Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - 2018 Revisited: Week 10 - Locked On Patriots June 5, 2019

Episode Date: June 5, 2019

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The Patriots this season, they are minus 18 in the first and third quarters. They are a plus 81 in the second and fourth. Brady is sacked! Wesley Woodyard gets to the quarterback for Tennessee. Keep fighting, number 59 on a slightly delayed blitz. He's going to overpower the block of James White. Get in on Brady. Losing 11 yards. Brady steps up.

Brady devoured. And that's how the first half ends. Yeah, really a creative blitz this time a delayed blitz by Ryan Brady steps Brady is sacked at the 31 number 55

you can see he outquicks big Trent Brown Brown of course dealing with an illness just a little bit slow off the get-go Hey there everybody Mark Schofield here with the latest installment of 2018 Revisited this show-by-show look at the entire 2018 Patriots season Mark Schofield here with the latest installment of 2018 Revisited. This show-by-show look at the entire 2018 Patriots season.

A season that began, obviously, trying to shake off the cobwebs of a loss in Super Bowl 52. The Patriots did that in Week 1 with a victory over the Houston Texans. And this season, as we all know, ended with New England hoisting their 6th Lombardi Trophy with a victory in Super Bowl 53 over the Los Angeles Rams. But we have arrived at week 10. And perhaps other than the Miami game, the two losses early in weeks two and three against Jacksonville or Detroit, this game, the biggest head scratcher of the season. Patriots looking ahead perhaps to a bye week a chance to perhaps get a day off maybe some extra time away from the field and they just go out and just lay an absolute egg in Tennessee to the Titans and they fall in this contest 34 to 10 what you heard there some of the sounds from this contest and we're not going to spend a lot of time

really breaking down this game but I did think it would make some sense to play some of the sound in the aftermath, both from 98.5, the sports sub, the NFL Network, and of course myself to sort of recap what happened in this game. We'll get to that in a second. But first, your usual reminders too. Follow me on Twitter at Mark Schofield. Check out the work at places like InsideThePylon.com, Pro Football Weekly, The Score, Matt Waldman's Rookie Scouting Portfolio,

and yes, that trio of SB Nation websites, Big Blue View, Bleeding Green Nation, and of course, Pat's Pulpit. Now, to sort of recap this game, I figure it's best to hear from me and others. So here's some sound from 98.5, then later some sound from the NFL Network, and then finally, the melancholy and the infinite sadness episode. We're going to play a little bit of that to sort of recap the day that was in Week 10 for the New England Patriots. With a minute 13 and counting left in the fourth quarter, the Patriots have been thoroughly dominated today in every phase,

and it started literally with the opening kickoff, trailing Tennessee 34-10. It's a big win for them four and four gets him going in the right direction sideline starting to whoop it up and this is where uh fable's got to be careful with them we were we were down in jacksonville where jacksonville made it their super bowl and then you saw how uh season went for them but uh this is a team trend in the right direction in the afc south. Mike Vrabel, the ex-Patriot today plotting a game plan and his players executing it to near perfection.

He gets a handshake from Logan Ryan and now Vrabel puts his arm around Ryan. Two former Patriots enjoying every last second of the final 29 with a handoff to Patterson. A run to the left engulfed and swallowed up and he is thrown down.

Boy, the Titans are having their way right now. They're celebrating, they're preening after every play, and they've earned the opportunity. Grable's going to run across the field and meet his former head coach. They'll shake hands in the aftermath of a game that's going to have plenty of fallout in really the two weeks to come as the Patriots head into a bye after being beaten 34-10. That's how you use it now.

You know, it makes it, gives you a pit in your stomach for the entire week. That's the sad part because you had that dangling carrot out there. You play well, maybe you get an extra day or two off next week. We'll see how Coach handles it. But let's go down. It was a bad loss. A six-game winning streak for the Patriots here in 2018, a seven-game series winning streak over Tennessee, both

abruptly brought to a halt today. One of the four teams to have done that, and LT, I know you remember that there. LT, you enjoyed that. Deion Lewis enjoyed this one. It was a real sweet win, you know, especially when you used to be there and they didn't want to bring you back. Definitely real sweet. I'm happy my teammates came out and played and I love these guys. So it is a little personal. Hell yeah, it's personal. That's what happens when you go cheap. You get your ass kicked.

