If only saving money in daily life was as easy it is in the NFL.

The Kansas City Chiefs were able to free up $43.6 million in salary cap space on Feb. 18 by restructuring quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ contract, per reports.

Before the restructure, the Chiefs’ star quarterback was set to enter the 2026 league year with a $78.2 million cap hit, according to OverTheCap. Instead, Kansas City converted $54.5 million of Mahomes’ 2026 salary and roster bonus into a signing bonus, dropping his cap hit to $34.7 million this year.

The Chiefs, who entered the offseason more than $54 million over the salary cap, according to OverTheCap, save $43.6 million with the restructure. They still remain roughly $11 million over the projected 2026 salary cap, which will be between $301.2 million and $305.7 million per team according to USA TODAY Sports’ reporting on Jan. 30.

Mahomes is entering the fifth year of the 10-year, $450 million contract extension he signed in 2020. In 2023, the star quarterback and Kansas City agreed to restructure his contract to pay him $210.6 million in guaranteed money between 2023 and 2026.

One year later, another Mahomes contract restructure opened up $21.6 million in cap room for 2024, and last year, the Chiefs created $49 million in cap space by restructuring Mahomes’ and Chris Jones’ contracts.

Mahomes’ contract is now due for an $85.3 million cap hit next year, though reports surrounding the quarterback’s 2023 restructure indicated that he and the Chiefs would revisit his contract after 2026.

Mahomes and the Chiefs missed the playoffs for the first time in his career in 2025. The two-time NFL MVP tore his ACL and LCL in a December game against the Los Angeles Chargers, cutting short a season that featured a career-low 62.7% completion rate and a 6-8 record as a starter. Mahomes is rehabbing and recovering from the injury and hopes to be ready by Week 1, Chiefs owner Clark Hunt said on Jan. 27.

Chiefs cap space

Cap space: -$11.4 million

According to OverTheCap, the Chiefs are still projected to be more than $11 million over the 2026 salary cap. They rank 28th in the NFL in cap space with just under one month left before the start of the free agency negotiating period and new league year.

Patrick Mahomes cap hits by year

Here’s how much the remainder of Mahomes’ contract is worth in salary cap hits over the next six seasons, per Spotrac:

2026: $34,653,888
2027: $85,253,888
2028: $53,014,000
2029: $55,414,000
2030: $56,415,000
2031: $48,375,000

Given that Mahomes and the Chiefs indicated in 2023 that they’d revisit his contract structure after 2026, it’s likely these numbers will change before Mahomes’ cap hit ever reaches that $85.3 million number next year.

Team Canada captain Sidney Crosby skated slowly toward the dressing room after a heavy check during an Olympics quarterfinal game on Wednesday, Feb. 18.

He did not return to the ice with his teammates after the intermission between the second and third periods, and Hockey Canada said shortly afterward he is out for the rest of the game with a lower body injury.

The Pittsburgh Penguins star was checked by Czechia defenseman Radek Gudas during the second period and then by two Czech players along the boards, and on replay, it his right leg appeared to buckle. As he skated away, he was limping slightly. He eventually went to the dressing room.

Czechia was leading 2-1 at the time of the injury, but the Canadians pulled out a 4-3 overtime win.

This is Crosby’s third Olympics. He won in 2010, scoring the golden goal in overtime in the championship game against the United States. He also won in 2014.

Crosby had two goals and four assists in the preliminary round as Canada went 3-0.

This story will be updated when more information becomes available.

Watch Winter Olympics on Peacock

Olympic men’s hockey scores and schedule today

All times Eastern.

Slovakia 6, Germany 2
Canada 4, Czechia 3 (OT)
12:10 p.m. – Finland vs. Switzerland, quarterfinals on Peacock
3:10 p.m. – USA vs. Sweden, quarterfinals on NBC, Peacock

Where to watch Olympic men’s hockey

USA TODAY at the Milano Cortina Games

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The 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics are off and running with 16 sports taking over 25 different venues. The games are exclusively airing across NBC’s suite of networks with many events airing live on its streaming service, Peacock, which you can sign up for here.

MILAN — Is this the best U.S. women’s national hockey team we’ve ever seen?

‘Absolutely,’ Olympic champion Monique Lamoureux told USA TODAY Sports on Tuesday.

Many talented squads have worn USA across their chests. There’s the 1998 team that clinched Olympic gold in the inaugural women’s competition in Nagano. The 2018 team topped the podium following a dramatic shootout in Pyeongchang, made possible by Lamoureux’s game-tying goal and her twin Jocelyne’s shootout winner.

