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Which college football coaches have the hottest seats at the midseason mark?

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Which college football coaches have the hottest seats at the midseason mark?

It’s the midpoint of the college football season and usually, the coaching carousel is spinning much faster. It’s spinning slower this year for a few reasons. First, the past two seasons had much more turnover than initially expected; second, this is the first year of the 12-team College Football Playoff, which is extending the potential waiting time on some search options.

Things could get active at the Group of 5 level soon, though. Here’s our midseason assessment after talking to numerous industry sources about the FBS coaching landscape.

AAC

Mike Houston, East Carolina: 3-3 record this season

Before getting the ECU job, Houston went 37-6 at James Madison and won an FCS national title. He led the Pirates to two bowl games in his first four seasons but went 2-10 last year. His team just got whupped by 31 at Charlotte, now a rival program, and has lost by far its best player, cornerback Shavon Revel, to a season-ending knee injury. ECU still has Army and Navy, both Top 25 teams, plus 5-1 North Texas left. Tulsa, FAU and Temple are all very winnable. Getting to six wins might buy him more time, but his team could use a few wins down the stretch. Temperature check: Warm.

Mike Bloomgren, Rice: 2-4

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This is a tough job. The former Stanford assistant got the Owls into a bowl game in his fifth year. Last season was his best: a 6-7  record that included snapping a seven-game losing streak to Houston. The Owls got off to a 1-4 start but just notched a nice, close win against UTSA for their first win against an FBS opponent. Getting bowl eligible looks doubtful, especially with only UAB seemingly looking like a likely win — and that one is on the road. Temperature check: A little warm.

Stan Drayton, Temple: 1-5

It’s been tough for Drayton to get much traction so far. The Owls are 2-16 in AAC play. The program wasn’t in great shape when Drayton took over for Rod Carey, whose teams only won two of his last 15 AAC games before he was fired. The Owls could really use a win at home against struggling Tulsa this weekend to get a little momentum going. Temperature check: Getting warmer.

Trent Dilfer, UAB: 1-5

The former NFL quarterback-turned-TV analyst had a lot of success building a powerhouse high school program in Nashville before getting the Blazers job over then-offensive coordinator Bryant Vincent, who not so coincidentally has done terrific in his debut season as the head man at the University of Louisiana-Monroe. That dynamic isn’t helping the situation for the first-time college coach. Vincent’s team blew out UAB 32-6 in early September. Dilfer went 4-8 last year and the Blazers are really struggling this year. Aside from a win over FCS Alcorn in the opener, this has been rough. They hung around against Arkansas and gave the Hogs a game, but the rest of the slate has been blowouts. They have home games against Tulsa, UConn and Rice. They need to win at least one of two of those to show some progress to quiet some of the critics since this was a fairly high-profile, outside-the-box hire. Temperature check: Getting hot.

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Dilfer was a splashy, leap-of-faith hire for UAB, but the Blazers have struggled so far under his tenure. Photo: Wesley Hitt / Getty

ACC

Mack Brown, North Carolina: 3-4

The Tar Heels has been pretty good in Brown’s second stint with the program. In his second season back, they finished No. 18. The Tar Heels have won 17 games the past two seasons but it feels like the program has fallen off quite a bit this year. They’ve lost four in a row, including giving up 70 to JMU at home. The bright side: three of their remaining five opponents have losing records. Getting to six wins isn’t out of the question but there’s been increasing chatter that it might be time for a change from the 73-year-old Brown. Temperature check: Getting a lot warmer.

Big 12

Dave Aranda, Baylor: 2-4

The wild roller coaster ride that has been Aranda’s tenure in Waco, Texas has struggled to ramp back up. He went 2-7 in his first season and then, after overhauling his offensive staff, led Baylor to a 12-2 season, finishing No. 5. Since then, the Bears are 11-20. Baylor almost made a coaching change last winter but showed more patience with Aranda. There were more staff moves made that included Aranda taking over the defense this season. But after some good early signs, that side of the ball is struggling again. The issue has been that Aranda hasn’t recruited well enough or close to the level that Matt Rhule did. Aside from this weekend’s game at Texas Tech, none of the next five opponents have winning records. Temperature check: Hot.

go-deeper

GO DEEPER

Khan: Can Dave Aranda come back from Baylor’s collapse at Colorado?

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Big Ten

Mike Locksley, Maryland: 3-3

A fast start has cooled quickly, with two double-digit losses including a dismal home showing where the Terrapins lost by 27 to a middling Northwestern team. Worse still, they’ll probably be underdogs in each of their last six games. A rebuilt O-line has struggled mightily, as has the secondary. Word out of College Park is that Locksley, who is so well-respected locally, has built up so much goodwill in his time there, especially having posted back-to-back eight-win seasons while in the much tougher side of the Big Ten and that’ll afford him a mulligan this year. In the previous 40 years, the Terps had only one stretch of three consecutive winning seasons until Locksley did it from 2021-2023. Temperature check: Lukewarm.

