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Despite their last-place finish, the Wildcatters won a franchise record 13 games. Their season’s mood shifted after they promoted Shawn Ramirez to Head Coach, and they finished the season strong. The Wildcatters hadn’t scored four in a game all season, but scored 4-of-5 in a game in each of the last three events. Edaurdo Matos had his best season yet, riding a career-high 19 and finishing 6th. He’s covered 54.29% of his bulls; no other Wildcatter has ridden even 40% of theirs. Kaiden Loud is next best, finishing 29th, and right behind him is Winy dos Santos in 31st. Both have nine rides this season. Oklahoma's Top 3 make up 37 of the team's 56 total rides, 66.07% of their scoring output. The other 19 rides are split between eight riders, six of whom have fielded double-digit outs. To their credit, as a team, Oklahoma has the 2nd-best average ride score in the league at 88.28 points per ride. But they’ve averaged just 1.60 rides per game, and high scores won’t help them unless they increase their ride rate. Oklahoma is still looking for their first Championship Tournament win in franchise history. Unless the Wildcatters can rally together another four-ride game, which they’ve gotten a hang of recently, they’re looking at another early exit.

It’s been a difficult, injury-ridden season for the Florida Freedom, who finished 9th, earning the lowest seed in franchise history. They covered less than 50% of their bulls in 11 of 12 events, and a third or less in eight, both league-worst. However, the Freedom are healthy now and will enter the Teams Championship stronger than when they started the season. 2x League MVP John Crimber will make his return after missing the final nine events of the season. He’s coming off a National Finals Rodeo qualification in his first ProRodeo season, and is in prime shape to lead the Freedom out of Day 1 as the first Play-In team to do so. He’s got Luciano De Castro beside him now, after the Freedom swapped Alex Cerquiera for him from Arizona. De Castro hasn't bucked off since joining the Freedom, riding a perfect 6-for-6. He’s 13-for-25 on the year, and is the only Freedom Rider who’s ridden at least 45% of his bulls. Austin Richardson kept the Freedom from bottoming out throughout the season, covering 11-of-28. As did João Lucas Campos, who rode 8-of-19. No other Florida rider has more than seven rides. We simply haven’t seen this roster perform together yet, which makes it difficult for opponents to predict their potential. However, between De Castro and Crimber, the Freedom have the most proven duo of any other Play-In team

The Mavericks began this season looking like they would finish last for the third straight year. Instead, they went 10-5 in their final five events to finish the season a franchise-best 15-20. The Mavericks have never made it to Day 2 of the Teams Championship, but they can continue their historic season with a win over the Carolina Cowboys. However, last year’s Missouri Thunder were the first 7-seed to make it to Day 2, and they made it all the way to the Championship. New York has a formidable squad ready to prove themselves on the big stage. Leading the Mavericks is Marco Rizzo, who’s covered 18-of-31 this season and 10 of his last 14. However, he’s the only Maverick who rode more than 50% of his bulls. Mauricio Gulla Moreira is the only other Maverick with more than seven rides this season, and he has just 13. The Mavericks will need to lean more heavily on Hudson Bolton, Afonso Quintino, and Bob Mitchell, despite none of them eclipsing 20 outs this season, as Leonardo Castro and Leandro Zampollo combined to ride just 10-of-48 this season. Bolton, Quintino, and Mitchell are each riding above a 40% riding percentage, making the Mavericks one of four teams with at least five riders riding above 40%. More than anything, a win would change the entire outlook of the Mavericks' future with a new benchmark to build upon. It validates what the organization has been building, and it rewards the athletes' resilience. This year is the best chance they’ve had; all they need to do is prove to themselves that they have what it takes.

Arizona started 7-4 in 2nd place through the first third of the season, but fell off a cliff not long after. They scored a lead-leading 2.45 rides per game through their first four events. That dropped to 1.83 rides per game overall at the end of the season. They finished 8th with a 15-20 record. Everton Natan da Silva has been their only consistent rider through good and bad, touting a 61.29% ride percentage. Da Silva finished 5th in the MVP race, tying his career-high of 19 rides. However, he’s scored as many rides as his bottom seven teammates have in 59 fewer outs. Furthermore, he’s the only Ridge Rider who’s covered at least 50% of his bulls. Behind him are Eduardo Aparecido and Elizmar Jeremias, who each started their seasons riding 8-for-11 but finished 7-for-21 and 3-for-17, respectively. The Ridge Riders miss Luciano De Castro, who has ridden six straight since being sent to the Freedom for AlexCerqueira, who’s gone 0-for-6 since being traded for. At 9-of-32, Cerqueira’s ridden just 28.13% of his bulls and has the worst ride percentage of any rider ranked inside the Top 40. Despite their woes, the Ridge Riders have a strong history of Teams Championship success. Arizona has upset an opponent at least once in three of the last four Championship tournaments. Besides losing in 2024’s initial Play-In and missing the tournament altogether, the Ridge Riders have made Day 3 every year. They finished 2nd in 2022, 3rd in 2023, and 4th in 2025.

