In the past week, several women have accused Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore of making inappropriate advances toward them while they were teenagers. Two of those instances allegedly included forced sexual contact. On this episode of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, our team discusses how the accusations have affected a race that Republicans were expected to win handily.

The crew also assesses the disunity within the Democratic Party after a strong showing in the 2017 off-year elections.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button above or by downloading it in iTunes, the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen.

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast publishes Monday evenings, with occasional special episodes throughout the week. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes. Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.

SACRAMENTO — In any of the past three seasons, the Kings beating the Sixers would have been seen as simply business as usual. After all, Philly — which had been mired in one of the worst stretches of any team in history — was liable to lose to just about anyone, even lowly Sacramento.

When it happened Thursday, though, it was surprising. The Sixers entered the contest as one of the NBA’s hottest teams, riding a five-game win streak. Somehow, expectations had been born.

That’s a key difference between the Sixers of yesterday and the Sixers of today: We actually expect them to win sometimes. The other distinction — the team’s two young potential superstars — means it’s finally possible to see how Philly could someday reach the point where it’s always expected to win.

It’s impossible to overstate just how bad the Sixers were until very recently. That was mostly by design, of course — an elaborate rebuilding experiment under the direction of former general manager Sam Hinkie — but it still resulted in the Sixers’ exploration of the extreme depths of North American team sports. Here’s Philly’s decline in graphical form, tracing its trajectory using our Elo ratings (which measure a team’s strength — or, in this case, weakness — over time):

Philly hit its peak Elo of the past five seasons — 1485, nearly a .500-caliber team — early in Hinkie’s first season at the helm, but then quickly dipped to its Hinkie-era nadir later that same season with a rating of 1175, which is good for about 13 wins per 82 games. From there, most teams tend to improve their rating just by sheer regression to the mean, but the Sixers found a way to drop back below 1200 again in April of 2016. (Perhaps not coincidentally, the 2015-16 season was Hinkie’s last as GM.) Over the past couple seasons, though, they’ve managed to climb back toward the league-average mark of around 1500. Philly’s trajectory has few parallels in NBA history; they’re only the sixth team ever to start at an Elo above 1440, dip below 1200 within two seasons, and then rise back above 1440 within the following two seasons:

This may be only the beginning of the Sixers’ rise. Going into the season, ESPN ranked Philly sixth in its NBA future power rankings, representing each team’s potential over the next handful of years. And since the start of the season, only two teams — the Magic and Celtics — have tacked more points onto their Elo ratings than the Sixers have.As of Nov. 9.

“>¹

We asked Brett Brown, who’s in his fifth season as Sixers coach, about that unusual transition.

“I do it multiple times every day,” he said when asked if he’s already given serious thought to making a title run with this core group at some point. “But I also feel incredibly grounded, because I’ve seen four championships, and my Spurs life helped me understand how hard it is and how long a process it is. You cannot skip steps, and you need some luck with health. I’m not young anymore, so the excitement of what could be is always with me. I think about it all the time.”

And for good reason. In Joel Embiid and rookie sensation Ben Simmons, the Sixers appear to have finally found what The Process ordered: a duo that has the advantage of both being very young and having the sort of size and skill that can’t be taught, a rare combination that the league has seldom seen.

Since the ABA-NBA merger in 1976, only five teams have had a pair of players age 23 or younger who each logged at least 25 minutes per game and posted a Box Plus/Minus of +3.5 or greater: The 1984-85 Portland Trail Blazers, with Clyde Drexler and Sam BowieYes, that Sam Bowie, who was infamously drafted one spot ahead of Michael Jordan. Before injuries ruined his career, though, Bowie was a solid up-and-coming big man.

‘>²; the 1993-94 and 1994-95 Orlando Magic, with Shaquille O’Neal and Penny Hardaway; the 2011-12 Oklahoma City Thunder with Kevin Durant and James Harden; and, if they keep it up, the 2017-18 Philadelphia 76ers with Simmons and Embiid.

