The Patriots have spent all season plugging holes on their injury-riddled offensive line, and Sunday they finally found a workable combination after bumping fourth-year lineman Mike Onwenu from right guard to right tackle.

Will that prove a long-term move or a temporary shift? The Patriots coaching staff isn’t sure, and it will depend in large part on the unit’s injury situation.

“We’ll have to see how it goes,” said offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien. “We practice tomorrow so we’ll see where everyone is relative to health and all those things as we move forward.”

Onwenu allowed a single pressure in 37 pass-blocking snaps against Buffalo and earned his highest single-game grade this season from Pro Football Focus. As an offensive line, the Patriots recorded a 50% success rate on running plays and allowed pressure on just 21.2% of their dropbacks.

The idea of Onwenu playing tackle isn’t new. The former sixth-round pick started 11 games at right tackle as a rookie in 2020, when he converted from career college guard, but he hadn’t take snaps at the position since 2021. Bill Belichick previously dismissed the idea of a shift back to tackle last season, when the Patriots experience similar offensive line issues and started four different players at right tackle.

“I think he’s built to play guard, he’s comfortable playing guard. He has a really good skill set in there,” Belichick said in Nov. 2022. “That’s where we’d like to play him, for sure.”

As injuries mounted this year that calculus began to change. Belichick said he approached Onwenu about moving from right guard early last week, and offensive line coach Adrian Klemm said it was something the coaches have had on their radar for a little while.

“It’s not like it just came out of the blue,” Klemm said. “As things developed, that developed.”

The main concern with bumping Onwenu to tackle wasn’t his ability to play the position, Klemm said, but his comfort level working back from an ankle injury. He still has work do to and progress to make, but the coaches felt he was up to the task and are open to playing him at tackle again.

“If it gives us an advantage, which it definitely did the last game, we’ll continue to do that,” Klemm said. “So there are a lot of different factors that factor into that and we’ll continue moving forward with whatever is best for the team.”

The Chicago Bulls open the 2023-24 NBA season Wednesday against the Oklahoma City Thunder at the United Center (7 p.m., NBCSCH).

After losing their second play-in tournament game to miss the playoffs last season, the Bulls have set a goal to advance past the first round of the postseason. That would be a critical milestone to reach in their third season centered around Zach LaVine, Nikola Vučević and DeMar DeRozan.

Here’s what to know about the roster and expectations for this season’s team.

What should fans expect from the 2023-24 season?

Starting lineup

Coby White, point guard
Zach LaVine, shooting guard
DeMar DeRozan, small forward
Patrick Williams, power forward
Nikola Vučević, center

Areas of improvement

The Bulls have targeted three areas of their offense to improve — 3-point volume, free-throw attempts and offensive rebounds — all of which hinge on their ability to get into the paint. They were a bottom-five team in all three categories last season; any improvement could lift the offense into a more competitive standing.

Staying the same

The starting lineup consists of five returning players, which means the Bulls will rely on individual player improvement — particularly from White and Williams — to increase their offensive rating. Based on the preseason, it’s unclear how the Bulls will significantly increase their 3-point volume. On the plus side, adding Torrey Craig and Jevon Carter should mean the defense will remain in the NBA’s upper echelon — maybe even the top five.

Over/under

FanDuel has the Bulls at 37.5 regular-season wins. The Bulls won 40 games last season and are equipped to improve — I’d put their over/under slightly higher at 39.5 wins.

Playoff prospects

The Bulls want to make the playoffs outright, but I expect them to get in through the play-in tournament after a seventh-place finish.

Meet the roster

Lonzo Ball

No. 2, point guard, 6-foot-6

This will be Ball’s second consecutive season on the sideline as he recovers from his third knee surgery — this time a rare cartilage transplant that aims to resolve the swelling and soreness that have plagued him since January 2022. Ball is not expected to return to the court until fall 2024, although the Bulls have yet to formally shut him down for the season.

Jevon Carter

No. 5, point guard, 6-foot-1

A much-needed reinforcement on the perimeter, Carter will be a key rotational guard after cementing his role as a lethal defender with the Milwaukee Bucks. He was considered for the starting point guard job and will be a key secondary ballhandler. Carter shot 42.1% from 3-point range last season and could help the Bulls make a jump behind the arc.

Alex Caruso

No. 6, shooting guard, 6-foot-5

The Bulls defense runs through Caruso, who was named to the NBA All-Defensive first team last season. Caruso is set to come off the bench after stepping into the starting lineup for parts of last season, but he’ll serve just as crucial of a role as a defensive anchor. The key for Caruso is to stay as healthy as possible, as short-term injuries have hampered his career.