The 2025 Team Series Champion Carolina Cowboys fumbled their chance at a bye in the last game of this season. At 19-16, the Cowboys needed just one more win to surpass the Stampede, but couldn’t and fell to 4th, losing the total rides tiebreaker with just 68 in total. Losing out of a bye may have saved their Championship hopes, as no team with a bye has ever won the title. The Cowboys have appeared in each of the last two Championship matches, winning last years, and are primed to make their third. Carolina was one of two teams to never finish an event a perfect 3-0, but they led the league with eight 2-1 event finishes. They accomplished this despite covering less than 50% of their bulls in nine different events. It took a while for the Cowboys to become fully healthy, but they’ll be at full strength heading into the Teams Championship. The 2025 Championship MVP Clay Guiton started his season 1/15 but finished 8/12. Adriano Salgado has covered 9-of-21, and Jess Lockwood rode 8-of-14, but Guilherme Valleiras and Thiago Salgado have been this team’s battery. They’ve combined for 32 rides in 60 outs. Valleiras leads the team in 10th place with the 4th-best ride percentage in the league at 62.96%. They’ve got Keyshawn Whitehorse, João Henrique Lucas, and Ezekiel Mitchell to back them up too, and all three have championship experience. They’ll need them too, as the Semifinals and Finals have changed to 6v6 and 7v7 formats, respectively. The Cowboys won’t go away easily; they never have this season. Their collective experience and drive make them a dangerous contender to become the first team to win back-to-back Championships.

The Rattlers may have finished below .500 at 17-18, but they have consistently been a Day 3 team and have plenty of reasons to believe they’ll make it there again. They’ve finished 3rd twice and won the Title in 2023. The last two Champions were also 5-seeds. Their star duo of Brady Fielder and Daniel Keeping are the highest-ranked pair in the league, at 4th and 7th. But the most important thing to the Rattlers' success is the rest of their roster's performance. Fielder and Keeping combined for 38 of the team’s 69 season rides. João Ricardo Vieira scored another 11 of his own, but no other Rattler has more than five rides. Which is why it was so refreshing that the Rattlers scored 10-of-15 and then 8-of-15 in their final two events to close out the season. The Rattlers have a league-high four perfect games in franchise history, and they got their 4th at Maverick Days during their season-best 10-for-15 performance. They scored 443.95 points, the second-most points in a game in Team Series History. Qynn Andersen emerged for the Rattlers during that game, scoring 86, and was instrumental for Texas throughout the rest of the season. He’s covered 4 of his last 6, including a career-high 90. The more they get from Andersen, the further the Rattlers can travel in the tournament. Texas averaged the most points per ride of any team at 88.55. If their roster can continue to score at the rate they finished the season at, the Rattlers are in good shape.

The Austin Gamblers started their season slowly. Halfway through the year, the Gamblers sat in 6th place with an 8-9 record, but went on to win 14 of their last 18, finishing in 2nd place with a 22-13 record overall. It’s the fourth time in franchise history the Gamblers end with a top-2 seed, and for the second straight year. Throughout all their ups and downs, Jose Vitor Leme has been the team's one constant. Leme won his 3rd career Teams MVP this season on a 29-for-33 ride campaign. He rode the most bulls in Teams history and with the best ride percentage ever at 87.88%. He tied his career-long ride streak of 14 in a row this season, marking the 2nd longest ride streak in Team Series history. Furthermore, Leme was 90+ six times this season and broke Chris Shivers’ record for most 90-point rides in premier series history with 95 in total. No other Gambler finished better than 20th. Dalton Kasel finished 20th and covered 13-of-26. He’s the only other Gambler besides Leme to have ridden at least 50% of his bulls. Sage Kimzey’s behind Kasel in 21st, with 12 bulls ridden this season, followed by Kaique Pacheco and Dener Barbosa in 30th and 35th with nine rides each. Every other team in the Top 5, along with Arizona, has at least two riders with 15 rides on the season. The Gamblers have either made it to the Championship match or were eliminated during Day 2. The Gamblers now have had a bye in four of the five Championship Tournaments, but no team with a bye has ever won the title. In 2024, the year they won the title, the Gamblers finished 5th in the regular season. It was the only time they’d finished outside the Top 2. If history wasn’t already against them, the MVP has never won the Teams Championship in the same season. However, their MVP, Leme, has been better than anyone has ever been, and the Gamblers will go as far as Leme takes them in Las Vegas. Leme didn’t ride in last year's Championship Tourney, but he’s 7-for-9 in his career, and the Gamblers are 5-2 when he scores. The Gamblers will wait to face the winner between the Texas Rattlers and the Kansas City Outlaws on Day 2. Austin has gone a combined 5-3 against both teams this season.

