SEATTLE (AP) — Sam Darnold threw for three touchdowns, the Seahawks’ “Dark Side” defense came up with a critical fourth-down stop, and Seattle advanced to the Super Bowl, beating the Los Angeles Rams 31-27 in an electrifying NFC championship game on Sunday.

Led by second-year coach Mike Macdonald and Darnold — an eight-year veteran playing for his fifth team — the Seahawks (16-3) reached the fourth Super Bowl in franchise history and first in 11 years. Seattle lost that most recent appearance to New England, its opponent in two weeks at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California.

With Los Angeles (14-6) facing fourth-and-4 at the Seattle 6, coach Sean McVay elected to go for it and Matthew Stafford’s pass was broken up in the end zone by Devon Witherspoon. The Rams didn’t get the ball back until there were 25 seconds left, and Puka Nacua was tackled inbounds near midfield on the final play.

Stafford threw for 374 yards and three touchdowns, but the Rams were undone by critical errors, including a muffed punt by Xavier Smith in the third quarter. On the next play, Darnold connected with Jake Bobo for a 17-yard touchdown.

Darnold, who flopped in his playoff debut last season with the Minnesota Vikings, played through an oblique injury and completed 25 of 36 passes for 346 yards with no turnovers. Jaxon Smith-Njigba had 153 yards receiving and a touchdown on 10 catches.

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LA QUINTA, Calif. (AP) — New year, same Scottie Scheffler.

The world’s No. 1 player loves coming to the California desert early in the season to take stock of his game and get into tournament shape. There’s wasn’t much wrong Sunday in The American Express.

Scheffler made birdie on half of his holes, going from a two-shot deficit early to a lead that stretched to six shots late before he closed with a 6-under 66 for a four-shot victory.

“There’s always a certain amount of rust when it comes to playing competitive golf,” Scheffler said. “You can simulate as best you can at home, but you can only get into the heat of the moment when you’re posting a score and you’re in contention when you’re at a tournament. So it’s nice to see some of the stuff that I’ve been being practicing and working on has paid off.”

Scottie Scheffler hits his tee shot at the 16th hole during the final round of the American Express golf event on the Pete Dye Stadium Course at PGA West Sunday, Jan. 25, 2026, in La Quinta, Calif. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

He had four birdies in a six-hole stretch on the front nine to blow past 18-year-old Blades Brown and everyone and the rest of the field.

Scheffler won for the 20th time on the PGA Tour — all in the last four years — to earn a lifetime membership. More indicative of his dominance in the game is winning nine of those 20 tournaments by four shots or more.

He also joined Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods as the only players to have 20 PGA Tour titles and four majors before turning 30.

“Pretty wild,” Scheffler said. “It’s been a great start to my career. It’s been special. I try not to think about that stuff too much. I was just trying to do the things I needed to do to be prepared.”

The world’s No. 1 player briefly shared the stage with Brown, who finished high school two weeks ago and tied for 17th in a Korn Ferry Tour event in the Bahamas that finished Wednesday. He’s the first player to play eight straight days of PGA Tour-sanctioned competition.

Whether the fatigue caught up with him or simply the moment — he was trying to become the youngest PGA Tour winner in 95 years — it ended quickly.

Brown was one shot behind 54-hole leader Si Woo Kim and one shot ahead of Scheffler heading to the tee at the par-3 fourth on the Stadium Course at PGA West. Five holes later, Brown and Kim both were five shots behind and Scheffler was putting it into overdrive.

“Eight rounds I know sounds like a lot, but I was having a lot of fun,” he said. “You’re telling me I get to play in a PGA Tour event and to play with Scottie Scheffler and see him win it, that was insane.

“I got some things I got to sharpen up, and hopefully we see if we can do what Scottie’s doing.”

It all looked so routine at the end. Scheffler rapped in a par putt to finish at 27-under 261, stuffed the golf ball in his pocket and smiled. It all looks so routine.

“It seems like he never wants to relax,” said Jason Day, one of four players who won the B flight by finishing second. “He always does his work, needs to do whatever he needs to do to be able to prepare, and he’s always around the lead. And that’s a very, very difficult thing to do with how much distractions there can be, especially at No. 1.”

Scheffler seized control quickly after a birdie-bogey start. He hit 8-iron to 2 feet on the par-3 fourth hole, played the par-5 fifth smartly with a shot away from the water and a pitch-and-run he nearly holed from across the green for birdie. Wedges led to two more birdies to close out the front, two more early on the back to lead by four.