Somewhat lost in the wild stat lines Simmons and Embiid are compiling is the fact that they excel by going against today’s NBA grain. The 6-foot-10 Simmons, much like scoring leader and early MVP candidate Giannis Antetokounmpo, has managed to foil defenses and log triple-doubles without the threat of an outside shot. In fact, through 11 games, Simmons hasn’t even attempted a true jumperMeaning one that wasn’t an end-of-quarter heave from the backcourt.

“>³ of 20 feet or more, yet he is skewering foes with nearly 18 points and eight dimes a game while shooting 50 percent.

Embiid, on the other hand, would appear to be a bit of a throwback. He’s most comfortable in the post with his back to the basket — his 22.5 post-ups per 100 possessions lead the NBA by far, according to data from Second Spectrum — even as he possesses the new-age ability to spot up.

The two display good chemistry, scoring an above-average 0.94 points per pick-and-roll they orchestrate, according to Second Spectrum data. They sometimes catch opponents off guard at the start of possessions, when defenders expect Simmons to come to the 3-point line to get the ball and initiate the offense, but he darts backdoor instead, with Embiid finding him for an easy bucket.

On a separate play against Dallas, Simmons calls Embiid over to set a screen for him, prompting Dirk Nowitzki to take a step or two forward in anticipation of the pick. That allows Embiid the space he needs to dive behind the future Hall of Famer for an easy lob.

In the nearly 200 minutes Simmons and Embiid have shared the court, the Sixers have played like a contender, scoring 106.2 points per 100 plays while surrendering just 97.2, marks that would rank them inside the NBA’s top 10 on both ends of the court.While it’s early in the season, it’s still noteworthy that the team’s net rating is even better, with slightly better offense and much better defense, when Embiid plays without Simmons. That sample size of 61 minutes is less than a third of the size of the sample for their time playing together, though.

“>⁴

This duo is clearly the source of Philadelphia’s new identity, but a number of other factors also help explain the team’s promising start.

The club — which for years might have had better shooters in the stands than it did on its bench — is lighting things up from deep, thanks to free-agent addition J.J. Redick and two-way stud Robert Covington (who’s outpacing Klay Thompson as the NBA’s best high-volume catch-and-shoot 3-point gunner so farAmong players taking five or more such shots per game.

“>⁵). The Sixers have made their plays following timeouts count, scoring 1.05 points per possession in those situations, second-best in the league, per Synergy Sports. And the young defense, still holier than a bible at times, is making an extraordinary effort as it learns the ropes. Philly boasts the NBA’s best defensive efficiency after committing live-ball turnovers, per Inpredictable; that’s noteworthy because the Sixers fumble it away more than any other team.

To be clear, no one is saying that Philadelphia, at 6-5, has it all figured out. Forward Dario Saric and Embiid ranked worst and second-worst in turnover rate, respectively, when being aggressively doubled in the post last season,Among players with 100 or more post-up opportunities.

“>⁶ per Synergy, and Brown said his team still needs to reduce the number of “my bad” situations it finds itself in over the course of each game. Simmons’s reluctance to pull the trigger on jumpers may be an extension of him still figuring out which hand he wants to shoot with on a primary basis. (Simmons, who shoots free throws left-handed, spent time during Thursday morning’s shootaround in Sacramento practicing midrange jumpers with his right hand. He missed the rim four times during a two-minute span.)

Philly’s rim protection crumbles into dust when Embiid goes to the bench, as opponents shoot just 57 percent from the restricted area with him in the game, yet hit a whopping 71 percent — which would rank worst in the league — when he’s sidelined, according to NBA.com. Then, obviously, there’s the question of whether the team’s key pieces can stay healthy, which is far from a given considering their injury histories. (The calculus could also change for the better depending on the status of No. 1 overall draft pick Markelle Fultz and what he’s able to give the Sixers once he comes back.)

But make no mistake: A healthy Sixers team — with Simmons infusing life into the offense by forcing help when he drives to the basket and Embiid bringing the sort of post D that makes players think twice about shooting — will factor into the playoff race this year, with a chance to do far more damage going forward.