Torrey Craig

No. 13, power forward, 6-foot-7

After stints with the Denver Nuggets, Bucks, Phoenix Suns (two) and Indiana Pacers, the versatile veteran is determined to bring an edge to the Bulls on and off the court. Craig will be a crucial rotational player to push Williams at power forward. His eager rebounding and accurate 3-point shooting also are expected to lift the offense.

DeMar DeRozan

No. 11, small forward, 6-foot-6

DeRozan continues to deliver as a veteran leader and prolific scorer. He is up for an extension after this season, which won’t change his role — lighting up the midrange and consistently producing as one of the Bulls’ two primary scorers. But it will force the front office to examine the future of the roster and how DeRozan fits into its long-term plans.

Ayo Dosunmu

No. 12, shooting guard, 6-foot-5

Although his second season didn’t live up to the breakout success of his rookie year, Dosunmu is in position to make another leap. He will be an anchor of the second unit, playing mostly off-ball guard alongside Carter, and will join a strong slate of perimeter defenders.

Andre Drummond

No. 3, center, 6-foot-11

Although he didn’t always receive consistent minutes in his first season with the Bulls, Drummond is the team’s most reliable player on the boards, averaging 6.6 rebounds in 12.7 minutes. As a more traditional center, he had to be used tactically against different opponents, but he remains a dominant force in the paint who can bolster the defensive-minded second rotation.

Zach LaVine

No. 8, shooting guard, 6-foot-5

After a slow start last season due to recovery from knee surgery, LaVine is eager to helm the Bulls from the jump this year. He missed out on an All-Star selection last season but ended it on one of the most efficient streaks of his career. LaVine is poised to lead the Bulls in scoring again, but he’ll also need to contribute to the offense holistically — especially by producing more 3-pointers.

Julian Phillips

No. 15, small forward, 6-foot-8

The No. 35 pick in the draft, Phillips will be competing for every minute he can get. The Tennessee product is a high-motor defender who will make his biggest impact by contributing to the smothering on-ball pressure of the second unit. He also showed an eagerness to get to the rim in the preseason.

Terry Taylor

No. 32, power forward, 6-foot-4

A deep rotational player, Taylor rounds out a smallish power forward group helmed by Williams and Craig. He played only five games last season after signing a two-way contract in February but could play a larger role in the second rotation with a smaller depth chart in front of him.

Dalen Terry

No. 25, small forward, 6-foot-7

After barely cracking the rotation for less than five minutes per game in his rookie season, Terry will be battling for a place in the lineup. His defensive tenacity interests the Bulls, but his shot and playmaking need to take a significant jump for him to see the court more often.

Nikola Vučević

No. 9, center, 6-foot-10

The third pillar of the central trio, Vučević has been consistent throughout 2 1/2 seasons with the Bulls. He played in all 82 games last season and remains a prodigious double-double machine — 51 in 2022-23, the second-highest total of his career — who provides a regular share of scoring. Like LaVine and DeRozan, his challenge will be helping the rest of the team produce a faster pace of play.

Coby White

No. 0, point guard, 6-foot-5

After snagging the starting point guard job in the preseason, White is primed for a breakout season. His 3-point accuracy (37.2% last season) will be critical to improving his scoring, but White’s biggest contribution to the offense will be distribution. He spent the last two offseasons improving his ballhandling skills. Now he’ll be tested as a playmaker for the primary rotation.

Patrick Williams

No. 44, power forward, 6-foot-7

This is a contract year for Williams, who did not sign a rookie extension at Monday’s deadline. He will round out the starting lineup on opening night, but the former No. 4 pick still is fighting for footing after underperforming in his third season. The baseline for Williams to establish himself in the starting lineup is clear: pull his weight on the boards and prove he can playmake and score alongside the team’s three stars.

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You can kiss USC quarterback Caleb Williams goodbye.

That much the Vikings essentially guaranteed with an upset win over the San Francisco 49ers on Monday night. All of a sudden, the Vikings are 3-4 and right back in talk of the playoffs. They are seemingly in decent position to chase down the Detroit Lions in the NFC North.

That should make the decision pretty easy for Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah in the short term. After nearly a month of various reports indicating that the Vikings might be willing to go into tank mode, it’s now safe to assume they won’t be sellers at the trade deadline.

As a result, it’s no longer worth fantasizing about who the next franchise quarterback is going to be, and what it’s going to take to get him to Minnesota.

You can stop living and dying with how each win or loss is going to impact the chances of the Vikings garnering a high draft pick. Truthfully, they were never going to be bad enough to be in contention for Williams, North Carolina quarterback Drake Maye or any other blue-chip prospect in the 2024 draft. It was just fun to pretend for a couple of weeks.

There are some really, really bad teams in the NFL at the moment, and the Vikings aren’t in the same conversation. Not with the amount of talent they have on their current roster.