I mean, it's an emotional thing, you know. Deion had a great career here. It's hard to see great players go and I know it's not the first time it's happened it's happened to a lot of guys and you know I'm sure when they go to different places they want to beat us absolutely I can understand that emotion yeah the emotion yes I think William McGinnis might be able to understand that emotion as well do we understand though what happened in this game how did the Titans do that well a lot of times people say what's wrong with the Patriots?

But what happened well for the Titans? I think they came out, and I think it started on the offensive side of the ball with Marcus Mariota. Hadn't been consistent for the last few weeks. Very consistent, very efficient, making key, accurate throws down the football field. He moved well in and out of the pocket, and then they ran the football very well. So they had a concise game plan, and he stuck to it. What about the defense, though?

We all talk about the formula to beat Brady. We talk about it every single week. Talking about it is one thing. Doing it is another in the Titans. It is. Everybody has the blueprint. But do you have the guys on your personnel or your roster to go out and execute the blueprint? And they did just that.

Vrabel knew that if you can get in the pocket, affect the middle of the pocket, and then be able to cover to immediate to intermediate passing game, Brady likes to outlet, to get the ball out of his hands. Then you have a chance to win the football game. But first, you've got to disrupt that pocket, get him off the spot. Everybody talks about that. You've got to finish plays. And then when he's ready to let the ball out because he has one of the fastest releases in the league,

you've got to be able to cover. And they did very well. Dory Jackson, talking to Mike Vrabel and listening to what he said, had a lot of respect in what he did in that football game. The defensive backs, they played at a high level the entire game. What do I do with all of this if I'm a Patriots fan? What does that do to impact my expectations about this team moving forward? You bury that.

You bury that football game you just played in. You go into the bye week. You make corrections and you make adjustments and you move on. Traditional Patriots. You move on. All right. Well, as you mentioned, they do have a bye week this week. Then it is back to work against the Jets, who I don't think I would want to be right now.

Bill Belichick after a bye with the Patriots, 13-5. Hello, everybody, and welcome on in to a melancholy and the infinite sadness installment of the Locked On Patriots podcast. Mark Schofield slotted into the big chair this Sunday evening after the New England Patriots, well, they played a game of professional football this Sunday. And that's about as good as I can put it. The New England Patriots fallen on the road 34-10 at the hands of the Tennessee Titans. We do not love, however, the performance that we saw today from your New England Patriots.

And it is tradition here on Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness editions of the Lockdown Patriots podcast. Again, the music is different. It is the instrumental beginning to that album by the Smashing Pumpkins. Again, I think it's very appropriate for post-loss episodes. But it is tradition that we still find the good in the performance from our New England Patriots before we get to the bad and the ugly. Now, I've spent approximately, let's see, it's now 8 p.m. on the East Coast. So I've spent about four hours sort of digesting that game. And in that period of four hours, I have not come up with one good

thing to say about this performance. Now, if I was not afraid of being fired for doing it, I would literally just let six or seven minutes of dead air reflect the good we saw from that game, because there was none. And frankly, if I wasn't afraid about getting fired for doing it, I would just, in the alternative, swear like a sailor for the next six minutes about the performance we saw. Because frankly, it was a bad performance. It was a disappointing performance. It was one of those performances where you wonder,

what really is this team. Mark Schofield now back with you here in the present. And there you go. There's a perfect sort of summation, encapsulation, whatever you want to call it, of the travesty that was this game. And, you know, you heard from Deion Lewis there. You heard from the guys over at 985. You heard some Willie McGinnis over at the NFL Network.

Again, you heard from me. This was a bad game. And as Bob Sochi said, this was a bad game from the opening kickoff. The Patriots kicked off. Darius Jennings returns it for 58 yards to the New England 40-yard line. So the Titans start off 1st and 10 on the Patriots 40. They go right down the field and score. They get a huge throw to Corey Davis, their first play from Scribich for 24 yards.

Deion Lewis then three-state carries for five, four, and three. And the Titans have first and goal at the four in a blink of an eye. And they end up scoring on third and goal from the four. Marcus Marietto short right to Juno Smith for a four-yard touchdown. The Patriots did get a field goal on their first possession of the game, so it was 7-3. But the Titans go right down the field and score. Patriots go three and out.