Simmons’s creativity on offense is bolstered by his ability to see over the top of the defense. His 10.6 assists per 100 possessions and 2.1 assist-to-turnover ratio compare favorably to the first few seasons of LeBron James’s career. And the Philly point forward, who leads NBA ballhandlers in passes per game, at times has flashed a James-like ability to spray the ball around to shooters.

As for Embiid, whom Brown referred to as his “crown jewel,” his impact can’t be overstated, particularly on the defensive end of the floor. As ESPN stat guru Micah Adams pointed out, teams have seemingly avoided trying to post up Embiid at all this season, perhaps aware of how effective he was at the rim last season, even when compared with the league’s other elite bigs.

Asked if it’s difficult to stay focused on what’s right in front of the team rather than thinking big-picture, Embiid smiled. “I guess I’d just say that I have to trust the process,” he said.

On Thursday, the U.S. Senate race in Alabama became the latest avenue of American life to be rocked by a scandal involving improper sexual conduct. The Washington Post reported allegations that Republican Roy Moore pursued relationships with four teenage girls, one of whom was 14 at the time of a sexual encounter with Moore. Moore has unequivocally denied the report.

The Alabama special election was already getting national attention as one of the fronts upon which former Trump adviser Steve Bannon said he would be waging his war against the Republican establishment, so the race has several facets to be closely watched — social, cultural and, yes, political.

Although it’s difficult to predict what effect a scandal will have on an election, here’s what we’re looking at and considering as it unfolds.

Where did the race stand before the Post story?

The five most recent public pollsters to survey the race — all before Thursday’s allegations — found, on average, Moore ahead of his Democratic opponent, Doug Jones, 48 percent to 42 percent. That sounds like a pretty decent lead until you realize that President Trump won Alabama by 28 points in 2016.

Why was Moore underperforming?

Alabama is a ruby-red state, but Moore has a had a long and controversial record there — which might explain why he’s not doing as well as you might expect for a Republican.

Polls differ a bit on why Moore has been struggling, but they all agree that he’s having trouble with voters who don’t identify as evangelical. (Moore has been doing fine among Alabama’s heavily evangelical Republican base.) Hillary Clinton won non-evangelical voters in Alabama by 12 percentage points in 2016, according to the Cooperative Congressional Election Study. But Moore is doing much worse than Trump did among that group. Jones was leading Moore among non-evangelical voters by around 40 points, according to a JMC Analytics and Polling survey and an Opinion Savvy poll.

Another weakness for Moore? Alabama’s independent voters. Both a Fox News poll and the Opinion Savvy poll have Jones winning independents even though Trump carried them in Alabama by 49 percentage points according to the CCES.

It’s possible that Moore has already lost the Alabama voters who would have been most likely to abandon him in light of the Post story. That said, the Fox News poll found that 42 percent of Moore’s supporters had reservations about him, so either they’ve made their peace voting for a candidate they see as flawed or they already have one foot out the door and the Post story could send them the rest of the way.

What will Republican officials do?

How national Republicans react to the scandal could do quite a bit to tip the balance of the race, forcing talk of the scandal into the conservative media and increasing pressure on Moore and his campaign.

Senators from the establishment wing of the Republican Party who have already been at odds with the Bannon-esque contours of the Moore campaign were quick to speak out. Sen. Lisa Murkowsi of Alaska and Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona were among the first to tell reporters that if the reports of sexual conduct with minors were true, Moore should resign from the race. Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said much the same, and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made a statement to the same effect.

Republican elected officials, perhaps aware that Moore was already problematic, seem to be in a holding pattern, loath to out-and-out call for him to drop out (and risk angering the base) but far from willing to vouch for Moore. Arizona Sen. John McCain went the furthest of his caucus, calling the allegations “disturbing” and “disqualifying.”

How will Trump react?

