Blink and they’re gone
Happy Thursday, and welcome to October — the sports month of all sports months. This is the most ruthless part of the sports calendar, when months of regular-season work can disappear in a couple of nights. The WNBA has already lost its No. 1 seed, while MLB just sent the Cubs, Red Sox and Astros home in a single evening. Tonight brings a pair of gigantic winner-take-all games, between Philadelphia and Atlanta in MLB and Las Vegas and Indiana in the WNBA. We’ll take stock of both of the suddenly-sparser playoff fields below. Plus, Week 4 of the NFL kicks off with Steelers-Browns, after one of the strangest statistical weeks we’ve seen in years. Here’s what else we’re watching today:
The Main Events
All listed times are Eastern. 🚨= Elimination game
MLB:
⚾ Wild Card: Phillies (50%) at Braves (50%) - Game 3 (Series tied 1-1), 8 p.m. (NBC/Peacock) 🚨
⚾🏆 World Series title check-in: Dodgers 30% to win
WNBA:
🏀 First Round: Fever (35%) at Aces (65%) - Game 3 (Series tied 1-1), 9 p.m. (USA Network) 🚨
🏀🏆 WNBA title check-in: Dream 28% to win
Football:
🏈 Thursday Night Football: Steelers (59%) at Browns (41%) - 8:15 p.m. (Prime)
🏈 CFB: Western Kentucky (45%) at New Mexico State (55%) - 8 p.m.
🏈 CFB: North Texas (52%) at Tulsa (48%) - 9 p.m.
🏈🏆 Super Bowl check-in: Bills 14% to win NFL title
🏈🏆 College Football Playoff check-in: Georgia 18% to win national title
NHL:
🏒 Flyers (40%) at Devils (60%) - 7 p.m. (ESPN+)
🏒 Lightning (54%) at Rangers (46%) - 7 p.m.
🏒 Blackhawks (33%) at Mammoth (67%) - 9:30 p.m. (ESPN+)
🏒🏆 Stanley Cup check-in: Avalanche 14% to win
Soccer:
⚽ UEFA Nations League: Germany (82%) vs. Serbia (7%) - 2:45 p.m.
⚽ UEFA Nations League: Greece (28%) vs. Netherlands (47%) - 2:45 p.m.
⚽ Women's Champions League: Manchester City (59%) vs. Real Madrid (21%) - 3 p.m. (Paramount+)
⚽ MLS: Seattle (65%) at Kansas City (17%) - 9:30 p.m. (Apple TV)
⚽🏆 Champions League title check-in: FC Barcelona 27% to win
⚽🏆 Premier League title check-in: Arsenal FC 64% to win
⚽🏆 MLS title check-in: Vancouver Whitecaps FC 23% to win MLS Cup
⚽🏆 NWSL title check-in: Gotham FC 28% to win
🔍 FIND THE EDGE
Happy trails
The thing about short early-playoff series in sports like MLB and the WNBA is that teams who you’ve followed for months and months can be gone just like that, in the span of only a few days. And in each sport thus far, we’ve said goodbye — or are about to say goodbye — to some good ones already.
Obviously, the biggest domino was the No. 1 seed in the WNBA playoffs, the Minnesota Lynx, who were blown out by the underseeded New York Liberty in consecutive games earlier in the week, ending their season. That knocked out the league’s top team by Basketball-Reference’s Simple Rating System (SRS), which tracks schedule-adjusted points-per-game margin, while the Washington Mystics (No. 8 in SRS) were also ousted by the Atlanta Dream last night.
One of the Fever or Aces (Nos. 4-5 in SRS) will be gone by tonight, and the No. 3 ranked Valkyries will have to make their last stand against Dallas on Friday night. Obviously, this is how playoffs work, but within the span of four days, the WNBA could potentially lose its No. 1, No. 2, No. 4 and No. 8 regular-season teams, leaving the rest of the field to sort things out from there.
