The Denver Broncos took a flyer on quarterback Paxton Lynch during the 2016 NFL Draft, selecting him in the first round that year in one of the event’s biggest shockers.

However, the former Memphis Tigers standout would only play five NFL games before he bounced around the league from practice squad to practice squad. He was last seen on the Pittsburgh Steelers’ roster in 2020.

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Lynch was attempting to find a route back into the NFL and landed with the Colorado Spartans of the National Arena League before the 2026 season. He was in his third game with the Spartans when he suffered a torn LCL.

“I was p—ed off,” he told The Denver Post. “And it sucks. I didn’t want it to be like this.”

Lynch appeared to take solace in being able to play again – even if it was in an indoor football league. He suggested he was up for the challenge.

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“I was like, ‘OK, if I play this year in arena football, I’m going to play as Paxton Lynch. I’m going to have full confidence in myself. I don’t really care.’ And that’s what I did,” he told the paper.

“It felt good to do that again.”

He had three touchdown passes in three games with Colorado. Javin Kilgo replaced him at quarterback. Through five games, Colorado is 2-3.

Lynch told The Denver Post he wasn’t sure if he would play in 2027, but if the National Arena League is where his career ended, he said he was just fine with that.

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Archaeologists have uncovered a previously unknown remnant of Thomas Jefferson’s era at Monticello: a brick kiln used to build his home.

The kiln was recently found on the east side of the Founding Father’s home amid an excavation that began in March, officials said.

Monticello historians believe it dates back to the early 1770s — some time before Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

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It was part of the construction of Monticello I, the first version of Jefferson’s home. 

The current structure reflects a later rebuild and expansion completed after his time in France, after 1789. 

Photos from the site show researchers working around a rectangular dig at Monticello, exposing evenly spaced brick channels and revealing several bricks stamped with initials.

The kiln was a large, temporary oven used to harden bricks, said Crystal O’Connor, manager of archaeological field research at Monticello.

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O’Connor told Fox News Digital that archaeologists found brick channels “filled with overcooked brick rubble, and the soil beneath them had been baked hard by intense heat.”

Archaeologists “immediately started hitting brick, and uncovered a series of low parallel brick walls, evenly spaced about a foot and a half apart, with channels running between them,” she said.

“While the team and I weren’t sure of what we were looking at initially, that pattern is a telltale sign of a brick kiln,” O’Connor added.

Workers once stacked thousands of unfired bricks atop the kiln and kept fires burning for several days until the bricks, eventually used to build Monticello, hardened.

“When the firing was done, workers took the kiln apart and carried the finished bricks to the house,” said O’Connor.

She added, “This kiln was crucial to building the home of the author of the Declaration of Independence.“

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O’Connor noted that it was likely run by George Dudley or William Bishop, two White workmen who were hired by Jefferson — and that it relied heavily on slave labor.

Though Jefferson wasn’t making the bricks by hand, the Virginia statesman was certainly aware of the kiln’s existence.

“Jefferson knew about this work because he contracted with his brickmakers for a set number of bricks before each major building campaign,” O’Connor said.

“He would not have overseen the firings himself. Dudley or Bishop would have managed that process.”

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O’Connor said records show Jefferson calculated whether hauling finished bricks uphill or producing them on site was more efficient in late 1774.

“We wonder if the brickmakers themselves pointed out the problem of dragging barrels of water and loads of firewood uphill, and if that helped push Jefferson to do the math and move the work downhill, closer to the raw materials,” she added.

O’Connor noted that “very few” artifacts were found at the site, other than bricks — but 18th-century remnants were interesting nonetheless.

These included “several bricks shaped in special molds to match the design of the house.”

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“These are decorative bricks with curved and S-shaped profiles,” said O’Connor. “Jefferson used them in the exterior brickwork of the dining room wall, which dates to around 1772.”

She added, “They don’t appear anywhere else on the house and represent a crazy amount of customization. Finding them in the rubble next to the kiln is what tells us it dates to the early 1770s.”

The official stressed the importance of archaeology at Monticello, especially because the kiln was entirely unrecorded in Jefferson’s maps, drawings, notes and letters.

“The discovery has already changed how we understand the building of Monticello,” she said.

“Even at one of the best-documented historic sites in America, archaeology keeps revealing what the written record does not.”

China said Sunday it would resume some ties it had suspended with Taiwan, such as direct flights and imports of Taiwanese aquaculture products, following a visit by the Beijing-friendly opposition leader of the self-ruled island.

The Taiwan Work Office under China’s Communist Party issued a statement saying it would explore setting up a longstanding communication mechanism between the Communist Party and Taiwan’s Kuomintang Party. It said it will facilitate the import of Taiwan’s aquaculture products that it had previously banned.

Cheng Li-wun, the head of the Kuomintang, and China’s President Xi Jinping held a high-profile meeting Friday during which they called for peace, without offering specifics. China claims the island as part of its territory and hasn’t ruled out the use of force to annex it.

Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, which oversees the relationship with China, said the measures that were announced, such as promoting a communication mechanism, were “political transactions” between the two parties that circumvented the government of Taiwan.

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“The government’s position is clear: to ensure the interests of the nation and its people, all Cross-Strait affairs involving public power must be negotiated by both governments on an equal and dignified basis to be effective and truly protect the rights and well-being of the people,” the Mainland Affairs Council said in response to the Chinese announcement.

Relations between China and Taiwan, which remain split since 1949, have been tense since the election of pro-independence President Tsai Ing-wen from the Democratic Progressive Party in 2016. Beijing cut off most of its official dialogue with Taiwan’s government, and has started sending warships and fighter jets closer toward the island on a daily basis.

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In the statement, China said it plans to resume direct flights between Taiwan and mainland cities like Xi’an or Urumqi, although it remained unclear how the measures will be implemented without the approval of the Taiwanese government.

China banned its citizens from individual trips to Taiwan in 2019. Taiwan’s rules now require Chinese visitors to hold a valid resident visa from another country, like the U.S. or the European Union, to apply for a visitor visa.

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China also said it would work toward construction of a bridge that would connect the mainland to Matsu and Kinmen, Taiwanese islands that are closer geographically to China. The project is a longstanding proposal that Beijing has previously announced.

China banned the import of Taiwanese pineapples in 2021, and since then has extended it to other fruits and products including the grouper fish, squid and tuna.

After the initial ban on grouper, Taiwan’s Ministry of Agriculture said it approached China about making adjustments to ensure it met import requirements. China replied with a limited list of individual companies that were allowed to sell to China, but without explanation.