The president is, as always, a wild card. Trump didn’t endorse Moore in the primary, instead favoring McConnell’s choice of Luther Strange. But in the waning days of the race, Trump seemed to express some regret with his decision, and after Moore won, he deleted some tweets expressing support for Strange.

Trump, who has weathered his own sex scandals, seems to always take the line of fighting allegations, so he might stand by Moore. Or, ever eager for approval from the electorate, Trump might bide his time to see how conservative media reacts, gauging how he thinks his base might take the news — as “fake news” or troubling allegations involving teenage girls.

How will the conservative media react?

News of the Post story first made its way onto the internet by way of a Breitbart report headlined, “After Endorsing Democrat in Alabama, Bezos’s Washington Post Plans to hit Roy Moore With Allegations of Inappropriate Relations with Teenagers; Judge Claims Smear Campaign.” Breitbart is, of course, Bannon’s domain, and Moore is Bannon’s horse in the race — so the website’s sympathetic coverage makes sense. How Fox News and other conservative outlets cover the scandal could play a part in how the Republican base comes to view it.

Trump won the presidency despite allegations of sexual assault, but the allegations against Moore involve underage girls, which might change how Republican voters view the scandal. The allegations led the right-leaning Drudge Report and Washington Examiner on Thursday evening, as well as Fox News’s homepage.

Can Moore be replaced on the ballot? Could there be a write-in campaign?

No and yes.

Moore’s name will appear on the ballot — it’s too late to switch it out for the Dec. 12 election — but there’s certainly still a chance for Republicans to launch a write-in campaign. Who’s at the top of the list? Strange. Murkowski, who famously won a write-in victory of her own, has already said that she’s in touch with Strange about this very thing. Should Moore stay in the race — as he has said he will — and Strange jumps in, the Republican vote could split. That would be good news for Jones.

Does it matter that Moore ran as a “values” candidate?

How the GOP base in Alabama reacts to this story is certainly the big looming question in all of this. Moore has made his name in the state as a fierce champion of evangelical Christian values, often testing the limits of democratic governance along the way; he was removed from the Alabama Supreme Court in 2003 for refusing to take down a replica of the Ten Commandments that stood in front of the court.

Allegations of sexual contact with children are incredibly serious, but it remains an open question whether the state’s Republican voters will see the story as true or not. As the past year has shown, in a highly politicized and polarized national environment, every story seems to take on political shading, including the allegations of sexual assault against men in positions of power. Party loyalty overrode personal affront for many Republican voters in 2016. And Clinton and other Democratic politicians, for instance, were quickly linked to Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein — who has been accused of a litany of wrongdoings, from harassment to rape — given his donations to various Democratic campaigns.

In some ways, the allegations against Moore might test how much American society, in all corners, has absorbed the national conversation on sexual assault allegations. Emerging narratives around that conversation feature a hope that more credibility is being lent to victim allegations. But some also fear witch hunts of powerful men. The next few weeks will surely tell us more about how Alabama voters are grappling with this cultural sea change.

Are there precedents we can look to?

There are past political scandals that involved underage or teenage victims, though most came before the highly polarized political environment of the past 10 years and most candidates dropped out of the race before election day.

In 1990, Republican Jon Grunseth dropped out of the Minnesota gubernatorial race after allegations of sexual misconduct. Among these allegations were that he had encouraged two girls — one 13, the other 14 — to take a nude swim with him. Grunseth’s primary challenger, Arne Carlson eventually won the race as a write-in candidate.

In 1983, the U.S. House formally censured two members, Republican Dan Crane and Democrat Gerry Studds, for sexual relationships with 17-year-old pages. Both ran for re-election, with Crane losing and Studds winning.

In 2006, Republican Mark Foley resigned from office after he was accused of sending explicit text messages to an underage former page. Foley’s name was kept on the ballot, and Democrats won the seat.

Alabama itself is fresh off another sex scandal (though it didn’t involve anyone underage). Republican Gov. Robert Bentley resigned from office in April as he was facing impeachment for allegedly having used his office to cover up an extramarital affair. His approval rating dropped precipitously after the revelation of the affair, showing perhaps, that there are instances when moral outrage outweighs partisan interest.

