P.J. Fleck picked up a local pledge Monday, when Forest Lake defensive lineman Howie Johnson committed to the Gophers immediately after Fleck and Co. extended an offer.
Johnson becomes the second committed member of the Gophers’ 2026 recruiting class, joining Rocori offensive lineman Andrew Tout. Johnson’s offer came at one of the program’s camps.
The 6-foot-4, 255 pound defensive lineman is currently listed as a 3-star recruit by 247 Sports. He was dominant as a sophomore at Forest Lake, tallying 80 tackles — 28 of which were for loss — for the Rangers’ stingy defense. Johnson had seven sacks and a forced fumble, while also blocking a kick.
Johnson wrote the following in a social media post Tuesday morning announcing his decision:
“I just want to say thank you. Thank you to everyone who has helped me in this process, growing up, pushing me, coaching me, and teaching me to be a better man. ,,, Thank you Minnesota for giving me this chance! RTB, SKI-U-MAH!!!!”
Johnson told Ryan Burns of 247Sports that he committed to Fleck after a quick, five-minute chat with his parents after he received the offer.
“Coach Fleck said he wanted to offer me because I fit the program,” Johnson told 247Sports. “He says I was a perfect fit for him and his coaching staff because I have the heart and the drive. And I elected to take the offer immediately because I’ve grown up a Gopher fan for years, and it was my initial inspiration for playing Division I football. And from the first time I stepped onto campus, I felt at home. I felt like I belonged. … It’s a dream come true. It means that there’s more work to do, and we can’t, and won’t, slow down.”
Johnson also said he’s now finished with the recruiting process.
“I’ve got everything I need right here in my backyard,” he told 247Sports.
In the action comedy “Thelma,” 94-year-old actress June Squibb plays the title role, a grandmother who one day gets a call from her “grandson” who claims he’s in jail and needs her to send $10,000 or things will get really bad.
Thelma sends the money and then she discovers she’s been scammed. She’s so outraged that she recruits her friend Ben, played by the late Richard Roundtree in one of his final roles, and sets off across the San Fernando Valley on a two-seat electric scooter to get her money back.
The so-called “grandparent scam” is a common con perpetrated on seniors who instinctively want to help their grandchildren out of trouble.
And for writer-director Josh Margolin, it got personal when his own grandmother, Thelma Post, now 103 years old, was targeted about a decade ago with a call purportedly from Josh in jail.
June Squibb as Thelma and Fred Hechinger as her grandson Danny in the new action comedy “Thelma.” (Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)
When a scammer tricks Thelma out of $10,000, she recruits her friend Ben and his spiffy two-seat scooter, to trek across the San Fernando Valley. Seen here are actress June Squibb and actor Richard Roundtree in the new action comedy “Thelma.” (Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)
In “Thelma,” a 90-something grandmother played by June Squibb turns action here with help from her friend Ben, played by the late Richard Roundtree, traveling across the San Fernando Valley to catch the men who scammed her out of $10,000. (Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)
Writer-director Josh Margolin was inspired to make “Thelma” after his own grandmother Thelma Post, seen here with Margolin, was targeted for by scammers. The action comedy stars June Squibb in the title role and the late Richard Roundtree as her sidekick on her quest for justice. (Photo courtesy of Josh Margolin)
June Squibb attends the premiere of “Thelma,” in which she plays the title role, during the 2024 Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 18, 2024 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)
In “Thelma,” the title character might be in her 90s, but she’s much more focused than her daughter, son-in-law, and grandson, played here by Parker Posey, Clark Gregg and Fred Hechinger. (Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)
Actress June Squibb and writer-director Josh Margolin attend the premiere of “Thelma,” in which Squibb plays the title role, during Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 18, 2024 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)
Writer-director Josh Margolin was inspired to make “Thelma” after his own grandmother Thelma was targeted for by scammers. The action comedy stars June Squibb in the title role. (Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)
In “Thelma,” a 90-something grandmother turns action here with help from her friend Ben, traveling across the San Fernando Valley to catch the men who scammed her out of $10,000. The movie sends up some of the action movie tropes, including the slow-motion walk away from a background explosion, as seen here with stars June Squibb as Thelma and Richard Roundtree as Ben. (Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)
“It just really shook up my sense of her,” says Margolin, who admired his grandmother for her seemingly unstoppable ability to care for herself. “She has always been so unflappable and so sharp and so tough in a way. So to see her get duped, especially with my name being used, it just felt like maybe we were entering this new moment.”