Titans go right down the field and kick a field goal. And then, before you know it, it's not a 7-3 game anymore. It's 14-3 in the blink of an eye. The Titans would add a field goal again late in the first quarter, make it 17-3. Your halftime score in this one was a fantastic, fantastic, fantastic, fantastic halftime score of 24-10. And the Patriots didn't get on the board in the second half. Goose egg.

Completely shut out in the second half. Titans added 10 more for the final 34-10. This was a bad game. And I went back through my notes on this game. There was nothing good. You heard it in how I described it. There was nothing good. I wanted to give you nine minutes of dead air.

I wanted to give you nine minutes of swearing. There was absolutely nothing positive to take from this game. And so I'm just going to move on. We're going to come back here in a moment. We're going to talk about something pivotal we take from this game. And so, I'm just going to move on. We're going to come back here in a moment. We're going to talk about something pivotal we saw from this game that the Patriots actually would apply themselves on the defensive side of the ball later on the road. Talk about some of the things we've learned. But, before we do that,

before we put this aside for a second, let's talk big picture. Father's Day. It is right around the corner. And, look, not everybody's tony cornerizing one of tony cornerizers great lines i think ever was all i want for father's day was to play golf on mother's day and i know it sounds a little counterintuitive but if you're here in the dc area like me by the time you're around mid-june it's hot and steamy you don't want to be out there

playing golf you'd love to be able to be playing golf sometime in May when the weather's nice. But not everybody wants the Tony Kornheiser Father's Day gift. Some people, the sports fans in your life, the dads you know that love a team or a couple of teams, they might be like me and they might want something to commemorate huge plays in a team's history from an X's and O's standpoint. That's why I'm so happy to tell you about our great friends over at Playbook Products. They have a tremendous collection of products such as slate coasters. They've got posters for you.

They've got coffee mugs, drawstring bags, phone cases, a bunch of stuff that would be perfect for your man cave or just anywhere in your house. And what these are, they commemorate great plays, such as the Malcolm Butler Interception, the Adam Vinatieri Field Goal through the uprights from Super Bowl XXXVI. They've got stuff from a variety of sports. If you've got, for example, a UNC basketball fan in your life, you've got Jordan Schott to win the national championship.

You've got some other stuff that you can check out. So please check out our great friends over at Playbook Products. Check them out, playbookproducts.com. Use that promo code LOCKEDON, L-O-C-K-E-D-O-N. When you do, you will get 15% off your order. These are perfect Father's Day gifts. Trust me, I've been telling everybody in my family that if I don't get something from these guys, I'm going to be very disappointed come Father's Day myself.

And so hopefully people are getting the message. Hopefully you're getting the message to check out these guys over at Playbook Products. Playbook Products, rest your pint on history. Mark Schofield back with you now on this latest installment of 2018 Revisited, the show-by-show look at the season that was for the New England Patriots. Started with a game against the Houston Texans that ended in a victory and ended with another victory in Super Bowl 53 over the Rams. Let's talk what we learned as well as some pivotal plays from this Week 10 game. And there weren't obviously any pivotal plays when the Patriots had

the ball or from the Patriots defense. But something we did see from the Tennessee defense was an ability to get after and pressure Tom Brady. You heard at the start of this show the three sacks of Brady, but they get after him a lot. And the way the Titans were able to do that was with something we've talked about on the show. We talked about it in the aftermath of the show of that game, and then we also also talked about it throughout the season and that's that radar alignment it was something that the titans brought out and it confused the patriots at times it was a late it enabled them to to pressure tom brady to get after him and the patriots would go on later in the season to use something similar they would use it with trey flowers they would put him over the center or guards at times

and get pressure on quarterbacks that way. And the Titans turned to this fairly early. They turned to it on New England's second possession in the game. This was a third and eight at New England's 26-yard line. Tom Brady starts in the shotgun, and the Titans come out with that sort of radar alignment. Everybody on the defense is in two-point stance. you don't really know who's coming from where and they do send a blitz they blitz the middle linebacker as well as the safety coming down those guys cross and they should have