Ryan Walters, Purdue: 1-5

The former Colorado defensive back did outstanding work as Illinois’ defensive coordinator before getting this job. The Purdue offense sputtered in his debut season, managing 17 points or less six times in a 4-8 year. Walters fired OC Graham Harrell early this season and Purdue’s woes have continued. A 49-0 win over FCS Indiana State is the lone victory, but they did show signs of life, almost knocking off No. 23 Illinois on the road last weekend, 50-49, with freshman QB Ryan Browne in his first start. Four of their remaining six games are against top-16 teams.  The other two teams are .500 Northwestern and at Michigan. Can the Boilers notch at least one win to show some progress? Two years isn’t close to enough time, so I’d be very surprised if the Boilers made a move. After all, this is a program that hasn’t finished in the Top 25 once in the past 20 years and only had four winning seasons in the past 16 years. Temperature check: Getting a little warm.

Conference USA

Sonny Cumbie, Louisiana Tech: 2-4

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He went 6-18 in his first two years. The Bulldogs lost their first three games against FBS teams this season. They hammered a bad MTSU team for their first FBS win of the season last week but weren’t able to build off of that. They lost in double-overtime to New Mexico State. Next up is another woeful team, UTEP. I thought 5-7 looked like where they were headed, but that was before losing to NMSU. Temperature check: Getting hotter.


I think Cumbie can buy himself another year with five wins. Photo: Jaylynn Nash / Imagn Images

MAC

Mike Neu, Ball State: 2-4

A former star QB for the Cardinals, Neu actually led Ball State to a Top 25 season in 2020, when the Cardinals finished No. 23. Neu followed that up with another bowl trip. They’ve tailed off some in the past two years and are off to a shaky start. They escaped with a two-point win against a hapless Kent State team on the road for their first FBS win. With the way their schedule sets up, getting more than three wins seems like a reach. He’s been the head coach for nine years and he’s the only one in school history that ever produced a Top 25 season, although Pete Lembo and Brady Hoke each did have double-digit win seasons. Still, this is a very tough place to win at. Temperature check: Warm.

Joe Moorhead, Akron: 1-6

One of the game’s better offensive minds has struggled to get any momentum here. He had back-to-back 2-10 seasons to start and looks like he might be headed to another one. Beyond Kent State, they won’t play another team with a losing record this season. Temperature check: Pretty warm.

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Scot Loeffler, Bowling Green: 2-4

He’s coming off of his best season of his first five years, when the Falcons went 7-6. They are off to a slow start this fall but they’ve had three losses by a touchdown or less, including against two ranked teams on the road — Penn State and Texas A&M. I think they’re good enough to rally for six wins but even if they don’t, it’s hard to think they can expect better than what they’ve had from Loeffler. Temperature check: Sort of warm.

Kenni Burns, Kent State: 0-6

He took over for Sean Lewis, who left to become an OC at Colorado. Lewis led Kent State to its first bowl win and had two seven-win seasons at a place that’s only had three winning seasons since 1987. Burns, a former Minnesota running back coach, won one game in his first season, and is still looking for his first win this season. Losing to FCS St. Francis still stings. Can they knock off Akron in late November to get a win? I think it’s pretty poor form to hire someone and only give him two seasons, but if there is only one win or less in each of Burns’ first two years, it wouldn’t be surprising if the school got itchy. Temperature check: Getting warm.

Mountain West

Tim Skipper, Fresno State: 3-3

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A former Bulldogs middle linebacker, Skipper is a well-respected part of the Fresno family and stepped up after Jeff Tedford stepped down for health reasons. Fresno State got off to a 3-1 start before losing the past two games. The Bulldogs have a decent shot to become a bowl team. If Fresno can go on a big run in the second half of the season, maybe Skipper can keep this job. Temperature check: Warm.

Nate Dreiling, Utah State: 1-5

The 33-year-old interim is still looking for his first FBS win. They pounded FCS Robert Morris in the opener and were then blasted in their next five games. Temperature check: They’ll be starting over this winter.

SEC

Sam Pittman, Arkansas: 4-2

After going 4-8 last season, Pittman’s seat was hot coming into this year, but he might be coaching his way to another. The Razorbacks won at Auburn and have a nice win against Tennessee their last time out. They still have 1-5 Mississippi State ahead and 2-3 Louisiana Tech. They may also be capable of knocking off LSU with the Tigers coming off the comeback win against Ole Miss last week. Barring a collapse, I think he’ll earn more time, unless the school is convinced it has a big upgrade waiting in the wings. Temperature check: Hot but cooling off a bit.