But the 2026 U.S. women’s team could be the most complete squad we’ve seen on the Winter Olympics stage. The U.S. women have been unstoppable in their run to Thursday’s gold medal game against Canada. Depth is their superpower and they are firing on all cylinders, with nearly every player on the roster on the score sheet.

‘Everyone up and down the lineup is contributing,” said Lamoureux. ‘Sometimes you get a line that’s really hot at an Olympics or in a tournament and you really lean on that line, but to see them all performing at the same tournament… that’s really good to see.”

That’s not an exaggeration by any means. Team USA has outscored opponents, 31-1, through six games with 19 players registering at least one point. Fifteen players have found the back of the net. And offense isn’t the only thing rolling. USA’s three goalies have combined for five consecutive shutouts.

“Anytime I put on the jersey I just feel so lucky to be part of this group,” starting goalie Aerin Frankel said. ‘There’s so much talent in our locker room. It’s just so much fun to play with the best players in the world.”

What makes the U.S women’s hockey team the best we’ve ever seen? USA TODAY Sports asked three-time Olympic medalist Monique Lamoureux ahead of Thursday’s gold medal match.

Monique Lamoureux weighs in on Team USA

The U.S. women’s national team has numerous offensive threats, which will force Canada to pick your poison. Lamoureux said the reigning Olympic champions will likely look to shut down defender Caroline Harvey, who leads the ‘most offensively skilled defensive core from top to bottom that we’ve ever seen.’

Harvey is one of 11 players returning from the 2022 Beijing Games, where the U.S. settled for silver following a devastating 3-2 loss to Canada, the nation’s fourth runner-up finish to the Canadians at the Olympics. That’s a defeat that likely remains in the back of their heads. It’s not a loss that’s easy to get over, but it has served as fuel for their dominant run in Milan. 

‘When you lose at the Olympics, it’s unlike anything else when you have to watch the other team celebrate for 30 to 40 minutes before they bring the medals out,” Lamoureux told USA TODAY Sports. ‘That’s something that sticks with you. So I’m sure they’ve used it as motivation.”

Harvey walked away from Beijing with the most motivation. She made her Olympic debut at age 19 as the youngest member of Team USA in 2022, but her lack of ice time (only about a minute in total) deeply rattled her confidence. Harvey has responded in historic fashion and is now one of the best players on ice.

The 23-year-old senior at the University of Wisconsin leads all women at the Olympics with nine points — seven assists and two goals — marking a record for an American defender at the Olympics.

‘Really you can take that one of two ways… but to come back four years later and be one of the top, or if not the top player on the U.S. for this tournament, speaks to her character and just the people she surrounded herself with to put her in a position that she’s in now,’ Lamoureux said.

Harvey leads a young core of stars that represent both the present and future of the national team. While the veterans — like five-time Olympian Hilary Knight and four-time Olympian Kendall Coyne Schofield — have anchored the team, the twelve players making Olympic debuts have infused youth into the lineup.

Seven players are still in college, but you wouldn’t be able to tell by their sheer production. The young stars are unphased by the moment and have successfully ‘made that jump from college or the pros to the international level,’ Lamoureux said, which isn’t easy despite how the U.S. rookies make it look.

‘Everyone tells you when you’re preparing (for the Olympics), prepare like any other tournament… Well, I feel like most people that tell you that have not been to the Olympics,’ added Lamoureux. ‘The pressure when you’re only there once every four years and the amount of eyes that are on you, it’s unlike anything else… It seems like they’re handling it very well and they’re managing everything very well.’

Lamoureux will have her eyes out for the second line of Hannah Bilka, Taylor Heise and Abbey Murphy on Thursday. Bilka was on the starting line for the first three games of the tournament, before moving to the second line ahead of USA’s 5-0 shutout of Canada Feb. 10. The move paid off as Bilka scored two of her four goals in the Canadian rout.

‘They’re just a bunch of spark plugs out there. They move fast, they’re creative, they play really hard and with an edge,’ Lamoureux said of the second line. ‘I know everyone’s talking about Abbey Murphy and how she plays with a chip on her shoulder and she gets under the other team’s skin. So I’d like to think that’s how my sister and I played when we were on the ice. So I love watching her play.’

Team USA’s three goalkeepers are also first-time Olympians, but have been solid in front of the net. Team USA conceded only one goal in its Olympic opener against Czechia, but has since kept opponents off the score sheet for the last 331:23 minutes of play. Frankel has recorded three of Team USA’s five shutouts, becoming the first goaltender in do so in women’s Olympic hockey.

