide receiver Jake Bobo, tight end Eric Saubert and fullback Robbie Ouzts. The run blocking continued to look strong throughout the first half - and better than it's been in a while. Collectively, the Seahawks ended the game having averaged over five yards per carry and scored two rushing touchdowns. Dud: QB Drew Lock While the run game looked like a well-oiled machine in the first half, Seattle's returning backup quarterback Drew Lock showed a whole lot of rust when it came time to air the ball out. On the first drive, Lock may have been able to lead rookie wide receiver Tory Horton into the end zone but he threw the wrong route by his own admission. Lock then followed that up with another bad throw that was picked off by Raiders safety Isaiah Pola-Mao. Lock finished the evening with an underwhelming line of 12/22 for 147 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT and a 71.6 passer rating. Stud: RB George Holani On their second drive Seattle's run game got stuffed a couple of times by Jamal Adams, but it took off when Holani came back on the field. Holani got another great block from Robbie Ouzts and used his burst to break outside and score on a 24-yard run that was initially ruled short. For the evening Holani posted 61 yards and a touchown on just seven carries. Holani also racked up 20 yards on a screen pass later on - overall a positive start for what might be his second-straight impressive preseason. Dud: C Jalen Sundell One play shouldn't completely define any player's game - but Seattle's coaching staff can't afford to be too forgiving about bad mistakes along the offensive line, even during the preseason. With Olu Oluwatimi sitting out due to injury, we saw a supremely ugly rep from Jalen Sundell in the second quarter when he snapped a ball wide and over Drew Lock's head, resulting in a 19-yard loss that killed the drive. Sundell was also flagged for a hold later on. Stud: Seahawks secondary The Seahawks sat starters Devon Witherspoon, Riq Woolen, Julian Love and Coby Bryant, but they still got some quality performances on the back end of their defense. Rookie DB Nick Emmanwori showed some burst as a blitzer early, and some preseason mercy by not cracking Geno Smith's back even though he had the opportunity. Boundary cornerback Josh Jobe also picked off an atrocious deep pass by Aidan O'Connell in the second quarter while Nehemiah Pritchett notched another INT on a nice read and posted a PBU, as well. Elsewhere, backup safety D'Anthony Bell flashed some pretty sharp tackling in the open field. Stud: WR Tory Horton Jr. The hottest playmaker at Seahawks training camp carried that momentum over into his NFL debut. Rookie wide reciever Tory Horton Jr. was clearly Drew Lock's preferred target in the first half. There were a few misfires from Lock but Horton made good on his legitimate opportunities, posting three catches, 31 yards and a touchdown after a nifty little spin move. Horton's momentum to take over Marquez Valdez-Scantling's role as the team's WR3 continues to build. Dud: Seahawks pass rush You can only expect so much when all your best pass rushers are on the sidelines. Still, as Michael Bennett lamented near the end of the game, there was a real lack of pressure on the Raiders' quarterbacks all night. As a team, Seattle finished with just one sack. The one exception to the rule was rookie outside linebacker Connor O'Toole, who finished with three quarterback hits. Stud: QB Jalen Milroe When the third quarter began Mike Macdonald subbed out Lock and put in rookie Jalen Milroe at quarterback. Milroe's night mostly consisted of handing the ball off, so we didn't really get to see him unleash his awesome deep arm power. However, we did get to witness his highly-potent speed on the ground. Milroe ran for 38 yards and left multiple pass rushers in the dust before completing a 15-yard pass to Tyrone Broden. Milroe also put a hell of a lot of zip on a couple of his short and intermediate completions. Milroe did have one bad miss on a comeback throw to Dareke Young and he took a rough sack on the final drive, but otherwise he played a clean game and flashed some of the high-level traits that got him drafted.
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