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Billy Napier, Florida: 3-3

Florida doesn’t have a lot of patience with football coaches. The Gators fired Dan Mullen, who’d won 29 games in his first three seasons but got the axe after going 5-6. Jim McElwain won 19 games in his first two seasons and then went 3-4 and got fired. Will Muschamp got four years. Ron Zook didn’t even get three. Napier went 11-14 his first two years after an impressive run at Louisiana. This season has been a mixed bag. The Gators got pounded by Miami in the opener in The Swamp but the team is still battling for Napier. That’s been a big plus, in addition to the tricky timeline now with CFP candidates potentially in play.

There’s been a ton of dysfunction around the university, all the way up to the university president fleeing.

The good news: the Gators thumped Mississippi State in Starkville, Miss., beat UCF by double-digits and almost upset Tennessee in Knoxville before losing in overtime. They have four top-20 opponents left, including two in the top five, vs. Georgia and at Texas. The only team with a losing record remaining is their road trip to 1-5 FSU. They just lost starting QB Graham Mertz for the rest of the season. Can true freshman DJ Lagway spark a strong second half to get Florida to 6-6? If they win this weekend against Kentucky, don’t rule it out. Temperature check: Toasty.

go-deeper

GO DEEPER

Billy Napier beware: Florida has not historically been patient in rebuilds

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Sun Belt

Shawn Clark, Appalachian State: 2-4

The former App State offensive lineman is well thought of in the Mountaineer community and he has three seasons with at least nine wins in his first four years. This year has been messy. They’ve lost three in a row, all by double digits and by giving up a ton of points. Just getting to five wins (the game against Liberty was canceled last month) looks dicey. And Appalachian State is not used to losing. Temperature check: Getting warm.

Butch Jones, Arkansas State: 3-3

Under Jones, the Red Wolves have gone from two wins to three wins to six and bowl game last year. I think they should get bowl eligible again. Their next two games are against Southern Miss and Troy, both 1-5 teams. They also have two games against two-win teams, so 6-6 feels like the floor, with seven wins seemingly realistic.
Temperature check: A little warm.

Will Hall, Southern Miss: 1-5

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The son of a Mississippi high school legend, Hall, a very successful Division II coach, seemed like an excellent choice when he got this job four years ago. After a solid season season where the Golden Eagles went 7-6 and won a bowl game, they have backslid quite a bit. They went 3-9 last year and are really struggling now. All five losses have been by double-digits. They still have to go to JMU and Texas State. The final two games of the season are against two-win South Alabama and one-win Troy on the road. Temperature check: Very hot.

(Top illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Photos: Adam Davis, James Gilbert, Grant Halverson / Getty)

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Culture

Champions League: Man City have Madrid mountain to climb, are PSG better minus Mbappe?

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Champions League: Man City have Madrid mountain to climb, are PSG better minus Mbappe?

Erling Haaland scored against Real Madrid for the first time in his career.

And then scored another.

But Manchester City still lost at home to the Champions League holders.

It will have felt all too familiar for Pep Guardiola and his team as they threw away a 2-1 lead with four minutes of normal time to play at the Etihad, being stung first by one of their former players, Brahim Diaz, and then the tireless Jude Bellingham, who steered the ball home from close range in added time.

Oh, and earlier in the game Kylian Mbappe had scored with his shin.

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Carlo Ancelotti’s side take a 3-2 advantage into the playoff second leg next Wednesday at the Bernabeu, with a place in the Champions League last 16 at stake.

Elsewhere in Europe’s elite club competition, a rocket from Weston McKennie helped Juventus beat PSV, Borussia Dortmund thrashed Sporting CP in Lisbon and Ousmane Dembele continued his ludicrous start to 2025 with two goals as Paris Saint-Germain beat Brest 3-0.

Elias Burke and Seb Stafford-Bloor analyse the key moments from all the Champions League action on Tuesday night…


Typical City… and typical Madrid?

In the battle between the Champions League’s perennial comeback kings Real Madrid, and City, who have made a habit of getting pegged back this season, it should come as no surprise it ended the way it did.

GO DEEPER

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The Briefing: Man City 2 Real Madrid 3 – Bellingham’s late, late winner and another City collapse

After an exceptional assist for Mbappe’s goal, Dani Ceballos went from hero to villain 20 minutes later, tripping Phil Foden just inside the box in the 80th minute. Haaland tucked away the resulting penalty, his 49th goal in 48 Champions League games.

Fortunately for Ceballos, two errors in quick succession from Ederson allowed Diaz, who has a Premier League medal with City from their centurion 2017-18 season, to level the scores at 2-2.

Then, after Vinicius Junior went through and lifted a shot/pass over Ederson’s head, Bellingham gambled to tap in a stoppage-time winner from close range to put Madrid 3-2 up ahead of the second leg in Spain.

