Le Journal

It was supposed to be all about football, but one unexpected image from the College Football Playoff National Championship has quickly become one of the most talked-about moments from the night. On January 19, 2026, as fans packed into Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida, to watch Indiana face...

The 59-year-old singer is in mourning — and this time, it's deeply personal. Russell Watsom took to social media on Tuesday, January 20, to share that he and his family have experienced a sudden and devastating loss. In an emotional message that moved fans across the world, Watson opened up...

In the span of four days, a father of three lost his partner, his daughter, and then his son, the last one dying in his arms. A woman and two of her children were killed when a suspected drunk driver slammed into their car while traveling the wrong way on...

As the footage circulates, so too does speculation that the cracks in the family's polished image had been showing long before the eldest Beckham son decided to speak out. A resurfaced red carpet clip is reigniting speculation about Peltz-Beckham family tensions — and Nicola Peltz Beckham is right at the...

It’s pretty clear at this point that Green Bay Packers backup quarterback Malik Willis will be playing for another NFL team in 2026. Willis should command a deal in the range of Justin Fields’ two-year, $40 million contract, a benchmark deal for the “prove it here and you’ll get a real starting quarterback contract” market. Generally, the market for true blue veteran backup quarterbacks now, ones who do not have to compete for their spot on the 53-man roster, is around $5 million per year in 2026. The Packers, due to their cap situation, aren’t really in the position to be throwing out that kind of money on a non-starter, especially without owning a first-round pick in either of the next two drafts. So, how will the team back up starting Jordan Love moving forward? Well, over the past two weeks, they made two moves, adding Desmond Ridder and Kyle McCord, that will help quarterback coach Sean Mannion sleep a lot better at night. Before we talk about Ridder and McCord, I want to take you back to the 2023 draft to show you how this could have gone wrong. The 2023 NFL Draft With Aaron Rodgers traded to the New York Jets and Love moving into a starting role, the Packers needed a backup quarterback in 2023. The problem is that, like in 2026, the team didn’t have much cap space, as they were one of the highest cash spending teams on the player level from 2020 to 2022. They paid a lot of money to go “all-in” at the end of the Rodgers era (were the 2nd-highest cash spend team on players in 2022) and now had to play within a restricted cap situation (were 27th in cash spend on players in 2023). They were cheap in the backup quarterback market because they had to, just like the reality that they faced at the kicker position that year. Another important piece to remember is that it wasn’t clear that the Packers were going to move on from Rodgers after the 2022 season. Had they known that, maybe they would have been more aggressive in the reserve/futures market for practice squad quarterbacks after their season ended (practice squad players usually sign deals right after their campaigns are over). With cheap practice squad players (Green Bay just had Danny Etling, on his second stint with the team, come back from the practice squad in 2023) and veteran backups off the table, the team had to turn to the draft to backfill for Love moving into the starting role. On draft weekend, five quarterbacks were picked in the top 68 selections, all players who were projected to be first-round picks based on the consensus draft board: Bryce Young, C.J. Stroud, Anthony Richardson, Will Levis and Hendon Hooker. Going into Day 3, the Packers were sitting pretty, as there were still nine players who had draftable grades on the consensus draft board who were still available to them. Then the run from hell started. One after another, seven total quarterbacks were taken from the 127th overall pick in the 2023 draft to the 164th pick, just 38 slots. By the time the run started, the Packers’ next pick was 149th overall in the fifth round, which they spent on Sean Clifford, the 11th quarterback off the board, after each of the following quarterbacks was drafted above their consensus board ranking after Green Bay’s fourth-round pick (defensive tackle Colby Wooden): Jake Haener, Stetson Bennett, Aidan O’Connell, Clayton Tune, Dorian Thompson-Robinson. Shortly after Clifford was taken, Jared Hall was also taken, another quarterback who was picked above his consensus ranking. You can’t control runs in the draft. Just because you need a quarterback on a cheap deal doesn’t mean that other teams will allow you to make a value selection. Ultimately, none of these passers in that seven-quarterback run ended up being worth their selections. Haener, Tune, Thompson-Robinson and Hall are out of the league completely, while Bennett is the Rams’ third-string quarterback (28-year-old with 0 career pass attempts in the NFL), O’Connell is the Raiders’ third-string quarterback and…