Scottie Scheffler celebrates with caddie, Ted Scott, after winning the final round of The American Express 2026 at Pete Dye Stadium Course on January 25, 2026 in La Quinta, California. (Photo by Orlando Ramirez/Getty Images)

Brown’s chances seemed to end on one hole. He took an aggressive line and pulled his tee shot into the water on the par-5 fifth. He had to drop in front of the tee boxes — he chose to drop in the dormant Bermuda rough instead of the teeing ground — and then hit a poor wedge when he got back into position that led to double bogey.

Brown went 11 holes without a birdie and had to late bogeys that led to a 74. He fell from a tie for second to a tie for 18th, costing him a spot at Torrey Pines next week.

But it was a good lesson alongside a great teacher.

“I would say one of the coolest things that I learned today was how underrated Scottie Scheffler’s short game is,” Brown said. “To see it in person and just to look at kind of the trajectory and the spin, and just the control that he has with his wedges and short game. Obviously, his putting is insane, too. It was really cool to watch. So I’m definitely going to go work on that.”

Day closed with a 64 that moved him up 18 spots to a runner-up finish, along with Ryan Gerard (65), Matt McCarty (68) and Andrew Putnam (68).

Kim, who plays often with Scheffler at Royal Oaks in Dallas, also lost his way on one hole. He was two shots behind on the par-5 eighth when he took two shots to get out of a greenside bunker, chipped strong and made double bogey. He missed a 3-foot par putt on the next hole. Kim rallied with three birdies on the back nine to salvage a 72 and tie for sixth.

Scheffler’s only big blunder was when it didn’t matter, a tee shot into the water on the par-3 17th known as “Alcatraz,” and by then he had plenty of get-of-jail-free cards. His double bogey only kept the margin from being greater against the strongest field The American Express has had in decades.

Scheffler now takes a week off before ending the West Coast with three straight events, starting with the Phoenix Open where this amazing run began four years ago. He won his first PGA Tour title in a playoff. It hasn’t been that close lately.

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MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Stephen Curry scored 26 points to lead the Golden State Warriors past Minnesota 111-85 on Sunday, the fifth straight loss for the Timberwolves and their longest skid in more than three years.

Curry added seven assists and four of his team’s season-high 20 steals after being listed as questionable to play because of knee soreness. Moses Moody added 19 points and eight rebounds for the Warriors (26-21), who moved within 1 1/2 games of the Timberwolves (27-19) for seventh place in the Western Conference.

Julius Randle #30 of the Minnesota Timberwolves competes for the rebound against Gary Payton II #0 of the Golden State Warriors in the fourth quarter at Target Center on January 25, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Warriors defeated the Timberwolves 111-85. (Photo by David Berding/Getty Images)

Brandin Podziemski had 12 points, six assists and four steals for the Warriors, who have won seven of their last 10 games.

Anthony Edwards led Minnesota with 32 points and 11 rebounds after the game was postponed a day following the fatal shooting of a Minneapolis man by federal immigration officers.

There was a pregame moment of silence held for Alex Pretti, and a subdued crowd found little to cheer as the Timberwolves stumbled to their lowest final score in more than four years since a 104-84 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers at home on Nov. 5, 2021. This was their first time under 100 points this season.

The Timberwolves found a burst of energy for a 10-0 run to close the first half, capped by a 3-pointer from Edwards that cut Golden State’s lead to 47-46. But they started the third quarter as flat as they did the first and trailed by double digits for the final 16:15 of the game. The last skid this long for the Timberwolves was six games from Dec. 21-31, 2022.

Forwards Julius Randle (11 points) and Jaden McDaniels (three points) combined to shoot 4 for 19 from the floor for the Timberwolves.

After Monday night’s rematch, Golden State plays at Utah, and Minnesota plays at Dallas, both on Wednesday.

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On Sunday morning, reporters on many TV networks were poring over multiple videos of the shooting over the weekend of a protester in Minneapolis by immigration agents, trying to understand what happened from slow-mo footage and freeze-frame images.

But on Fox News, the nation’s top-rated cable news network, there was little of that kind of analysis. Instead, most of its hosts, reporters and guests appeared laser focused since the shooting late Saturday morning on supporting the Trump administration’s official narrative: that Alex Pretti, a 37-year old intensive care nurse, brought the violence upon himself.

“Only one person could have prevented this from happening and it’s Alex Pretti,” said Charlie Hurt, co-host of “Fox & Friends Weekend” on Sunday morning. “He should have not been there.”