For City, it was yet another disastrous late collapse after the Feyenoord and PSG debacles in the league phase. Now, they have given themselves a mountain to climb in overturning the deficit at the hardest place to win at in the Champions League.

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Are PSG actually better without Mbappe?

Few would have expected PSG to improve when Mbappe left for Real Madrid last summer. But, judging from their comfortable 3-0 win against Brest and impressive form in 2025, coach Luis Enrique appears to have found a harmony in Paris that he struggled to create when the France superstar was leading the line.

As it’s transpired, Ousmane Dembele, 27, once considered a talent so promising that Barcelona paid a fee rising to £135 million, reported by BBC, to sign him as a 20-year-old from Borussia Dortmund in 2017, has more than filled his shoes after an inspired tactical switch from the coach.

Since Enrique brought Dembele into the central striker role from the wings, the position he has fulfilled since emerging as a talented youngster, his goalscoring production has exploded — and his two goals against Brest were another example. His first demonstrated his confidence, dribbling into the box before whipping a left-footed effort into the near post. His second, a deflected finish with his right foot after reacting quicker to a loose ball than the Brest defenders, highlighted his anticipation as a goalscorer. Scoring with both feet is not an unfamiliar feat for Dembele, who famously does not know which is his stronger foot.

It was his third brace of the year to go along with two hat-tricks and 15 goals in total — already more than his entire tally in 2024. This switch has given PSG a fresh attacking verve and resulted in a more balanced unit.

Who knows, it might be enough to push the French champions from a side that was teetering above the elimination zone for much of the league phase to contenders for the trophy.


USMNT midfielder McKennie sprinkles some magic for Juventus

McKennie dedicated his celebration to Harry Potter but it was his wand of a right boot that provided the magic as he opened the scoring for Juventus against PSV.

With the USMNT midfielder lurking on the edge of PSV’s box, the ball broke in his direction, bouncing at a good height to strike. McKennie, who is no stranger to scoring spectacular goals, approached the ball at an angle, allowing him to shift his body weight to the left to get over the shot and control his effort while striking through it.

The result was an unstoppable blend of control and power. His shot flew past Walter Benitez in the PSV net, inches below the crossbar. It’s probably a good thing the ball missed him, too, as it would have taken him with it into the back of the net if he was in the way.

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McKennie, who is a huge Harry Potter fan, celebrated with an imitation of the “Expelliarmus” spell from the film and book franchise. He has a lightning bolt tattooed on his finger in tribute to the speedy Gryffindor seeker, and in 2023 he was pictured alongside Matthew Lewis, who plays Neville Longbottom in the films, posing with a USMNT shirt alongside Brenden Aaronson.

In December, club and national team-mate Timothy Weah joined in on the fun, celebrating together with the “Expelliarmus” after McKennie scored against City.


Rooney and Mbappe: masters of the shinned volley against Man City

Wayne Rooney’s brilliant overhead kick in Manchester United’s 2-1 win over City in 2011 will take some beating as the greatest shinned goal ever scored against City (and perhaps anyone), but Kylian Mbappe surely claimed the silver medal with his goal in the second half for Madrid.

Dani Ceballos, who was playing in his first Champions League knockout match for Real Madrid seven-and-a-half years after signing from Real Betis, played a perfectly weighted lofted pass in the danger area between City’s goalkeeper and defence, which Mbappe latched onto.

With an astoundingly similar technique to his second goal against Argentina in the 2022 World Cup final, Mbappe leapt and volleyed across the ball with his right foot while falling away to the left.

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While his effort in Qatar flew past Emi Martinez, the connection wasn’t so pure in this instance, the ball looping off his shin, over Ederson, and into the corner. 

Rooney, watching from pitchside at the Etihad while working for Amazon Prime, must surely have been impressed.


Why did it take four minutes to award Haaland’s first goal?

Premier League fans are now accustomed to seeing footage of VAR officials in Stockley Park drawing lines to determine whether a player was offside, but things operate differently in the Champions League — and Manchester City fans found out the hard way.

The Etihad Stadium erupted after Haaland put the home side ahead with a left-footed finish from close range after Josko Gvardiol played a chested pass in his direction. Three minutes and 50 seconds later, another cheer went up around the stadium as the Champions League’s semi-automated offside technology confirmed the goal.

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Gvardiol was visibly onside when the initial cross was played towards him, but he, and Haaland, had moved beyond the Madrid defence by the time the Croatian made contact. As long as Haaland was in line with or behind Gvardiol, he’d have been onside, but, as evidenced by the time it took for the technology to confirm, it was very tight.