Is there empirical research on how much “scandals” can change electoral outcomes?

One paper from researchers who looked at senators running for re-election from 1974 to 2008 estimated that scandals involving immoral behavior cost the scandal-plagued candidate 6.5 percentage points and raised his opponent’s vote share 6.5 points, for a net change of 13 points. We don’t know if the Alabama race will move that much, but any penalty approaching that size would be more than enough to significantly darken Moore’s prospects of winning this Senate seat.

Scoring 50 goals in 50 games is the crowning achievement of an NHL goal scorer. Players who do so join a club of legends including Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux and Maurice Richard. The club is exclusive — it has only five members, and it hasn’t accepted a new application in 25 years. There are dozens and dozens of active NHL players who weren’t alive yet the last time someone scored 50 goals in 50 games, when Brett Hull did it during the 1991-92 season.

As with throwing dead octopuses onto the ice and shaking hands with the opponent after a playoff series, the 50 in 50 club is like many things unique to the NHL: steeped in history and perhaps devoid of logic. The attention bestowed on the exploit dates back to the days when there were only 50 games on the schedule. So when Richard became to first to do it in 1945, it meant he averaged a goal a game for a whole season. When the schedule expanded to 60 games — and then to 70 games, and then 74, 76, 78, 80 and 84 games, finally settling at 82 games — 50 in 50 remained a thing. Because, you know, why not?

Like with many exclusive clubs, there are also a lot of rules. To gain access, you must score 50 goals in your team’s first 50 games, not your own. Alexander Mogilny scored 50 goals in his first 46 games in 1992-93, but an injury forced him to miss three weeks at the beginning of the season. Mogilny’s 50th tally came in his team’s 53rd game, so he’s not allowed in. No exceptions!

It’s not easy to sustain a goal-per-game pace for 50 consecutive games, but so far this season, Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov is doing almost exactly that. With 14 goals in 15 games, the young Russian with a hellacious shot has set himself up to make a legitimate run at hockey’s goal-scoring holy grail.

Of course, many others have started the season on a similar tear in recent years — and all of them ended up way short of the benchmark. Here’s how every player who notched at least 14 goals in his team’s first 15 games post-lockout stacked up against the last three 50/50 players.

Amazingly, only one of these players (Jaromir Jagr in 2006) exceeded 50 goals on the season, let alone in 50 games. In the 2005-06 season, winger Simon Gagne scored 17 in the Flyers’ first 15 games, but he ultimately scored only 17 more in the next 35. In that same season, both Dany Heatley and Daniel Alfredsson had 15 goals through the first 15 games. They both cooled, too — like Gagne, they each netted 17 goals in the following 35 games.

But there’s reason to believe this year might be different: The league itself seems different.

So far this season, goalies are stopping pucks with less success than they have since 2008-09. But not all of the blame can be placed on lackluster goaltending — a number of rule changes have led to an increase in power play opportunities per game. More power play opportunities equal more high-quality scoring opportunities, which means more goalies left hung out to dry.

It’s not shocking to see an analog in the 2005-06 season, when Jagr, Gagne, Heatley and Alfredsson each flirted with a goal-a-game pace: The league instituted rule changes in the wake of the 2004-05 lockout with the express purpose of increasing the number of goals per game, which had tanked in the NHL of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Chief among those rule changes was the elimination of the two-line offside pass. Defenses were slow to adjust to the rule change, which led to a preponderance of breakaways and two-on-one situations.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, the NHL was a wide open league, and goaltending often seemed like an afterthought. From 1980-81 to 1993-94, the goals against average for the league never dipped below 3.0 — and the 50 in 50 was accomplished seven times.Mike Bossy, Gretzky (three times), Lemieux, Hull (twice).

“>¹ From 1994-95 to the present, the goals against average has risen higher than 3.0 in only one season. It hasn’t climbed quite that high this season, but it’s close.It currently sits at 2.89.