For the first time in franchise history, the Missouri Thunder finished as the 1-seed heading into the Teams Championship. The Thunder finished the season with a franchise-best 24-11 record and tied the 2025 Austin Gamblers for the 2nd-best win percentage in league history at 68.6%. Leading the franchise in their career-year has been Paulo Eduardo Rossetto, who produced the second-best individual season in Teams history, only behind the MVP Jose Vitor Leme this year. Rossetto covered 28-of-35, including 15 in a row, for a total of 2476.5 points and 2nd in the MVP race. His 15 bull ride streak more than doubled his previous career-best streak of seven, and it’s the longest ride streak in Team Series history. Rossetto will enter the Championship Tourney having ridden nine of his last 11 bulls. He averaged 89.02 points per ride during that streak, more than half a point better than his season average of 88.45 points per ride. It wasn’t just Rossetto who had a career year, though, as three other of the team’s starters did too. Julio Cesar Marquesfinished 11th and rode 17-of-33, nearly doubling his ride total from last season's nine. Felipe Furlan did double his previous career-high rides of six, by scoring 12-of-29 this year. Macaulie Leather also scored 12, but in four fewer outs than Furlan. The pair finished 22nd and 24th, respectively. Maverick Smith rounds out the Thunder’s starting lineup. He scored just seven rides this season, five short of his career-high 12, but still makes the Thunder the scoring-est starting 5 in the league with 76 rides between the five. They don’t have much help from the bench, though, besides Ramon Fiorini, who’s 4-for-7 this year. He’s scored three of four since returning to the lineup in New York and finished his season with a career-high 88.6. The Thunder had the most 3-0 even finishes at four, with their best event being Gambler Days where they scored 889.85 points on 10/15 rides. Furthermore, they finished an event with a record of 2-1 or better a league-leading nine times and finished an event 1-2 or worse just twice, the fewest in the League. They’ve covered at least 50% of bulls in six events this season but lead the league with 2.40 rides/211.12 points per game. All of this earned the Thunder a Day 1 bye at the Teams Championship. However, no team with a bye has ever won the Teams Championship. The 1-seed Gamblers in 2023 and the 2-seed Cowboys in 2024 reached the Championship match but were upset and lost. However, those two teams then won the Teams Championship the season following their reserve-champion result. The Thunder got to the Championship match last season as the 7-seed but lost to the Cowboys. Championship experience matters, and the Thunder have got that under their belt already. This may be the year that the Thunder become the first-ever 1-seed to win the Championship. They’ll start their campaign against the winner of Day 1’s Last-Chance game.

Two-time NFR qualifier JR Stratford announces his retirement from bull riding following a serious vehicle accident. At just 24 years old, JR Stratford is facing an unexpected end to his professional bull riding career after a pickup truck accident on October 26 left him with significant spinal injuries. The wreck resulted in damage to his C5 and C6 vertebrae, along with fractures that placed pressure on his spinal cord. Stratford underwent surgery at OU Health University of Oklahoma Medical Center in Oklahoma City, where surgeons stabilized his spine with two cages and seven screws. Despite the severity of his injuries, Stratford shared some encouraging news on Monday, November 2. He has begun regaining sensation and movement following surgery and has already been able to walk the hospital hallways. While his recovery is progressing, doctors' concerns about the risks of returning to bull riding have brought his competitive career to a close. Stratford first qualified for the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo in 2022, finishing 12th in the world despite an injury-shortened Finals appearance. He returned to Las Vegas in 2025 and delivered some of the strongest performances of his career, accumulating 370.5 points on four bulls through the first six rounds before another injury sidelined him. He ultimately finished the season ranked eighth in the world with a career-best $271,892 in earnings. Now, Stratford's focus has shifted from the arena to recovery and finding his next place in the sport that has been such a significant part of his life. The outpouring of support from the rodeo community has been a source of encouragement throughout his hospitalization, and Stratford remains hopeful that his future will still involve the Western industry. Although his time competing inside the arena has come to an earlier end than anyone anticipated, Stratford has plenty to be thankful for as he continues making progress toward recovery. From all of us at US Cowboy, we're wishing JR continued healing and success in whatever comes next. Information sourced from PRORODEO Sports News. Visit prorodeo.com for the full story.

THE NO. 1 SEED CURSE 👀🏆 There's a haunting trend in PBR Teams Championship history, and this year's top contenders are hoping they aren't next. In four seasons of the PBR Teams Championship, not a single No. 1 or No. 2 seed has walked away with the title. In fact, three of the four champions entered the tournament seeded fifth or lower. Now, the Missouri Thunder and Austin Gamblers enter the 2026 Teams Championship as the top two seeds, looking to accomplish something no team before them has managed. The regular season may have earned them the top spots, but championship history hasn't been particularly kind to the favorites. Will 2026 finally break the curse, or will the top seeds find themselves haunted by the same fate? 👀