As the name suggests, the technology eliminates the potential for human error, with the offside pictures taken from cameras in real time. It debuted in the Champions League in 2022-23 and was used at the 2022 World Cup. According to the Premier League, which has plans to bring in this technology this season, offside check delays should be reduced by 31 seconds.

In this case, however, the check took so long that Alan Shearer intimated the wait may have had some relation to Jack Grealish being replaced due to a non-impact injury 10 minutes later.

“It certainly doesn’t help when you’ve got elite athletes standing around for almost four minutes,” Shearer said on co-commentary during Amazon Prime’s UK coverage of the match. “It cannot help you, or your body. It’s not acceptable that players are having to wait around for that long.”

Judging by this incident those marginal calls will continue to take time. At least we got the right decision, eh?

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Who exactly is Serhou Guirassy? 

The Champions League has an unlikely top-scorer this season: Borussia Dortmund’s 28-year-old Guinean Serhou Guirassy. His tenth goal of the competition might have been his best; it was certainly the most important. An authoritative header that looped up and into the far corner, it settled a Dortmund team who, for much of the first half in Portugal, had had to withstand pressure.

That was vital, because Dortmund have endured a torrid season and are naturally fragile. They sit a distant 11th in the Bundesliga and are now coached by Niko Kovac, who was appointed to replaced the sacked Nuri Sahin two weeks ago.

This was Kovac’s first win. More importantly, it was a result (and performance) that Dortmund will feel they can build on in coming weeks — and that sense of a first step taken owes much to Guirassy.

He was signed from Stuttgart in the summer of 2024 after scoring 28 Bundesliga goals from 28 appearances last season. It was the first truly prolific top-flight season of his career, but at times the season he has laboured at the head of a team who do not create nearly enough chances. He can snatch at opportunities and drift out of games. So, while nine goals from 18 league appearances is hardly bad, it’s not quite what it could have been.

But Guirassy is an elegant, technical footballer rather than just a goalscorer. There were times in the first half when his languid skill on the ball seemed to reassure team-mates clearly short on confidence. And, having scored the goal which changed the entire complexion of the game — truly, an exemplary header — he created the second with a perfect cross for Pascal Gross, who kneed the ball in at the back-post to give Dortmund a 2-0 advantage on the night.

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Even before Karim Adeyemi had scored a third from a flowing counter attack to effectively finish the tie as a contest, Dortmund had started to play with a confidence and security that they have lacked for many months. Guirassy alone did not provide that. By full-time, this had become a commendable team performance. But goals so often change a side’s mood and that could not have been more the case for Kovac’s BVB than it was on Tuesday night.

There were plenty of individual contributions to that, but they followed Guirassy’s lead.

Seb Stafford-Bloor

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What happens next?

Champions League playoffs

Tuesday’s results

Brest 0 Paris Saint-Germain 3
Juventus 2 PSV Eindhoven 1
Manchester City 2 Real Madrid 3
Sporting CP 0 Borussia Dortmund 3

Wednesday’s fixtures
(8pm BST, 3pm ET unless stated)

Club Bruges v Atalanta (5.45pm BST, 12.45pm ET)
Celtic v Bayern Munich
Feyenoord v Milan
Monaco v Benfica

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The second legs will be played on February 18/19.

Eight teams will advance to the last 16, to join Liverpool, Barcelona, Arsenal, Inter, Atletico Madrid, Bayer Leverkusen, Lille and Aston Villa.

The draw for the last 16, quarter-final and semi-final will take place on Friday February 21.

(Top photo: Carl Recine/Getty Images) 

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Maria Teresa Horta, the Last of Portugal’s ‘Three Marias,’ Dies at 87

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Maria Teresa Horta, the Last of Portugal’s ‘Three Marias,’ Dies at 87

Maria Teresa Horta, a Portuguese feminist writer who helped shatter her conservative country’s strictures on women, died on Feb. 4 at her home in Lisbon. She was 87.

Her death was announced on Facebook by her publisher, Dom Quixote. The Portuguese prime minister, Luis Montenegro, paid tribute to her on X, calling her “an important example of freedom and the struggle to recognize the place of women.”

Ms. Horta was the last surviving member of the celebrated writers known as the “Three Marias,” who together wrote the landmark 1972 book “Novas Cartas Portuguesas” (“New Portuguese Letters”). A collection of letters the women wrote to one another about their problems as women in Portugal, it opened up a world of repressed female sexuality, infuriated the country’s ham-fisted dictatorship and led to their arrest and criminal prosecution on charges of indecency and abuse of freedom of the press.

“To feminists around the world, as well as to champions of a free press, the police action against the Portuguese women in June 1972 was an outrage that slowly became the focus of an international protest movement,” Time magazine wrote in July 1973.