For Post, the scam was caught before she actually lost any money. But Margolin, who’d been filming his grandmother almost as a documentary subject for years, the “what ifs” of that moment set his imagination in motion.
“I started wondering what might have happened if she sent it and then set out to get it back, which I think is something she very well may have done,” he says. “Many of the things June did (as Thelma in the movie) are things she might have done if given the chance.”
The movie he wrote celebrates the grit and determination he admired in his grandmother. It mines the humor in the family dynamic – Squibb and Roundtree are far more capable than her hapless heirs, Thelma’s daughter and son-in-law, played by Parker Posey and Clark Gregg, and grandson Danny, played by Fred Hechinger.
And it lets the film’s Thelma be an action hero, albeit one moving a little slower, OK, a lot slower, but just as gamely as Tom Cruise, whom she’s seen watching in a stunt-filled movie early on.
“That cocktail of things is what sort of got me really excited about it,” Margolin says. “It made me realize I had to write it.”
But first, he’d need to find his leading lady.
A star is born – at 94
Squibb says she was on board to play Thelma by the time she reached the final page of the screenplay.
“My initial reaction was: I must do this,” she says. “I think I just reacted to her. I understood her age, certainly. And I felt that I would probably do these very things if something was done to me. It was just all there.”
For Margolin, Squibb, who was nominated for best supporting actress for 2013’s “Nebraska,” wasn’t just No. 1 on his list. She was his entire list.
“I had her in mind because I’ve just been a longtime fan of her as an actress,” he says of Squibb, a character actor whose films include “The Age of Innocence,” “About Schmidt,” and “Far From Heaven,” as well as dozens of guest star turns on television. “She just has a wonderful mix of qualities that to me felt essential to the character, and at a certain point, I had a lot of trouble imagining anybody else doing it.”
Margolin and Squibb were mutual friends of the actress Beanie Feldstein, who not only had worked with Squibb in “The Humans” but knew Margolin’s grandmother too.
“She basically said, ‘Well, I hope you’re going to send this to June,’” Margolin says of Feldstein. “I said, ‘That’s my dream casting,’ and she very generously read it and then sent it to June, and we connected from there.”
Squibb’s early life was spent on stage; in 1960, she appeared in the original Broadway run of “Gypsy.” She made her film debut at 71 when she was cast in Woody Allen’s 1990 movie “Alice.” Supporting roles and character parts kept her busy ever since. Now “Thelma” is her first-ever leading role.
“I think that’s funny,” she says of making her debut as a leading lady at 94. “It never occurred to me I was doing a leading role, something different.”
“The biggest difference is probably that you’re on set more days in a row,” Margolin says.
“I think I was on set 27 out of 29 days or something like that,” Squibb replies.
“I think for us, or for me, having you as the lead just set the tone,” he adds. “Being the leader, your presence on set was what set the lone.”
Can you dig it?
Squibb wasn’t the only one breaking new ground with “Thelma.” For Margolin, the film was his feature directing debut, a task he says was made easier by the veteran actors in his cast.
“I think a big part of having a cast that you trust, and who are kind of these consummate pros, who show up and really give themselves to the work, it puts you at ease,” he says. “You realize there are times when you can take a step back.
“There are times when you’re obviously going to get involved to make sure things are the way they need to be,” Margolin says. “There’s other times where if something’s not working, sometimes they know that at the same moment you do, and they’re like, ‘Let me take that again.’”
In addition to Squibb, Posey and Gregg, “Thelma” also features Malcolm McDowell as the scammer that Thelma finally tracks down. But it’s Squibb and Roundtree who share the most screen time, becoming something like the classic partners in a buddy movie – Thelma charging ahead, Ben more cautious – and their chemistry shines throughout.
“He was a wonderful, warm human being, and such a good actor,” Squibb says of Roundtree, who died in October at 81. “You never forgot, though, that he was Shaft. I don’t think there’s any way you could. He is so strong and so straight and so noble in his own way.
