Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - 2018 Revisited: Week 17 v. Jets (Win) - Locked On Patriots June 17, 2019

Episode Date: June 17, 2019

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We'll come up with a loose football. Man, is this just so Jet. And that'll be the final play of the Jet season offensively. D'Angelo Henderson, a former Bronco, just promoted for the second time this year off the practice squad. And Brian Hoyer will line up the offense one last time in this regular season finale in victory formation. With 16 seconds to go, he takes the snap. He drops to the knee and the New England Patriots have won their 500th game as a franchise. They're bound for the divisional round of the AFC playoff tournament with a bye for the ninth straight year.

With their win over the New York Jets in resounding fashion, 38-3. Well, it's been an interesting regular season. Some ups and downs, some difficulty on the road, but the way they've taken care of business at home, they ought to sit here after that two-game stretch when you lost to Miami, when you lost to Pittsburgh, to think, okay, you'll end up with 11 wins, guaranteed.

That was a tough time there. But I think they buckled down. They cleaned some things up. They played smarter football. The defense came around these past two or three games. Defense came around against Pittsburgh. They shut down a high-flying Pittsburgh team. You look at the Saints last week.

People talk about the Saints having one of the best defenses in the league. They couldn't keep up with Pittsburgh offensively. You did on the road in Pittsburgh's building. That game was in the dome. So let's go. Let's see what happens. You got the coach. You got the quarterback.

You got two weeks to get ready for a team for one game to get back in the AFC title game, which is amazing. Hello there, friends, and welcome on in to the latest and the final regular season installment of 2018 Revisited, the off-season series here at Locked On Patriots, where we are going game by game through the campaign that was the 2018 season for your New England Patriots. A season that ended with their sixth Super Bowl title. What you heard right there, Bob Sochi, Scott Zolak on the call for the season finale. A resounding 38-3 win at Gillette Stadium over the AFC East rival New York Jets. Mark Schofield here back in the big chair,

as always going to take you through this installment of 2018 Revisited. But before we do that, your usual cavalcated reminders. Please, first of all, do follow me on the Twitter machine at Mark Schofield. Check out the work at places like InsideThePylon.com, Pro Football Weekly, where I will be part of the Bears preview magazine that will hit bookshelves and bookstores and Amazon and other outlets later this summer. Also, Matt Waldman's rookie scouting portfolio, mattwaldmanrsp.com. And yes, that Trinity of SB Nation websites, Big Blue View, Bleeding Green Nation, where I co-host the QB Scope Show. And of course, Pat's Pulpit. Now let's break down week 17 of the regular season.

A game that, yes, the Patriots won in resounding fashion. And if you're anything like me, you needed this game. Because we just got done talking about that Week 16 game against the Buffalo Bills in which the passing game struggled. I played for you some of the audio from yours truly in that contest. And it didn't seem like this passing game had enough juice to it. There were even questions about Tom Brady's health, you heard. In that show yesterday, Scott Zolak wondered about the health of the Patriots quarterback. But the Patriots entered Week 17 with a chance to at least solidify a first-round buy

and potentially, if they got a lot of help get the first overall seed now as we know they would not get that number one overall seed so they would face at least potentially one and as we know they would get one road playoff game now they would have one home game and they would earn that with this 38 to 3 win over the New York Jets and the passing game showed up in this one. Tom Brady would have a huge afternoon going on to complete. 24 of 33 for 205 yards. Four touchdowns on the day for a quarterback rating. Not that QB rating is the best statistic, but it is a measuring stick, and he measured up pretty well on this one.

A 133.8 quarterback rating. And, of course, the first touchdown of the game? Well, shocker. Tom Brady to James White on an option route. Stop me if you've heard this one before. Brady said he would come up big today and in the playoffs. First target of the day for Gronkowski. Sets up New England. Inside the 20.

In stride. Catch made. James White. Touchdown, Patriots. Rev it up for New England. The question is, does he get all the way in before his knee goes down? We'll take a look at it. He's way across. Touchdown

Patriots. The fifth different receiver as Brady goes six for six on the drive and he finds the matchup he wants. Out of the backfield he gets James White, their leading receiver against Rontez Miles from

Hewitt and Miles for the score. Brady settled into a nice clean pocket. Hits White working from right to left on the option route, working over the middle. The Patriots get onto the board first with that 7-0 lead. The Jets would tack on a field goal at the end of the first quarter. The teams would enter into the second quarter with the Patriots holding a 7-3 lead.