Lamoureux praised Frankel’s skill ability to stay focused and engaged in front of the net.

‘She’s small for a goalie. So her athleticism and her ability to read plays, I think it is just at an elite level,’ Lamoureux said, pointing to her performance against Sweden on Monday. ‘(Frankel) had two shots in the first period and then in the second period she gets 13 shots. Those are not easy games to play in…Her and the other goalies have been ready at every step of the way.’

What to expect in USA vs. Canada gold medal match?

The USA-Canada women’s ice hockey rivalry is like no other in sports. Although the players taking the ice in Thursday’s gold-medal match have played together in the PWHL, Lamoureux said there will still be fireworks. The Americans shut out the Canada for the first time in Olympic history Feb. 10, further adding fuel to the flame, but the Canadians will have five-time Olympian Marie-Philip Poulin back in the lineup after injury.

‘When you’re putting on your country’s jersey and you’re going against Canada, there’s certainly no love lost,’ added Lamoureux, who expects a physical and heated matchup. ‘As far as offensive threats, the US definitely has a lot more of ’em for sure…We’re going to see some awesome hockey on Thursday.’

Team USA is one win away from securing its first gold medal since 2018, which would cap Hilary Knight’s prolific Olympic career with her fifth medal and second gold. Knight is one point and one goal away from setting all-time U.S. Olympic records. She’s also one medal away from the U.S. Olympic record.

‘It would be pretty amazing to see her top it off with one more gold medal,’ Lamoureux said. ‘Some people were kind of counting her out and saying she was past her prime… to see her continue to produce at an elite level and just to be able to sustain a career like that for so long is, I mean, there’s not that many people who’ve done it.’

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MILAN — U.S. women’s hockey captain Hilary Knight is going for gold as the Americans prepare to face off against Canada on Thursday, but that’s not the only bling being dished out in Milan.

Knight proposed to U.S. speed-skater Brittany Bowe on Wednesday, Feb. 18, as both athletes compete at the 2026 Winter Olympics. It marks a full circle moment for the couple, who first met at the 2022 Beijing Winter Games.

‘Olympics brought us together. This one made us forever,’ Knight captioned an Instagram video of the proposal.

Knight and Bowe first connected at the Beijing Games amid strict COVID-19 protocols. The duo often went on fully masked strolls that were cute, but not necessarily romantic, Knight recalled. Bowe walked away with bronze in the 1000m in Beijing, but she told People that her time with Knight ‘was the biggest win coming out of Beijing.’

“(It was) a very unique way to meet someone, but it was also kind of cool because we felt like we were in this bubble,’ Bowe said. ‘No outside distractions. And we really had a lot of time just to get to know each other.” 

Knight and Bowe started dating in December 2022. Their relationship helped Knight find the strength to publicly come out a year later in 2023. Knight said they understand each other on a different level as two elite athletes with prolonged careers. Milano Cortina marks Knight’s fifth Games and Bowe’s fourth.

‘We have normal human conversations and then we have Olympic athlete conversations about tactical and technical parts of our training,’ Knight said at the USOPC media summit in October. ‘(Bowe’s) so intentional and thoughtful with preparation and it’s something that I hope that’s rubbed off on me in the right way. But it’s really incredible when you put two different sports side by side and see how they’re similar and how they’re different as well.’

There’s another ‘awesome’ perk of dating a fellow athlete – watching sports all day long. ‘Whether it’s playoffs, regular season, we’re watching everything sports 24/7,’ Knight joked.

The 2026 Winter Olympic will mark the last Games for both Knight and Bowe. Bowe fell short of the podium with fourth-place finishes in both the women’s 1,000 meters and the women’s team pursuit. But Bowe will have another chance to medal on Friday in the women’s 1500m, a distance she previously held the world record in.

‘I gave it my best effort and left it all out there,’ Bowe said after the 1,000m race. ‘Obviously, tough finishing in what most would think is the hardest position in the Olympic games in fourth place. In the same breath, just such an honor to be able to be out there and my name continuing to be in that very elite pack of ladies.’

Meanwhile, Knight will lead Team USA in a gold-medal match against Canada on Thursday. Knight is one point and one goal away from setting an all-time U.S. Olympic hockey record.

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The Mexico men’s national team has announced it will conclude World Cup preparations with matches against Ghana, Australia, and Serbia.

Mexico will serve as the World Cup co-host along with the United States and Canada, and will have the honor of opening the tournament when it faces South Africa on June 11 in Mexico City.