“Riding that scooter, I just was so aware, always, who was on the back of the scooter with me,” she says. “We had a great time, we really did. I think we ended up with a wonderful relationship, he and I.”
And she does stunts!
About that scooter – in most scenes, the driver really is Squibb, who like Tom Cruise, did most of her own stunts, even if they were performed at much lower intensity than Cruise works in the Mission: Impossible franchise.
“In reading it, I got all excited that I was going to be able to drive that scooter,” Squibb says, laughing. “I was a dancer in New York for years, and I physically kept my body going. I swam a lot. I do Pilates now. And I just felt I could do most of the things that I was reading, that Josh had written.”
Margolin and his stunt coordinator were nervous, though, she adds.
“But I proved to them in my complex here that I could drive the thing,” Squibb says. “I had the stunt coordinator running alongside me the whole time. He was so frightened that I was gonna kill myself. But you know, after a while they relaxed, and they got used to the idea I could do this.”
When your star is in her 90s, it’s natural to want to keep her safe and healthy, but Squibb says she surprised the crew more than once with her abilities, climbing atop a bed to reach on tiptoes to the top of a cabinet to retrieve a gun in one scene, crashing her scooter during a chase scene in another.
“The scooters were supposed to clash, and they told me, ‘Now don’t do that, just go up to it and we’ll fix it,’” Squibb says. “I decided, ‘Well, what the hell.’ So I clashed with Richard’s scooter, and everybody, ‘Oh my God!’ You could just hear the reactions going on.
“But I did it, and I zoomed off afterwards. And the only thing I could think was, ‘Well, they got that on camera.’”
Respect for the elders
One of the loveliest aspects of “Thelma” is the dignity with which it treats seniors of different ages and abilities. Yes, Thelma fell for a scam, but that doesn’t define her as much as her go-get-’em attitude does. Sure, some of her friends in the film need more assistance as they age, and that’s fine, too.
“I think both Josh and I look at film as reality, and we want to see lives shown to us that are somewhat real,” Squibb says of the realism the film portrays even when she’s on the hunt on that scooter. “If they’re not, they can become funny, and it’s not good.
“I just think we both went into this with the attitude that we wanted to show this woman in her reality,” she says of the real-life Thelma. “She’s a hell of a woman, Thelma herself is. She could sit and talk to you probably longer than Josh or I could, and she’s going to be 104.”
Margolin, who says Grandma Thelma has slowed down a little as she entered her second century of life, agreed.
“Her old age, to your point, is not a monolith,” he says. “Like, she’s been ‘old’ my whole life. She’s gone from 70 to 103, and each chapter had its own needs, its own stories.”
The inclusion of seniors in the film extended to one of its key shooting locations, the Motion Picture and Television Fund’s independent and assisted living campus in Woodland Hills. It’s where Squibb and Roundtree have their scooter chase, and some of its residents, all of them veterans of film and TV careers, show up in passing shots.
“There’s a ton of people there with these incredible, sort of storied careers in film and television,” Margolin says.
“They know what you’re doing,’” Squbbs says of the interest of residents in the film shoot.
“Exactly,” he replies. “People know, ‘Oh, we’re gonna be in the shot, we’re gonna go this way.’ They were all so interested and curious and excited that it was happening there.
“Some of the residents appear in some of the establishing shots, which was fun. This one old guy who crosses frame I found out later was the assistant director on ‘The Godfather.’ You’re like, ‘Oh, amazing!’”
‘Thelma’ and Thelma
Residents of the Motion Picture and Television Fund community recently got their own special screening of the film partly shot where they live. Grandma Thelma also has seen a finished cut of the film, Margolin says.
“I think she’s both very touched by it and excited about it, and also, it’s a little bit surreal,” he says of her reaction. “Kind of out of body, like, ‘What is this? There’s a movie? And it’s my name.’ “
Not long ago Squibb got to meet the woman whose she loosely inhabits in “Thelma.” They hit off famously, not least in their mutual pride in what Margolin accomplished with “Thelma.”
“She’s proud of you,” Squibb tells Margolin. He laughs.