But the Patriots would dominate the run of play basically for the rest of this game. And they would get back on the board early in the second quarter and doing what they do best, get at a matchup, confusing the defense in the pre-snap phase, and then exploiting it with Tom Brady finding Rex Burkhead on a seam route for another touchdown. Lost one.

End zone. Touchdown. Burkhead, the over-the-shoulder grab. New England adds to its lead. another touchdown. Take on the coverage. Nobody took Burkhead until it was too late. Just a case of some miscommunication here. And Brady is going to find your weakness every time. A running back on a linebacker. Brady's second touchdown pass of the game showed off what he can do from the mental side because the defense of the New York Jets, they were very confused with a lot of pre-snap movement and motion from the Patriots offense.

That allowed Brady to spot the mismatch he wanted to take advantage of, Rex Burkhead, against a linebacker out of the backfield, and then he drops in a perfect touch throw. So you have Brady winning with mind and with touch on this play. But on his third touchdown of the game, a touchdown pass to Philip Dorsett that came a little bit later. Just a little bit later with 11 minutes remaining in the first half. Brady actually won with his legs. Buying some time, scrambling to his right before finding his receiver in the back right of the end zone for his third touchdown pass of the day.

Now it's third and goal for New England. They've had a number of cracks at it here on this end of the field. Third down. They handle the rush. Brady. Into the end zone. Touchdown! Philip Dorsett on the receiving end

against Rashard Robinson. And the Patriots are rolling. Well, the ability to buy some extra time, the protection, really good brady with awareness of his escape route out of the pocket and dorsett with a beautiful catch in the back of the end zone dorsett the leading receiver today for the patriots as brady continues his hot hand i've often said here and elsewhere that brady's pocket mobility is at an elite level. And while he's not the most athletic quarterback, we can be honest, but his ability to use his feet at times

to slide away from pressure, create space, and give him opportunities to extend plays. That's one of the reasons he's an elite quarterback. And he doesn't get the credit, I think, for his pocket movement that he should. As a matter of fact, I've seen on Twitter and elsewhere people sometimes laughing when I call Brady a mobile quarterback, but I think he is and this play is a great example of that. There's a lot of time that he has because of the offensive line initially, but the coverage is good so he has to create time. So he slides initially to his left and then when the pocket starts to break down, he rolls out to his right, extends the play, escapes the pressure as the pocket begins to collapse, but keeps his eyes downfield. And it enables him to find Philip Dorsett, who does a fantastic job of extending to make an overhead catch.

And getting both feet down for the touchdown. This touchdown would give the Patriots a 21-3 lead in this contest. A lead that they would take to the halftime break. Up next, we're going to talk about the second half of this game, and a little bit later we're going to break down what we learned about the Patriots as well as a pivotal defensive play that helped close out the season and a season finale victory. That's all ahead on this Week 17 installment of 2018 Revisited here at Locked On Patriots. Mark Schofield back with you now on this week 17 installment of 2018 Revisited, going game by game through the Patriots 2018 season.

We are into week 17, as I said, the regular season finale, a victory over the Jets. And just so you know, for the week ahead, Tuesday's show, we're going to do the division round game, a victory over the Los Angeles Chargers. And on Wednesday, the AFC championship game. And finally, this series, it ends on Thursday with a look at Super Bowl 53 yet again. Then we'll probably have a Friday show, maybe a little more TV action, some more letter candy talk,

maybe some more chips. But then next week, we roll into Patriots A to Z. That's going to be our second offseason series here. We're going to take you through the Patriots, your into Patriots A to Z. That's going to be our second offseason series here. We're going to take you through the Patriots, your favorite team from A to Z. We're going to talk about players, plays, concepts, moments, working our way through the Patriots history. So that's what we've got up store, in store, upcoming,

whatever you want to call it here at Locked on Patriots. But let's pick up the Week 17 action in the second half. And to this point in the show, we have yet to talk about the Patriots' defense. Well, that changed, and it changed pretty much in a hurry as we head into the second half of this game against the New York Jets in Week 17. As a matter of fact, we're going to talk a lot about the defense in this second portion of the show here.