Prior to that match, El Tri will face Ghana on May 22 at a venue in Mexico yet to be confirmed.

Mexico will then take on Australia at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California on May 30 before concluding its warm-up matches against Serbia on June 4, also at a venue in Mexico yet to be confirmed.

Get tickets for Mexico vs. Australia

‘These are the ideal opponents to help prepare the national team for the World Cup,’ said Ivar Sisniega, president of the Mexican Football Federation.

Mexico went winless in six fall friendly matches (four draws and two losses), a major letdown after winning the Gold Cup over the summer.

Javier Aguirre’s side bounced back in January during a non-FIFA window, defeating Bolivia and Panama by 1-0 scorelines.

Before its three final World Cup tune-ups, Mexico will host Iceland on Feb. 25 in Querétaro and Portugal in Mexico City on March 28, before facing Belgium on March 31 in Chicago.

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — Take that, haters. Mikaela Shiffrin’s Olympic drought is over.

Shiffrin won gold in the slalom Wednesday, Feb. 18, her first medal since winning a silver in the combined at the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang. It snapped an 0-for-8 streak at the Winter Games, which included DNFs in three events four years ago.

‘It’s been so long that I’ve felt tired of questions that don’t feel like they line up with the reality of our sport. And in order to do this today, I kind of needed to accept the possibility that those questions would keep coming,’ Shiffrin said. ‘It was like, just don’t resist it. Just live in my own moment.’

It is Shiffrin’s second gold in the Olympic slalom and third overall, tying her with snowboarder Shaun White and bobsledder Kaillie Humphries for second-most golds by a U.S. Winter Olympian. Speedskaters Bonnie Blair and Eric Heiden each won five golds.

It’s also Shiffrin’s fourth overall Olympic medal, tying her with Julia Mancuso for most by a U.S. woman in Alpine skiing.

‘I have a challenged relationship with racing,’ said Shiffrin, who has always cared far more about the process than the result. ‘But when I get to do it like this today? Actually racing in that way, earning the race, that was wonderful.’

The American women finish the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics with three Alpine skiing medals, matching their second-most at a single Winter Games. In addition to Shiffrin, Breezy Johnson won gold in the downhill, and Paula Moltzan and Jackie Wiles won bronze in the team combined.

It’s only the second time the U.S. women have claimed two Alpine golds at a single Games. They won golds in the giant slalom and slalom in 1952.

‘Everybody just showed up with so much courage and heart here, and I’m so proud to be part of this American team,’ Shiffrin said.

Shiffrin finished with a combined time of 1:39.10, 1.5 seconds ahead of Switzerland’s Camille Rast, who took silver, and 1.71 seconds ahead of Sweden’s Anna Swenn Larsson, who got bronze.

The gold was all but assured after Shiffrin’s blistering first run, which gave her a lead of 0.82 seconds over Germany’s Lena Duerr. To put in perspective how commanding that was, there was as much distance between Shiffrin and Duerr as there was between Duerr and Austria’s Katharina Truppe, who was 10th.

‘I knew Mikaela could ski rally fast on this kind of slope and I need to push really hard to beat her on this kind of slope,’ Rast said. ‘After the first run, I knew gold was gone but silver and bronze were open.’

This is the kind of dominance Shiffrin has shown week after week on the World Cup circuit, where she’s won seven of the first eight slaloms and been second in the other. She’s been so in command she wrapped up her ninth season slalom title before the Olympics.

But when Shiffrin struggled in the slalom portion of the team combined on Feb. 10, finishing 15th out of 18 skiers and dropping her and Breezy Johnson from first to fourth, it raised questions about whether the Olympics had become a mental hurdle following her struggles in the 2022 Beijing Games.

Shiffrin has more World Cup wins (108) and podiums (166) than any other skier, male or female, and she’s been in the top three in more than 55% of her starts. She’s the only skier in history to win a World Cup in each of skiing’s six disciplines – downhill, super-G, giant slalom, slalom, combined and parallel – and she has the single-season record for wins with 17.

Shiffrin also has three Olympic medals, two of them gold, won in her first two Winter Games.

Which is what made Beijing so out of character. Shiffrin didn’t finish a single tech run in an individual race. Her best individual result was ninth in the super-G.

But Shiffrin looked better in the giant slalom here, finishing 0.30 seconds off the podium. Afterward, she sounded optimistic about the upcoming slalom race.

“After the team combined, I went out and did a really wonderful session of training with my team, focusing on some of those variables that were really destabilizing,” Shiffrin said after the GS race.