“>²

Kucherov isn’t the only one taking advantage of the increase in scoring. Like during the 2005-06 season, this year’s NHL has a handful of players vying for NHL legend status. Alex Ovechkin has also started the year on fire (13 goals in 16 games), while Islanders’ captain John Tavares has 12 goals in 15.

Of course, a goal scorer is nothing without dime-dishing linemates, and Kucherov has benefited from playing with the league’s leading point getter in Steven Stamkos (who missed 65 games last season, and the Bolts missed the playoffs). Stamkos is known best for his goal scoring prowess — he’s a two-time recipient of the Maurice “Rocket” Richard Trophy, awarded to the league’s top goal scorer — but this year it’s his passing that has him at the top of the NHL’s scoring list. He’s still scoring goals, but his 18 assists pace the league. And 10 of those helpers have come on goals scored by Kucherov.

Every player to hit the 50-goals-in-50-games milestone played on a line with one (or two) very good passers. Lemieux — who also unofficially scored 50 in 50 in two other seasonsSuper Mario scored 50 goals in his first 50 games in both the 1992-93 and 1995-96 seasons, but neither exploit came on or before his team’s first 50 games. Sorry, Mario: Hockey conservatives say this doesn’t count.

“>³ — played the bulk of his career on lines with some combination of Jagr, Kevin Stevens and Ron Francis. Hull played on a line in St. Louis with Adam Oates. Gretzky had Jari Kurri, Mike Bossy had Bryan Trottier and Clark Gillies, and Richard had Elmer Lach and Toe Blake. And it’s not a stretch to place Kucherov and Stamkos among these all-time great duos and trios.

Kucherov’s gaudy numbers aren’t surprising — he’s scored no fewer than 29 goals in each of his three full NHL seasons and has an astounding career shooting percentage of 15.1. But that historically good shooting percentage is up dramatically this season: At the moment, Kucherov is scoring on 24 percent of the shots he’s taking. That’s destined to regress to the mean, but for now, Kucherov’s shot looks damn near unsavable.

Who knows if Kucherov — or Ovechkin or Tavares — can sustain a goal-per-game pace for all 50 games. Even if they don’t, they’ve already made the NHL feel a little bit like the wild old days of the ’80s and early ’90s. And they’ve given every hockey nerd something to pull for.

If you were tuned in to your TV last week as news broke about the first indictments in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, you likely had a very different experience depending on which news channel you were watching.

Russia-related coverage was much more plentiful on MSNBC and CNN than it was on Fox News as Americans learned of the charges against President Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, Manafort’s former business partner Rick Gates, and Trump’s former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos. However, our analysis of the three major cable news outlets showed that the networks had all been airing Russia-related stories, some of which were about the investigation, in the days and weeks before the indictments became public. It’s just that the ideological leanings of the network tended to determine when each covered Russia-adjacent news and which stories it focused on.

We investigated how those cable news networks covered the story by turning to the Television News ArchiveAnalysis by the GDELT Project using data from the Internet Archive Television News Archive.

“>¹ for all mentions of the words “Russia,” “Russian” or “Russians” in roughly the past month.Our query starts Oct. 1 and ends Nov 4. All times reported by the TV News Archive are in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which is four hours ahead of Eastern time in the United States.

“>²

In the first two weeks of October, MSNBC, whose audience leans left, aired more coverage of stories related to Russia than either Fox, whose audience leans right, or CNN did. (CNN’s audience is between the two ideologically but also leans left.) Some of those stories were about Mueller’s investigation.For example, on Oct. 14, when coverage spiked on MSNBC, the network led several segments with a story that was originally reported by NBC News about Manafort’s connections to a Russian oligarch.

‘>³ Other Russia-related coverage that MSNBC broadcast in the first two weeks of October included revelations originally reported by the The New York Times that Russia was using Facebook to influence what Americans read online during the 2016 election cycle. But perhaps the most interesting spike in MSNBC’s Russia coverage occurred on Oct. 6, when MSNBC’s Russia-related coverage frequently mentioned a dossier of allegations of compromising information about Trump from Russian sources that a former British intelligence officer had compiled during the 2016 campaign.The Television News Archive allows us to query its database for phrases that occur in close proximity to each other, defined as within four sentences.