The Three Marias — Ms. Horta, Maria Isabel Barreno (1939-2016) and Maria Velho da Costa (1938-2020) — became international feminist folk heroes, and the book’s fame alerted the world to repression under the Portuguese dictatorship. Simone de Beauvoir, Marguerite Duras and Adrienne Rich were among the writers who declared their public support. The National Organization for Women voted to make the case its first international feminist cause.

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The case was not Ms. Horta’s first brush with controversy.

In 1967 she had been “beaten in the street” after the publication of her breakthrough volume of poetry, “Minha Senhora de Mim” (“My Lady of Me”), she told her biographer Patrícia Reis in 2019. That book “challenged something deeply rooted in this country,” she said: “the silencing of female sexuality.”

Frequent knocks on the door by the Portuguese secret police became part of her life.

The themes of her work grew from what she characterized as a dual oppression: being a woman in Portugal’s male-dominated society and growing up in a police state.

“I was born in a fascist country, a country that stole liberty, a country of cruelty, prisons, torture,” she told an Italian interviewer in 2018. “And I understood very early on that I couldn’t stand for this.”

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She also wouldn’t stand for the oppression of women in Portugal’s traditional macho culture. “Women are beaten or raped just as much by a doctor, a lawyer, a politician, whoever, as by a worker, a peasant and so on,” she told the Lisbon daily Diário de Notícias in 2017. “Women have always been beaten and have always been raped. People do not consider the violence that goes on in bed, in the sexual act with their husband.”

In 1971, these preoccupations inspired Ms. Horta to start meeting every week with two friends and fellow authors, Ms. Barreno and Ms. da Costa, to share written reflections on the common themes that troubled them.

They were inspired by a classic work from the 17th century, “Letters of a Portuguese Nun,” supposedly written by a young woman shut up in a Portuguese convent to the French cavalry officer who had abandoned her. Scholars now believe the work was fiction, but its powerful expression of pent-up longing and frustration resonated with the three Marias.

Like the nun in the book, they used letters to one another, as well as poems, to express their unhappiness as women in their early 30s, educated by nuns, married and with children, in a Lisbon stifling under a 35-year dictatorship, rigid Catholicism and ill-judged colonial wars in Africa.

When they published the writings as “New Portuguese Letters,” they vowed never to reveal to outsiders, much less the police, who had written what.

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“Their views and natures were far apart,” Neal Ascherson wrote in The New York Review of Books in a review of the 1975 English translation, titled “The Three Marias.” “Maria Isabel the coolest, Maria Teresa the gaudiest personality, Maria Fátima the one who swerved away from pure feminism toward social and psychological analyses of a whole people’s oppression.”

The strange hybrid — Mr. Ascherson called it “a huge and complicated garland” — is suffused with repressed rage at the condition the women find themselves in.

“They wanted the three of us to sit in parlors, patiently embroidering our days with the many silences, the many soft words and gestures that custom dictates,” one of the letters says. “But whether it be here or in Beja, we have refused to be cloistered, we are quietly, or brazenly, stripping ourselves of our habits all of a sudden.”

Another letter says, “We have also won the right to choose vengeance, since vengeance is part of love, and love is a right long since granted us in practice: practicing love with our thighs, our long legs that expertly fulfill the exercise expected of them.”

Although Mr. Ascherson found the book “often maddeningly imprecise, self-indulgent and flatulent,” he said that “where it is precise, the book still bites” and “where it is erotic, it is neither exhibitionist nor coy but well calculated to touch the mind through emotion.”

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A few Portuguese reviewers welcomed it as “brave, daring and violent,” as the author Nuno de Sampayo put it in the Lisbon newspaper A Capital. They predicted a difficult reception.

Prime Minister Marcello Caetano attempted to put the authors in jail, calling them “women who shame the country, who are unpatriotic.”

On May 25, 1972, the state press censor banned the book. The next day it was sent to the criminal police department in Lisbon. When the authors’ trial opened in 1973, the crowd was so great that the judge ordered the courtroom cleared.

In May 1974, nearly two years after their arrests and two weeks after the Portuguese dictatorship was overthrown, the Three Marias were acquitted.

Judge Artur Lopes Cardoso, who had been overseeing the case, became a sudden convert, declaring the book “neither pornographic nor immoral.” “On the contrary,” he said, “it is a work of art of high level, following other works of art produced by the same authors.”

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Maria Teresa de Mascarenhas Horta Barros was born in Lisbon on May 20, 1937, the daughter of Jorge Augusto da Silva Horta, a prominent doctor and a conservative who supported the dictatorship, and Carlota Maria Mascarenhas. Her paternal grandmother had been prominent in the Portuguese suffragist movement.

Maria attended Filipa de Lencastre High School, graduated from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Lisbon, and published her first book of poetry at 23. She would go on to write nearly 30 more, as well as 10 novels.

