Boston edges Minnesota in thriller as UFA title race stays wide open

Boston’s 21-20 escape over Minnesota showed how thin the line is between the league’s best teams, even with the defending champion now in position to claim the top seed. Tobe Decraene controlled the game with nine assists, a goal and 664 total yards while completing 53 of 55 throws against one of the league’s toughest defenses, and Boston did it without Jeff Babbitt, Tannor Johnson-Go or Rowan McDonnell.

That is why Boston’s most important flaw looks fixable before the playoffs: health. The Glory have already won a one-point game over New York this season with Decraene producing six assists, and Decraene’s title-game résumé is already established after his seven-assist MVP performance in Boston’s first championship final in 2025. If Babbitt and the rest of the missing pieces are available in August, Boston’s offense has the clearest path to another title run. Championship Weekend is set for Aug. 28-29 at Breese Stevens Field in Madison, Wisconsin, a venue that has now hosted the event in 2016, 2018, 2022, 2025 and will again in 2026.

Minnesota’s case is no softer. The Wind Chill have already shown they can play the elite teams close, and their win over Oakland gives them a result that few contenders can match. They were also the Central Division representative at Championship Weekend for the third straight season in 2025, which makes them look less like a hot July story than a club built to peak later in the summer. Their weakness is harder to isolate than Boston’s injury list, which makes it harder to say what, exactly, can be cleaned up before the bracket opens.

The rest of the field keeps refusing to sort itself out. The July 6 rankings had Minnesota, Oakland, Boston and New York as the top four, and Week 12 only widened the sense that those clubs can beat one another on any given night. New York crushed Chicago 31-18 behind Ben Jagt’s plus-10 line with five goals and five assists, and the Empire offense turned it over only three times, two of them on the opening possession. Madison answered with a 31-19 win over Pittsburgh while keeping its own turnover count low.

That leaves a broader title picture that still includes Oakland, Carolina, Austin, San Diego, Salt Lake, Seattle, DC, Madison and Indianapolis. Regular-season separation has become easier to read than playoff certainty, but the most meaningful distinction right now is this: Boston’s flaw is personnel, Minnesota’s is timing, and New York’s is ball security. The first of those looks most repairable before Madison.