Pretti’s killing in Minneapolis came scarcely two weeks after the fatal shooting of Renee Good by a federal agent in the city as part of an immigration enforcement action. The incidents have led to mounting outrage from members of the public and demands from public officials, including Minnesota’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, that Border Patrol and ICE agents leave the state immediately.

Fox News’ handling of Pretti’s killing also highlighted what appears to be its willingness to play down or overlook evidence that could contradict the federal government’s version of events. The coverage made for a jarring disconnect between the narrative found on the conservative network and the one on other outlets.

“A lot of what Fox does, in general, is to make arguments that Donald Trump will make seem more reasonable,” said Anthony Nadler, a professor at Ursinus College who studies conservative media. “That means being extremely selective about what aspects of reality you’ll include in that narrative.”

In response to a request for comment, Fox noted that it had preempted regular weekend programming to expand coverage of the shooting, had multiple reporters on the ground in Minneapolis and had interviewed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel about the episode.

Pretti’s father told The Associated Press on Saturday that his son was on the streets protesting because he was “very upset with what was happening in Minneapolis and throughout the U.S.” with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Videos from the scene show that at the time he was confronted by Border Patrol agents, Pretti was filming with his own phone and appeared to be trying to defend a woman who had been pushed to the ground by the same officers. While he did have a gun, it was in its holster, the videos show, and local law enforcement has said that he had a legal permit to carry a firearm.

The Department of Homeland Security posted on social media that Pretti “approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun” and that they tried to disarm him. But videos analyzed by The New York Times and other news outlets appear to show that Pretti never took his pistol out of his holster, even after multiple masked agents sprayed him in the face with chemical irritants and forced him to the ground. Instead, one agent removed Pretti’s firearm and immediately after that, two other officers began shooting him in the back.

Yet on Sunday morning, that kind of analysis was nowhere to be found on Fox. Instead, Matt Finn, a reporter for Fox on the ground in Minneapolis, citing statements from the Department of Homeland Security, said that Pretti “had a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun on him and two full magazines when he approached agents,” adding that “an agent, fearing for his life, ultimately shot Pretti.”

Others on the channel supported suggestions that Pretti had brandished his weapon and had actively threatened the agents. That was how multiple federal officials described the incident, including Noem and Gregory Bovino, who heads Border Patrol operations. On Saturday, Bovino claimed in a news conference that Pretti “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”

On Saturday night, Nicole Parker, a Fox contributor, said on air that “when you’re seeing a gun in your face and you’re in the scuffle, then you have to, again, assume that is a gun.” Early Sunday morning, Chris Clem, a retired Border Patrol agent interviewed on Fox News, called the shooting “tragic” but said that Pretti “put agents in a situation where they had to use deadly force.”

Not all voices on the network joined the narrative. On Saturday evening, Ted Williams, a former police officer and defense lawyer who is now a Fox News contributor, told Fox that he saw no evidence of Pretti drawing his weapon and called for a thorough investigation of the shooting.

And on Sunday, Maria Bartiromo, the host of “Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo” on Fox, disputed statements by Patel that Pretti had attacked the Border Patrol agents.

“But how was he threatening Border Patrol?” Bartiromo asked. “How was he using that handgun in terms of threatening Border Patrol? What was that threat? He had his camera, right, he was filming it.”

In an interview with Noem, also Sunday, Peter Doocy, the senior White House correspondent for Fox News, questioned her claim that the agents had followed protocol when confronting Pretti.

“If he was disarmed,” Doocy asked, “is it the protocol to use deadly force?”

Still, those questions were the exception on Fox as it covered the fatal shooting in politicized terms.

On Saturday, one Fox reporter described huge crowds forming on the streets despite the subzero temperatures in Minneapolis as part of “an organized movement.” It is a version of events that suggests the protests are somehow inauthentic, a claim pushed by Trump, who last week called the protesters “paid agitators and insurrectionists.”

Last week, the Department of Justice sent grand jury subpoenas to a number of Minnesota officials, including Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis, as part of an investigation into whether they obstructed the immigration sweep. In a statement, Walz called the inquiry “political theater” and a “partisan distraction.”

On Sunday, Griff Jenkins, a “Fox & Friends Weekend” host, blamed those Democratic officials for this weekend’s shooting. He said that Pretti “was urged by the mayor and the governor to go out and confront them,” adding, “Why an individual would confront federal immigration law enforcement with a handgun is beyond me.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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