She was also a critic and reporter for several newspapers and the literary editor of A Capital.

In the 1980s, she edited the feminist magazine Mulheres, which was linked to the Portuguese Communist Party. (She was a member of the party from 1975 to 1989.)

No matter the genre — poetry, fiction or journalism — she considered writing a public duty.

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“The obligation of a poet is not to be in an ivory tower; it is not to be isolated but to be among people,” she told the online magazine Guernica in 2014. “As a journalist, I never isolated myself. I was a journalist at a daily newspaper and every day I went out on the street. Every day I had contact with people.”

She won most of her country’s top literary prizes, but she caused a stir in 2012 when she refused to accept the D. Dinis Award because she objected to the government’s right-leaning politics.

She is survived by her son, Luis Jorge Horta de Barros, and two grandsons. Her husband, the journalist Luis de Barros, a former editor of the newspaper O Diário, died in 2019.

“People ask me why I am a feminist,” Ms. Horta told Guernica in 2014. “Because I am a woman of freedom and equality and it is not possible to have freedom in the world when half of humanity has no rights.”

Kirsten Noyes and Daphné Anglès contributed research.

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The Eagles defense couldn’t stop Mahomes in 2022. In Super Bowl 59 they got their revenge

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The Eagles defense couldn’t stop Mahomes in 2022. In Super Bowl 59 they got their revenge

NEW ORLEANS — There Howie Roseman danced, a cigar between his fingers, surrounded by the team that dismantled a dynasty. Players urged their general manager on. Others showered him with champagne. More stood atop their lockers, hollering over speakers that pulsated lyrics that partly defined their franchise within Future’s “Lil Demon.”

Go platinum, f— a budget.

Jeffrey Lurie, the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, later lauded Roseman in the hallway outside. The NFL is not a place to be risk-averse, Lurie believes. Not if you want to unseat the Kansas City Chiefs. Not if you want to be Super Bowl LIX champions. Not if you want to turn a long-languishing team into a league-wide standard that’s won two Super Bowls in eight seasons when it once had none.

“Aggressive,” Lurie said. An organization must be aggressive. Look through the smoke and the spray in the Superdome locker room. Look at all the reasons the Eagles thrashed the Chiefs 40-22 in one of the most blatant beatdowns in Super Bowl history. Look at Saquon Barkley pouring a giant golden bottle of bubbly down an offensive lineman’s throat.

That image doesn’t exist without a three-year contract that fully guaranteed $26 million to the outlier of a devalued position entering his seventh season. No, Terrell Davis would still own the full-season rushing record he set in 1998, instead of watching Barkley topple it by halftime on Sunday — completing the single greatest season by any running back ever. Barkley wouldn’t be there, shirtless and smiling, a once-ringless wonder for the New York Giants, now an Eagles demigod, watching his teammates pass the Lombardi Trophy around the room.

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“She looks prettier in person, I’ll tell you that,” Barkley said.

The trophy eventually reached A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, Landon Dickerson and Jordan Mailata — four key members of a young offensive core whose combined offseason extensions included $155 million guaranteed. Aggressive. An organization must be aggressive. The Eagles ranked third in the NFL in cash spending in 2024, per Over the Cap. Lurie authorized Roseman to set the market instead of chasing it, to retain a foursome that knew what it took to beat the Chiefs because they’d each suffered the last-minute loss in Super Bowl LVII. Mailata had beaten a locker-room refrigerator with his fists that day. On Sunday, he’d beaten a team pursuing the NFL’s first-ever three-peat.

Beaten is too kind a word for what the Eagles did to the Chiefs. They made a two-time reigning champion that only lost two games all season look like losing was all it ever did. They made Patrick Mahomes, a three-time Super Bowl MVP, not only look mortal — they familiarized him with football mortality. They pulverized him within a brutal three-drive sequence that supplied the Eagles with a 24-0 halftime lead — an advantage that eventually swelled to 34-0 after Mahomes, who was sacked a season-high six times, was further throttled in the third quarter.

The Chiefs only trailed 10-0 when Mahomes dropped back on the first play of their fourth possession. Eagles edge rusher Josh Sweat blustered past tight end Travis Kelce so swiftly, Mahomes didn’t have time to dish a checkdown to Kelce before Sweat tore him down with one hand. On the next play, Jalyx Hunt, a third-round rookie, bullied Joe Thuney, a two-time All-Pro guard filling in at left tackle, backward and dragged Mahomes down for yet another sack.

Then came the fatal blow. Cooper DeJean, a nickel safety and defensive rookie of the year finalist, started the subsequent third-and-16 drifting toward the sideline in zone coverage. Mahomes rolled to his right, and, anticipating DeJean to remain there, fired a pass across his body toward the middle of the field. But DeJean jumped the pass, picked it off and housed his first-ever interception for a 38-yard touchdown.