this blocked up they only send five patriots have five plus the running back into block, so they should have it blocked up. The problem is the coverage is good too. And so Brady doesn't really have anywhere to throw initially. He has to come off his first read and go to his second. And when he tries to do that, that's when the protection breaks down. That's when you get the linebacker, Woodyard, Wesley Woodyard, who's coming on his cross splits. He gets blocked by James White,

but he covers a lot of ground before he gets to White. And he has the momentum advantage, and he runs through him. White does everything he can, but it's not enough. And when Brady is forced to pull the ball down from his second read, which is covered, because Brady's basically working an option route on the inside to a deep vertical route along the boundary. And when the option route is bracketed by two defenders, Julian Adame is double teamed on this. Brady then looks to the vertical route along the right sideline,

and it's covered. He's got nowhere to go with the ball. And that's when he gets hit. And so that was sort of the first instance of this radar alignment getting to Tom Brady and forcing him into a sack situation. They got him again right before halftime. And the Patriots were final play of the half. They had a third and ten at the Tennessee 43-yard line.

And they go with a radar look. They rush just five. Hail Mary situation. And he doesn't even have a chance to let the play develop. It's another situation where Brady, he gets to his depth. He has to give this time. But he doesn't. And the pressure really comes here off the edges.

Both Trent Brown, who was battling some illness. Excuse me, LeidAdrian Waddell. Trent Brown's out of the game at this point. He gets beat. Marcus Cannon gets beat. And it's a sack. And the Patriots go to the half down 24-10. And so that radar alignment look, the Patriots saw it.

They had trouble protecting Tom Brady. But they would pull from that some wisdom. And they would go on to use similar looks as their season went on, particularly in that game against the Vikings, and we saw it in the divisional round against the Los Angeles Chargers. And so that was some pivotal stuff that we saw X's and O's wise. As far as what we learned about this team, well, this was the bad loss at the worst time

because you're going into the bye and you're thinking, we get a win, we get a bye, then we come out of it. We've got divisional round, I mean, divisional opponent, the Jets. Patriots always great coming out of the bye. And so you're thinking,

look, we just get to the bye. It'll be perfect for us. Season sets up really well for us. We'll come out of the bye we'll get the jets and we get a home game against minnesota and then we get into december you know that minnesota game december 2nd that's kicked off five straight games in december and i remember before those games started telling everybody patriots are so good in december oh this is sets up so well for them with five games in december three of them at home this is gonna be great oh we know how those two road games went so this was a bad loss at a bad

time and the other thing that sticks in my mind from this game is brady throwing to his left i remember i spent a lot of time in the post game show talking about how it looked like tom brady couldn't throw to his left and what really blew my mind about it was sort of at the end of the year when I went back and looked at some stats and there were some people that put together some plots of quarterbacks completion percentage and they used R to chart them out, to graph them, and they had hot and cold zones. And for most quarterbacks, it's sort of like a convex or concave. I always forget it. But, you know, throws along the line of scrimmage, you know,

those are going to be completed. And as you get deeper downfield, throws are going to stay completed until about 20 yards and they start to cool off. But outside of the numbers or so, around 15 yards, it gets a little bit cooler but in the middle of the field you're completing more stuff i think that's concave kind of diagram but for brady strangely enough even throws to the left flat were a cold zone for him last year and this was the game where it really sort of came up he couldn't throw to his left he had

james white in the flat a couple times he just missed him and so this game was that moment where i started to wonder what are we going to see from brady brought down the stretch and that would linger basically until the playoffs so it was a weird season and perhaps this game right here against the titans the weirdest game of the year but thankfully that's in the past. Unfortunately, we've got two more losses to break down. The Miami game, and yes, that Steelers game. But before that, though, we've got two wins to talk about.

We will be back. We will be talking about that Jets game after the bye and the next show. That will be on Thursday. And then Friday, we're going to talk some OTA stuff. I know the Patriots' mandatory minicamp. That's going on. Brady's helmet, all that stuff.

Maybe we'll even wade into the Tom Terrific thing. That will be Friday, and then we'll be back into the recap stuff. 2018 revisited for next week. Closing out the rest of the regular season over the next couple of weeks, and then obviously the playoffs culminated in a Super Bowl 53 recap show. So that will do it for today. I will be back tomorrow. Until next time, keep it locked right here to

me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on Patriots.