“>⁴ The coverage focused on the news that the author of the dossier may have been willing to speak to Senate investigators about the contents of the document.

Although CNN was relatively quiet on Russia during those two weeks, we did see a spike in its coverage near the beginning of the month, when much of it mentioned Facebook.

All three networks’ Russia-related coverage began to spike again when Attorney General Jeff Sessions testified in front of Congress on Oct. 18 about President Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey and other topics. However, Fox News’s Russia-related coverage spiked the most — in addition to airing coverage of Sessions’ testimony to Congress, it alone among the networks was giving airtime to a re-emerging story about the sale of uranium to Russia while Hillary Clinton was former President Obama’s secretary of state. This story, which was first reported in 2015, returned to Fox after The Hill published an article on Oct. 17 containing new information about an FBI probe that had collected evidence about the corrupt practices of Russian nuclear industry officials involved in the matter. That night, Sean Hannity aired a Fox News segment on the uranium deal, and the story picked up steam from there.

The dossier story also made a comeback during the second two weeks of October, but this time on Fox News rather than MSNBC. That followed a Washington Post report Oct. 24 that the company that had hired the former spy who authored the document was paid by a law firm representing the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

Both of those stories appeared more in Fox News’s Russia coverage than in MSNBC’s or CNN’s during the second half of October.Interesting tidbit I found in my research: Among the major cable business news networks, Fox Business featured the dossier and uranium stories, while Bloomberg and CNBC hardly aired any coverage of them or Mueller’s investigation, right up until the indictments went public.

“>⁵

CNN first reported on Oct. 27, a Friday, that charges had been filed in the Mueller investigation and that subjects could be taken into custody as soon as Monday. That led to a spike in Russia-related coverage at both CNN and MSNBC, but less so at Fox News. On Saturday and Sunday, just before the indictments were made public, words such as “uranium,” “dossier” and “Democrats” repeatedly popped up in Fox News coverage. The table below shows how much more or less often a word appeared in segments about Russia on each network that weekend compared with the three-channel average, expressed in standard deviations above or below the mean. For example, the word “collusion” appeared more often on CNN than it did in the average of the three networks; less often than that average on MSNBC; and right about average on Fox News.The list of words in this table was created by combining the 20 most commonly used words in Russia coverage from each network, with duplicates and common, filler words such as “going” and “think” removed.

“>⁶

As the news broke and in the days that followed, Fox News’s coverage of Russia tapered off, while coverage on CNN and MSNBC continued. On Oct. 31, there was a notable drop in Russia-related coverage by all three networks after a deadly terrorist attack occurred in New York City.

The Atlanta Falcons have a big intra-division game against the Carolina Panthers on Sunday. As you’ll see in the video above, they’ll need Julio Jones to play like his old self in order to win.

Hope you didn’t get sick of the Astros and Dodgers, because you’re going to be stuck with them for a lot of Octobers to come. Based on our analysis of all MLB teams since 1988,That’s when free agency truly began to reshape the way teams build following a period of collusion between owners.

‘>¹ this year’s Astros and Dodgers each appear to have two of the brightest futures for any pair of World Series teams ever.

Here’s how we figured that out. We gathered data on all MLB teams from 1988 to 2012 and tried to see which factors best predicted their win totals over the following five seasons. After testing different combinations,Specifically, variable selection was performed using the Lasso.

‘>² we found that five metrics emerged as significant predictors of a team’s future record: A team’s Elo rating through the end of the World Series (which contributed about 33 percent to a team’s future win projection); its batting wins above replacement (WAR)Averaging together the versions found at Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs.com.

‘>³ (29 percent); its pitching WAR (13 percent); and the average ages — weighted by playing time — of its batters (6 percent) and pitchers (12 percent) — plus a bonus for making the World Series (7 percent).Winning the World Series, while all sorts of fun, didn’t predict much for the years to come, after accounting for all this other stuff.