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DeJean said he was too excited to think. He didn’t even celebrate. He just caught his breath because he immediately returned to the field. The Chiefs went three-and-out after Milton Williams sacked Mahomes within a four-man rush. The Eagles didn’t need to blitz. Defensive coordinator Vic Fangio never sent one. The seven-time defensive play-caller later said “Mahomes is very, very good when you rush five or six” defenders. Fangio had seen Mahomes too often make teams pay for trying too hard to take him down. So, he constructed a game plan in which the Eagles relied on the strength of their secondary, on the belief there’d be enough time for their defensive front to strike home.

Sweat, a member of the Eagles defense that failed to sack Mahomes two years ago, recorded 2.5 sacks. Williams sacked Mahomes twice and forced a fumble in the fourth quarter.

“The boys up front are some bad motherf——,” DeJean said.

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They were “angry,” too, if you ask Lurie. That Super Bowl LVII loss drove the Eagles in their journey back to the mountaintop. “I mean, we lived that every day,” Lurie said. They believed they’d be right back with the same ideas. At first, it seemed they would. But a 10-1 start in 2023 devolved into a 1-6 collapse, and Eagles coach Nick Sirianni fired both of his coordinators — Brian Johnson and Sean Desai — in a staff overhaul aimed to repair dysfunctional systems and maximize a roster that Roseman flipped into one of the best the Eagles have ever fielded.

In one dizzying offseason, the Eagles acquired Barkley, linebacker Zack Baun, safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson and right guard Mekhi Becton in free agency, and spent their first two draft picks on DeJean (No. 40 overall) and cornerback Quinyon Mitchell (No. 22). Baun, who’d never before played inside linebacker, burgeoned into a Defensive Player of the Year finalist. Mitchell and DeJean blossomed into starters in a secondary that went from surrendering the league’s third-most passes of 15-plus yards in 2023, to the fewest in 2024, per TruMedia. On Sunday, Mahomes failed to find anything deep in the first half. Mitchell blanketed speedy wideout Xavier Worthy, forcing Mahomes to settle for checkdowns.

Mahomes eventually got flustered. Just before halftime, dropping back from his own 6, Mahomes failed to spot Baun when firing to Hollywood Brown over the middle of the field. Baun intercepted the pass. Jalen Hurts tossed a 12-yard touchdown to A.J. Brown two plays later. Mahomes’ EPA per dropback at halftime (-1.45) was the lowest ever by a quarterback in a Super Bowl since at least 2000, per TruMedia.

Behind the defensive dominance, Fangio’s hands were on the controls, running the system this Eagles regime prefers. If the franchise had its way, Fangio would’ve been the team’s defensive coordinator in 2023. He’d served as a consultant during the 2022 playoffs, but, before Jonathan Gannon suddenly accepted the Arizona Cardinals’ head-coaching job, Fangio left Philadelphia for a one-year stint as the defensive coordinator for the Miami Dolphins. But the Dunmore, Pa., native returned to the team he admired growing up. “I just called them,” he said. “I said, ‘I’m going to get out of Miami if you’re interested. I’m here.’ It was done many days before it was announced.”

Fangio, 66, stood there in the bowels of the first NFL stadium he ever coached in. After starting as a linebacker coach with the New Orleans Saints, after four decades in professional football, Fangio at last had the Super Bowl championship that had long eluded him. He’d begun Philadelphia’s final week of practices with film from his only other appearance — a loss in Super Bowl XLVII as defensive coordinator of the San Francisco 49ers. That, too, had been played in New Orleans.

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“It’s just a really warm feeling of accomplishment,” Fangio said. “And….”

Fangio flinched. Turned. There was Hurts, smiling. The quarterback had slapped the old-school coach on the behind. The two field generals, who developed a friendship while dueling each other on the practice field, hugged amidst the scrum of reporters.

“…. and satisfaction and all of that,” Fangio finished.

And what about that guy?

“Yeah, I think Jalen’s great,” Fangio said. “Him and I have a good little relationship. Very happy for him.”

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Hurts, the Super Bowl MVP, the quarterback who embraced a more conservative role with Barkley in the backfield, the man Sirianni always called “a winner,” combined for 293 yards and three touchdowns in the first championship of his career. He carried a cigar in his hand and moved from teammate to teammate with a grin that seemed reserved for that very moment — and that moment alone. There was Brandon Graham, the edge rusher who perhaps made his final appearance with the Eagles, activated for a surprise appearance after suffering what was thought to be a season-ending triceps injury. Hurts tugged Graham by the shoulder pads, pulling him away from the reporters. The past and the present celebrated in the cigar smoke together.

(Top photo: Timothy A. Clary / AFP via Getty Images)

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