Baseball is experiencing something similar, if not quite as dramatic just yet. Because the top seeds get first-round byes, we’ve been spared any Lynx-style carnage for now, but the No. 3 ranked SRS team (the Cubs) was swept by the Padres, the No. 7 ranked Red Sox just got absolutely blasted out of the playoffs by the Yankees — by a combined score of 18-2 — and the Astros (who admittedly didn’t have a great regular season, as we detailed here) were swept by the White Sox.
The No. 4 ranked Braves could be done today as well, since they must face the Phillies in a rare winner-take-all Game 3 of the Wild Card round. (Since the format was permanently installed in 2022, only six of 20 wild-card series have reached a Game 3, including Phillies-Braves.) And all of those ousters will have happened in the span of just three days — life comes at you fast.
All of this has left the odds in an interesting place. The WNBA seems to just not know who will win at all anymore, with Atlanta leading the pack for the time being. In MLB, things are more stable at the top — the Dodgers abide — but the Yankees have now overtaken the Brewers for the second-best odds in the market and the Padres are up to fourth. It will be interesting to see where the Phillies-Braves winner lands as well.
That’s the chaos and cruelty of these early rounds. Months of regular-season work can disappear in 48 hours, and the championship picture can suddenly look nothing like it did on Monday. Happy trails to those who’ve departed — and onward to whoever’s still left standing.
Make it make sense
Week 4 of the 2026 NFL season is already upon us tonight, with the Steelers visiting the Browns in the most AFC North-coded matchup possible. And we can only hope that this week is a bit more logical than last week, which was one of the weirdest NFL weeks of the past 27 years, at least if we look at who won versus who we’d expect to win based on the stats. Headlined by the Chargers losing to Buffalo despite winning the turnover battle 5-1, we saw four different games where (based on historical trends around yardage and turnover margins) the winning team “should” win less than 22% of the time, and Week 3 overall featured just a 61% average win probability for the actual winners by that metric — making it the 23rd-most surprising week in the data since 1999:
What else we’re reading
Smart, short reads we liked while building today’s odds.
🏈 “Week 4 ‘Coach, I Was Open’ & ‘Route-Based Heroes’” by Joseph Bryan
🏀 “How Top-Heavy Is Every NBA Payroll” by Storm Mensing
🏀 “Inside Look at Basketball Technology (and the transformation of the game)” by Andrew Petcash
🏈 “Ancient EPAliens” by Ray Carpenter
⛳ “Tours’ strategic alliance: At what cost?” by Bob Harig
Next on deck…
Friday (10/2)
⚾ MLB Playoffs: No games. (Off-day prior to Division Series)
🏀 WNBA Playoffs: Wings at Valkyries (Game 3) 🚨
🏈 CFB: Penn State at Northwestern
🏒 NHL: Rangers at Red Wings
⚽ UEFA Nations League: Belgium vs. Türkiye
Saturday (10/3)
⚾ MLB Playoffs: ALDS Game 1 - White Sox at Guardians
⚾ MLB Playoffs: ALDS Game 1 - Yankees at Rays
⚾ MLB Playoffs: NLDS Game 1 - Padres at Brewers
⚾ MLB Playoffs: NLDS Game 1 - Phillies/Braves winner at Dodgers
🏀 WNBA Playoffs: No games. (Off-day prior to Semifinals)
🏈 CFB: #5 Ohio State at #14 Iowa
🏈 CFB: #7 Alabama at #16 Mississippi State
🏈 CFB: #8 Florida at #25 Missouri
🏒 NHL: Blues at Avalanche
⚽ UEFA Nations League: Croatia vs. England
⚽ UEFA Nations League: Spain vs. Czechia
Sunday (10/4)
🏈 NFL: Rams at Eagles
🏈 NFL: Chiefs at Raiders
🏈 NFL: Broncos at 49ers
⚾ MLB Playoffs: NLDS Game 2 - Padres at Brewers
⚾ MLB Playoffs: NLDS Game 2 - Phillies/Braves winner at Dodgers
🏀 WNBA Playoffs: Semifinals Game 1 (2 matchups TBD)
⚽ UEFA Nations League: Portugal vs. Norway
⚽ UEFA Nations League: Greece vs. Germany
🏁 NASCAR: Cup Series South Point 400 at Las Vegas