‘No matter how many runs of slalom I do, it never gets easier. It only gets — you become more aware of how challenging it is,’ she added. ‘But it felt really good. It was great to practice and sort of take control of that.’

That carried over to race day.

When Shiffrin is on, she skis with a deceptive effortlessness. While other skiers seem to lunge from gate to gate, she flows. It’s not until you look at the splits, or her final time, that you realize how aggressively she’s been skiing to produce that kind of speed.

That was the case in the first run, when she came out blazing and never backed off. She had the fastest times in three of the four sections of the course, and was just 0.03 seconds off the pace in the other. When she crossed the finish line, she gave a pump of her fist.

It was more of the same in the second run.

‘Both runs were exactly what I wanted to feel overall,’ Shiffrin said. ‘Every time you get a little disturbance in the ski, just dive down into it more. And oftentimes I get through the finish and I’m just like, thank you for letting that work.’

Work it did. And now the haters will have to find someone else to criticize.

Kansas State basketball’s attempt to fire Jerome Tang for cause has been widely derided by the basketball world. After a 90-74 win over Baylor with interim coach Matthew Driscoll on the bench, the Wildcats still mentioned Tang several times postgame.

Kansas State arguably looked more complete than it has all season, with PJ Haggerty and Nate Johnson putting up 34 and 33 points, respectively.

‘We (came) more together as a team,’ Johnson told reporters postgame. ‘It just bonded us over that period of time, and it showed. His message still showed that we are still together and we’re just going to keep getting better every day.’

‘It’s been some very difficult days,’ Haggerty added. ‘Every day, we all love Coach T (Tang), you know, as a coach and as a person. He just wanted us to be better men rather than just basketball players, too. But at the end of the day, we’re just gonna keep playing and honoring him.’

Haggerty also harkened back to a mantra of Tang’s.

”Crazy faith’ is something he said every day, whether it was good days or bad days; he always stuck with faith,’ he said. ‘Either he had it on his shirt, or he said, ‘crazy faith,’ and that was the biggest thing that he always told us.’

This support lingers even after Tang’s firing for cause was justified by a press conference in which Tang derided his roster and said most of the players wouldn’t be back next season.

‘This was embarrassing,’ Tang said after a 91-62 loss at the hands of Cincinnati. ‘These dudes do not deserve to wear this uniform, and there will be very few of them in it next year. I’m embarrassed for the university, I’m embarrassed for our fans, and our student section. It’s just ridiculous.’

Even with those harsh words, Kansas State’s players are rallying behind him as he looks for the $18.675 million buyout he would be owed if Kansas State loses its case to fire him for cause.

Driscoll added: ‘Because of his leadership and because of what he did, that’s why tonight transpired, and it’s why everything came to fruition tonight. We went through a lot of things, but if you want to know something, there’s nothing easy in life, and nothing’s normal. Everyone wants it easy, and he said we’re not doing that.’

Clearly the players and new installation of coaches aren’t hoping to bolster the university’s case.

Benfica winger Gianluca Prestianni has denied racially insulting Real Madrid star Vinícius Júnior during a Champions League match on Tuesday, Feb. 17.

Vinícius scored the game’s only goal in the 50th minute, but the match was marred by a confrontation between the Brazilian and Prestianni just five minutes later.

Prestianni covered his mouth with his jersey when approaching the 25-year-old, with nearby Real Madrid players signaling that the Argentine had made a racial insult.

Television footage appeared to show Vinícius telling referee François Letexier that Prestianni called him a “monkey.” Letexier halted the match for 11 minutes under FIFA’s anti-racism protocol, with Madrid clinching a 1-0 win after it resumed.

After the game, Vinícius wrote on Instagram: “Racists are, above all, cowards. They need to cover their mouths with their shirts to show how they are weak.’ 

But in a statement released on social media, Prestianni denied that he had racially abused Vinícius.

“I want to clarify that at no point did I direct racist insults at the player Vinicius Júnior, who unfortunately misinterpreted what he thought he heard,’ the 20-year-old said. ‘I have never been racist towards anyone and I regret the threats I received from Real Madrid players.”

Benfica has strongly backed its player, posting Prestianni’s statement along with the words: “Together, by your side.”

The Portuguese club added in a statement that Prestianni had been the victim of a ‘defamation campaign.’

“As the images show, given the distance, the Real Madrid players couldn’t have heard what they have been saying that they heard,” Benfica added.

UEFA has announced that it will open an investigation into the incident.