The second half got off to a start. The Jets had possession first, and they would go 3-0. Trey Flowers would get a sack of rookie quarterback Sam Donald on a 3rd-and-2 play that would force the Jets had possession first, and they would go 3-0. Trey Flowers would get a sack of rookie quarterback Sam Darnold on a 3rd-and-2 play that would force the Jets to punt. Now the Patriots, their drive stalled in their own territory. The Patriots thought they had a huge play to start off their second-half offensive effort when Tom Brady hit Rob Gronkowski for 30 yards, but an offensive pass interference penalty on Dwayne Allen brought that back.

And then the Patriots went facing a 1st 20 with three straight incompletions Brady missed Chris Hogan on first down failure to connect with Julian on second down and then another deep throw for Chris Hogan again on third down and the Patriots are forced to punt but on their ensuing possession the Jets they would face a third and long a third and ten and there was the Patriots defense led by Adam Butler with the pressure in the hit and Kyle Van Nooy with a scoop in the score that would get the Patriots back into the end out with the ankle injury curse out with the Achilles injury Darnold loses the ball, and it's scooped up by Van Noy. Kyle Van Noy takes it for the touchdown.

Van Noy goes the distance. Now trying to make something happen on this third and ten. You can see the pressure coming. Ball slips out of his hand as he's hit. This is just his fifth fumble of the season. But you can see the low hit there around the legs. Van Noy with the scoop. The stroll and the score.

This was an effort play from the Patriots defense in a couple of different respects. First, Sam Darnold tries to climb the pocket and extend the play here, and it looks like he's going to break free of the Patriots defensive front, but Adam Butler gets that big right arm in there and knocks the ball out of Darnold's hands before he gets across the line of scrimmage,

and from there, it's Kyle Van Noy with the scoop and the score, effort play, getting this ball into the end zone to give the Patriots a 28-3 lead in this contest. But the defense was not done. Just a couple of plays later, the Jets would drive the ball down into the Patriots, into the Patriots' red zone, and they would face a 4th-and-1 on the Patriots' 9-yard line. Down 28-3. It was a no-brainer for the Jets. Keep the offense on the field.

Try to get this 4th down converted. Get the ball into the end zone. Try to claw back into this game. But the Patriots' defense, again, having nothing of it. Receiving this snap. They're using Dozier in the backfield. They say leg it in motion. again having nothing of it. with Roberts and Brown leading the charge. And New England will take over. Malcolm Brown and Landon Roberts stop Elijah McGuire basically behind the line of scrimmage,

and he doesn't even get a chance to get back to the line of scrimmage. Officially, this play goes down for no gain, but it almost looked like a loss on the carry. And there are some things that stick out doing these shows, revisiting some of these moments. And what stood out watching that play is how almost nonchalant everybody was, at least in the crowd and in the booth.

It was almost like they expected the Patriots to get this stop, and they did get this stop. Now, they wouldn't convert at the points. They would have a drive that would stall out basically near midfield, but it's not like the Jets did anything else offensively in this contest. They would be held to the three points, and this was a defensive effort as well as an offensive effort that I think for many people, myself included, left you feeling a little bit better about where this team was, and of course, we'll talk about that a little bit more in a second but the Patriots they were not done scoring points

they would tack on a Steven Kosowski field goal to make it 31 to 3 and then a little bit later they would close out their regular season from an offensive standpoint with Tom Brady finding who else with Julian Edelman. Fake the jet sweep. Brady rifles. Touchdown! Julian Edelman. The Patriots do not take their foot off the gas. Now they want to give their next opponent as many different looks to prepare for as they possibly can. But again, this is the way the game started for the Jets, leaving wide open receivers. This time it costs them with Edelman wide open in the end zone. It is a four touchdown day for Tom Brady.

There's not a whole lot to break down out of this play. Julian Edelman is aligned at a bunch to the right, the inside receiver, and Brady fakes a jet sweep and then throws to Edelman who's working across from right to left and he is absolutely wide open. Brady drills in a perfect throw on the crossing route with some good velocity and placement and he has his fourth touchdown of the game, 28th touchdown pass of the season, and the Patriots are rolling into the postseason. Up next, we're going to talk about the pivotal play of this game. We're going to break down that Burkhead touchdown from back in the first half of this contest.