The only way the Vikings were ever going to get themselves in the conversation was if they instituted a fire sale.

That seemed like a legitimate possibility a couple of weeks ago after the Vikings placed star receiver Justin Jefferson on injured reserve. Nothing to that point suggested that better days were ahead as they pressed on without their best player. Even after the Vikings scored an ugly win over the Chicago Bears last weekend, it was fair to wonder if they were actually capable of stringing wins together.

The trade rumors continued to swirl.

Maybe the Vikings were going to try to convince veteran quarterback Kirk Cousins to waive his no-trade clause, though that always felt more like fodder for First Take rather than something that could actually happen.

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA – OCTOBER 23: Camryn Bynum #24 of the Minnesota Vikings celebrates his game ending interception against the San Francisco 49ers at U.S. Bank Stadium on October 23, 2023 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

Maybe the Vikings were going to trade star pass rusher Danielle Hunter to the highest bidder, which, considering all the options, seemed like the most realistic possibility.

Maybe the Vikings were going to seek out a desperate team that wanted to add a veteran presence like receiver K.J. Osborn ahead of a potential playoff push.

All of it should be off the table in the aftermath of the Vikings taking down the 49ers.

There are winnable games ahead, with the Vikings slated to play the Green Bay Packers, Atlanta Falcons, New Orleans Saints and Denver Broncos over the next month.

It’s not absurd to think the Vikings could get extremely hot and rattle off a half-dozen wins in a row. Plus, they could be getting Jefferson back in a few weeks, which could make them a potentially dangerous team the second half of the season.

Now, there are inevitably going to be parts of the fan base that criticize the Vikings if they aren’t sellers at the trade deadline. Those people have already decided they have no problem neglecting the present as they set their sights on the future.

It’s the byproduct of a generation that grew up playing the video game Madden, where it is commonplace to simulate to the end of the season without any repercussions.

That’s not how it works in the real world. If the Vikings were to trade away a bunch of players after earning their most impressive win to date, they would run the risk of losing the locker room. This group has gotten itself back into the playoff race. It deserves to see how far it can take this thing.

Even if it costs the Vikings some draft positioning in the process.

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JERUSALEM — Eighty-five-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz spoke of a “hell that we never knew before and never thought we would experience” as she described the harrowing Oct. 7 assault on her kibbutz by Hamas militants and the terror of being taken hostage into the Gaza Strip.

Lifshitz was the first of the four hostages released so far to speak of their experience, from the initial attack through the more than two weeks of captivity.

“Masses swarmed our houses, beat people and some were taken hostage,” said Lifshitz, speaking softly from a wheelchair as she briefed reporters on Tuesday at Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital, a day after Hamas released her and 79-year-old Nurit Cooper. “They didn’t care if they were young or old.”

Her 83-year-old husband, Oded, remains a hostage in Gaza.

Lifshitz, a member of Kibbutz Nir Oz, was among the more than 200 Israelis and foreigners seized after heavily armed Hamas militants broke through Israel’s multibillion-dollar electric border fence and fanned across southern Israel, overrunning nearly two dozen communities, military bases and a desert rave. More than 1,400 people died in the daylong killing rampage that followed.

Israel’s military has launched a devastating war on Gaza in an effort to crush Hamas and its airstrikes into Gaza after the Oct. 7 attack killed more than 5,000 people, according to the Hamas-led Gaza Health Ministry. Lifshitz’s captors hustled her onto a motorcycle, removed her watch and jewelry and beat her with sticks, bruising her ribs and making it difficult to breathe, she said.

Once in Gaza, she walked several kilometers to a network of tunnels that she described as “looking like a spider web.” She reached a large room where 25 people had been taken but was later separated into a smaller group with four others.

The people assigned to guard her “told us they are people who believe in the Quran and wouldn’t hurt us.”

Lifshitz said captives were treated well and received medical care, including medication. The guards kept conditions clean, she said. Hostages were given one meal a day of cheese, cucumber and pita, she said, adding that her captors ate the same.

Lifshitz and her husband were peace activists who regularly drove Palestinian patients from Gaza to receive medical treatment in Israeli hospitals. But in captivity, the hostages told their captors, “We don’t want to talk about politics,” she said.

Lifshitz and Cooper were the second pair of hostages to be released. On Friday, Hamas freed two Israeli American women from Evanston, Ill. Israel’s government has said returning all hostages safely is a top priority.

Israel overlooked warnings that something was afoot ahead of the attack, Lifshitz said.

“We were the scapegoat of the government,” she said. “They [Hamas] warned us three weeks before they taught us a lesson. A huge crowd arrived at the road. They burned fields. They sent incendiary balloons to burn the fields, and the army didn’t take it seriously.”