“>⁴

Unsurprisingly, having a talented young core (especially on the hitting side) is a good ticket for a return trip to the World Series. After running the numbers for the final two teams standing this year, here’s how the Dodgers and Astros stack up against the other 56 World Series teams in our data set:

Los Angeles Dodgers (90.0 wins per season)

2017 Elo Rating: 1581.6 (11th)

2017 batting WAR: 29.9 (18th)

2017 pitching WAR: 21.3 (21st)

2017 average age, batters: 27.7 (5th-youngest)

2017 average age, pitchers: 29.7 (33rd-youngest)

Despite losing to the Astros in Game 7 on Wednesday, LA appears to have the brighter future of this year’s World Series teams, albeit only just. The Dodgers are projected to win about 90 games per season for the next five years, but that’s nothing new to them. Since 2013, the Dodgers have averaged an MLB-best 95 wins per season and were twice denied a shot at the World Series. The bulk of this year’s production for the Dodgers has come from a mix of young phenoms and veteran stars. Turner, Clayton Kershaw and 23-year-old Corey Seager were the top three WAR contributors to the Dodgers. Seager has emerged as one of the premier players in the league and, with just three years of MLB experience to date, he ranks sixth all-time for the most WAR among shortstops in their first three seasons. Although he was up and down during the playoffs — he missed the NLCS with a back injury and hit just .237 in the postseason — Seager is one of the biggest reasons LA’s future looks so bright.

It’s not just Seager that has Dodgers fans drooling. Twenty-two-year-old rookie sensation Cody Bellinger launched 39 home runs and knocked 97 RBIs in 2017 to lead the Dodgers in both categories, and is a frontrunner for the NL Rookie of the Year award. LA also has 21-year-old left-handed starting pitcher Julio Urias, who missed much of 2017 with a shoulder injury, but is still one of baseball’s most promising talents. And there’s more. LA has one of the top-ranked minor-league systems in the game, so there are even more talented Dodgers to come. Which is likely why they opened the offseason as 2018 World Series favorites.

Houston Astros (88.6 wins per season)

2017 Elo Rating: 1575.0 (15th)

2017 batting WAR: 36.5 (5th)

2017 pitching WAR: 17.0 (42nd)

2017 average age, batters: 28.8 (21st-youngest)

2017 average age, pitchers: 28.5 (17th-youngest)

For Houston, it’s been a completely different journey to the top. The Astros were really bad for more than half a decade, when they averaged an MLB-worst 69 wins between 2006 and 2014. But while the organization floundered at the major-league level, the Astros’ front office steadily stockpiled the organization’s minor-league system with high-ceiling talent through the draft and international free agency.

In 2006, Houston signed a 16-year-old named Jose Altuve for just $15,000 — Altuve is now a three-time reigning AL batting champion. In 2009, they drafted Dallas Keuchel in the 7th round of the draft, and he went onto win the AL Cy Young award in 2015. Two years after that they drafted George Springer out of Connecticut, who this week was crowned World Series MVP. Then in 2012, the Astros selected shortstop Carlos Correa with the No.1 pick in the draft — this year Correa had the team’s second-highest Wins Above Replacement in the regular season.

Put that all together and Houston had the largest WAR of any team in MLB from their homegrown players in 2017. They’ve done their time at the bottom, and now with their star trio leading the way, it’s Houston’s time to shine.

Of course, it’s also worth noting that although the Dodgers currently project for the most future wins of any current MLB team, the Astros rank third. Sandwiched in second place between the two World Series participants are the Cleveland Indians, who were upset in the ALDS by the New York Yankees but still had one of the most impressive seasons of any team in recent history. Across their entire roster, Cleveland was a little younger than either the Dodgers or Astros, so they should be a force to reckon with for the foreseeable future. Add in other up-and-coming teams (such as the Yankees) and old standbys (such as the Cubs), and 2017’s glut of good teams should continue into next season and beyond.