“When I walked in I said, ‘I’m Thelma Post,’” Squibb says of their meeting. “She said, ‘No, I’m Thelma Post.’ And we laughed.
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A tornado watch has been issued for much of Minnesota on Tuesday, including the Twin Cities.
The watch will be active until 8 p.m., according to the National Weather Service. Thunderstorms are expected to return this afternoon and evening and could be severe.
Large hail and damaging winds are possible. Some areas could also see heavy rainfall.
There should be a break in the rain Wednesday and early Thursday, but more rain and storms are expected late Thursday through Saturday. Flash flooding will be possible and river flooding will increase through the week, leading to moderate or major flooding at some locations, the weather service said.
The offseason, technically, might have lasted for only about an hour. The Boston Celtics won the NBA Finals on Monday night, and when the clock rolled over to Tuesday morning, teams — in many cases — could start talking to their own free agents.
The on-court games are over, for now. Let the off-court games begin.
“This is a business,” Miami Heat President Pat Riley said when his team’s season ended last month, “as much as it is anything else.”
The champion Celtics and Jayson Tatum can agree on an extension that will be worth a record $315 million, though that record is probably going to get smashed annually over the next few years. There’s an Olympics that will have tons of NBA representation. The Los Angeles Lakers and Cleveland Cavaliers still need to hire head coaches.
LeBron James, who plays (for now at least) for the Lakers and used to play for the Cavs, can be a free agent. His oldest son Bronny James may be about to enter the league as a rookie, there’s a draft that starts on June 26, and the Atlanta Hawks hold the No. 1 selection — the Timberwolves are set to pick 27th and 37th overall — in what will be one of countless dominoes to fall this summer.
“I really enjoy our process that we’ve built out and the people that we’ve done it with,” Hawks general manager Landry Fields said. “At the end of the day, you all will be the judge of whether that was the right pick or not. For me, it’s more looking at where are we at, what was our process, how are we assessing this current player and just rolling with it.”
The new rule, part of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement, saying that teams can talk to their own free agents before the June 30 start of free agency means that some deals can be agreed to — but not announced — even earlier than usual. Deals cannot be signed until July 6, in most cases. The penalties for rule-breakers on those fronts will be severe: fines of up to $2 million, forfeiting of draft picks and suspension of team personnel involved in violations are among the NBA’s options.
Some players will get a few million this summer. Some will get many millions. The creativity of teams and their salary-cap gurus will be tested this summer, as always.
“You have to put a pencil to the bottom line,” Riley said. “And then also you have to pencil in what the cost is going to be in the collateral damage of going over the first apron, the second apron and then the repeater tax.”
Meanwhile, the NBA is going to secure billions before long. Billions and billions. The biggest deal — series of deals, really — in league history is likely about to close, that being the new media rights packages that the league has been negotiating for some time.
The current deals with ABC-ESPN and Turner Sports expire after next season and the NBA has been talking with NBC, ESPN and Amazon, among other networks and platforms, about what comes next. The numbers are staggering: 11 years and more than $70 billion is the expectation, both dwarfing the current nine-year, $24 billion deal.
“The global nature definitely factors into the discussions,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said. “As all of the media companies, even the traditional ones, move towards streaming and have primary or adjacent streaming platforms. Those platforms are increasingly global. And their ability to reach our fans around the world is a critical component of these discussions.”
It’s a mix of everything right now, some contracts that will extend for a decade, some that won’t last past the end of Summer League in Las Vegas next month. There are big questions: Will Golden State keep its core together? Will San Antonio take a big swing to place more talent around rookie of the year Victor Wembanyam? Where will James go? Will Miami give Jimmy Butler the extension he seeks? Will Donovan Mitchell stay in Cleveland? And on and on and on.
The only real certainties are these: There are 29 teams chasing the Celtics, and everyone is looking to get better. It starts with the draft, then free agency, and plenty of people around the NBA think this will be a summer filled with trades, as well.
“Good players are really hard to find; like, super hard to find,” Oklahoma City general manager Sam Presti said. “Guys that can play consistently in the NBA and be in the NBA for more than three years … that’s actually harder than it sounds.”