And we're also going to talk sort of what we learned about the Patriots over the course of just not this game, but the entire regular season. And frankly, we still had some questions. That's ahead on this week 17 installment of 2018 Revisited. Mark Sofil back with you now. Going to close out the regular season portion of 2018 Revisited with a sort of quick look at the pivotal play, or at least one of the pivotal plays from the Week 17 victory over the Jets, as well as some thoughts on what we learned about the Patriots in the regular season.

And let's talk about the Brady touchdown pass to Rex Burkhead that came on a first and 10 with 12.57 left in the first half. Now, this is a great example of the Patriots using personnel alignment and formation to confuse a defense in the pre-snap phase because they come out using 21 personnel. Rex Burkhead and James Devlin are both in the game. They put Brady in the shotgun with James Devlin to the left of the quarterback in the backfield. Then they go Y-ISO. So now you've got Gronkowski alone split to the left with three receivers to the right. And one of those receivers, you've got Edelman on the inside, you've got Dorsett on the outside, and you've got Burkhead in the slot, that middle trips receiver. That's a lot to throw at a defense

in the pre-snap phase because you've got one running back in the backfield, but it's a full back. The other running back is aligned sort of to the outside. You've got to keep your base defense in there. Then the offense is going, why ISO? That's a whole lot to figure out and what happens is because of the formation there's a late adjustment where they slide williamson the linebacker out to cover door set so you've got a guy that wants to be blind up as the middle linebacker now he's flexed outside basically trying to play slot corner and he doesn't have a chance he gives Burkhead like four yards of cushion and Burkhead has erased that cushion by the time Tom Brady has set himself up after his one-step drop out of the shotgun alignment Brady knows pre-snap that this is where he's going with the football and it's a

cover one look because based on alignment again he knows linebacker here strong safety over Gronk he knows by the way the defensive players have lined up they're dropping into man coverage here single high look he knows that in this area of the field all he has to do is make that free safety freeze for a second so he gives him a quick glance then eyes to the right to the slot receiver burkhead running that sort of slot fade easy throw the route is cleared out underneath because they run basically Dorsett on an under concept, an under route, which is what the Patriots call it, a five-yard in. So that corner is going to dive down on that.

A lot of space, a lot of green grass. Brady just throws Burkhead basically to the corner of the end zone, to the back of the end zone, and it's an easy touchdown. But this is yet one more example of the Patriots and Josh McDaniels and Tom Brady sort of winning in that pre-snap fave now let's sort of talk big picture what did we hear Scott Zolak talk about when we had the cold open when 98-5 sort of closed out their coverage he talked about the defense And what's interesting is that this was a game where you had a four-touchdown day from Brady. The Patriots win their 500th game all-time, which is the most amongst the original sort of AFL franchises.

They lock up that second spot. And we broke down a pivotal play from the offense. But what we saw this defense sort of put together down the stretch and to sort of go big picture, what we saw this defense do after that Miami game was perhaps the biggest inkling that on the defensive side of the ball, this team was starting to put it together. Because they go down to Miami and, yes, they give up 34 points, which was, other than that regular season game to the Chiefs,

the biggest point total they would give up this season. Obviously, the Titans tied that back in Week 10 of the game, which I don't want to talk about. But after that, they go down to Pittsburgh, a team that was fighting for their playoff lives, and they give up just 17. Buffalo scores 12. Jets score 3.

This defense was playing well at this point in the season. And it led us to, as we got into the playoffs and maybe even a little deeper into the playoffs, to think maybe they don't have the best offense left, especially when we got to the conference championship weekend. But maybe they had the best defense left. And that defense would need to come up big

a couple more times over the course of the playoffs for this team to get to where they ultimately wanted to be, which was Super Bowl 53. And so there you have it. There's sort of a look at the regular season all over again. Some ups, some downs, some games where they laid an egg. And I think if you had to sort of look back at this regular season and pick out

what was perhaps their best win, maybe that Minnesota game. Maybe, strangely enough, that Kansas City game, the regular season game. Maybe you could say, okay, that was the best win. We all sort of felt maybe there would be a rematch down the road. Maybe that Bears win. But it was an up-and-down season, a couple of two-game losing streaks, which are very unpatriot-like.

But in the end, 11-5, number two seed and another shot at a title. So that will do it for today, their last sort of regular season installment. Up next, we're going to work into the playoffs, the divisional round, AFC Championship Gaming, and yes, Super Bowl 53. That's all to come here at Locked On Patriots and 2018 Revisited.