Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Crossover Wednesday with Locked On Bengals - 12/11/19

Episode Date: December 11, 2019

It’s Crossover Wednesday! Join hosts Mike D’Abate of Locked On Patriots and Joe Goodberry of Locked On Bengals as the duo preview Sunday’s matchup between the New England Patriots and Cincinnati Bengals from Paul Brown Stadium in Cincinnati, OH. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello to all you Foxborough faithful and welcome to your Crossover Wednesday episode of Locked On Patriots, your daily home for news, notes, analysis, and the occasional opinion on your six-time Super Bowl champions, the New England Patriots. This episode is brought to you in part by DoorDash. Treat yourself to the meal you deserve and have your favorite restaurants come to you with DoorDash. Right now, our listeners can get $5 off of their first order of $15 or more when you download the DoorDash app and enter promo code LOCKEDON.

If you're listening on the go and you can't visit DoorDash right now, you can find this and all other offers from LockedOn sponsors at LockedOnPodcast.com slash offers. My name is Mike DeBate, and I am your host of LockedOn Patriots, which, of course, is a part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Please feel free to reach out to me on Twitter at MDABATEFPC and be sure to follow Locked On Patriots on Twitter at LO underscore Patriots. Folks, Wednesdays are always big days for all of us across the Locked On Podcast Network, especially for the NFL shows. And today, as the Patriots start to prepare to visit the Queen City on Sunday at 1 p.m. to face the Cincinnati Bengals, it's my pleasure to join Joe Goodberry of Locked On Bengals,

and we will discuss this matchup from a Bengals perspective and a Patriots perspective. And yes, we'll probably discuss a little bit of the news of the week, folks, but hopefully we'll give both fan bases something to watch for in this one. So sit tight, folks, and the crossover will begin in just a moment. But it's been a couple of nights sleep since the latest controversy surrounding your New England Patriots hit the national media hype machine. And the accusations have been made. The team has made a statement.

The footage is in the hands of the league who are conducting an investigation. Those are the facts of the case. They are undisputed. Everything else, not so much. But more details are emerging, folks. And those details are actually working in favor of the Patriots, if you can believe it or not. And these details are coming straight from the Patriots beat writers, you know, the ones

that actually cover the team and have a pretty good knowledge of what's going on in Foxborough and are not sitting behind a desk miles away speculating on what might be going on. But we'll leave that aside for a second. These sources are indicating that Bill Belichick and the Patriots football operations team indeed had no knowledge of what was going on in the Cleveland Browns press box on Sunday, December 8th. So the common narrative that you're hearing about the Patriots quote-unquote cheating again or once a cheater, always a cheater, that's a big one.

That's one that we're seeing a lot on social media. Folks, do yourself a favor. Ignore that and any of the other sludge, and that's exactly what it is, sludge, that you'll read from uninformed fan accounts on Twitter or anywhere else on social media. But one account that you can put a great deal of stock in, and I do always, is the account of the Athletics' Jeff Howe, who was the beat writer for the Athletic Boston. And on Tuesday, he published a piece that outlines this fiasco from start to finish. And as always, Jeff does an amazing job here.

The details he provides really gives an insight into why Bill Belichick was, quote, furious upon learning of the incident. And it starts with his sources telling him that the team staff videographers were actually working the Patriots-Kansas City Chiefs game at Gillette Stadium on Sunday. As a result, freelancers were hired to shoot the Do Your Job featurette in Cleveland, per Jeff's source. Now, the crew's producer was a full-time employee of the Patriots TV team. However, this producer was unaware of the league rules forbidding filming the field

from the press box and intended to use the footage as a B-roll. Now that's a term that I'm sure you've all heard bandied about over the course of the last couple of days. Some of you may know what B-roll footage is, some of you may not. Here's just a quick bit of insight on exactly what a B-roll is. In film and television production, folks, B-roll, or you might even hear it referred to as B-real, is defined as a supplemental or alternative footage intercut with the main shot you'll often hear these terms used in journalistic filmmaking and as in the case of documentaries and news stories in short folks it's cutaway footage

and in this case of the featurette on the scout it would be a bird's eye view so to speak on a perspective of what the scout is seeing it's's not stock footage, so don't confuse it with that. That's historical footage used for flashback sequences. B-roll is meant to be inserted in a real-time concept and take you into the eye of the film's subject. So in this case, what the scout would be seeing is the field, the sidelines, and the game itself. The A-roll, or the main footage, would be focused on the scout himself,

and the B-roll would be what he's seeing. Now, according to the Paul Dellerller jr report in the athletic yesterday the footage of the bengals sideline was approximately eight minutes now some have taken to twitter to say that eight minutes is way too excessive for b-roll footage but some filmmakers i spoke to yesterday said that eight minutes is often not enough depending on the filmmaker's vision of the finished product until the footage becomes available and what was on it is confirmed, its contents are going to be speculated. So what does that mean in terms of the Patriots and any potential penalty

or discipline from the league? Well, no one really knows quite yet, folks. As I stated here on Locked on Patriots yesterday, Judy Batista of NFL.com says the NFL is hoping to move quickly on whether or not there will be any discipline for the Patriots stemming from this incident. She adds it seems likely that the league is, quote, leaning toward believing the Patriots' version of the events, unquote. And several other insiders are indicating that the NFL could resolve their investigation

into the incident by the end of this week. And at present, the Patriots reportedly are not expected to receive harsh penalties. It should also be noted that Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who is in Dallas, Texas right now for the NFL League meetings, was seen walking out of a meeting yesterday with Commissioner Roger Goodell. And of course, reporters attempted to get him to stop and answer some questions. And he did decline to speak to reporters. However, he did look back and provide one soundbite and said, quote, you know everything you should know, unquote. So apparently Kraft's not talking anytime soon.

As for Bill Belichick, in his press conference today, he's done talking about this too, folks. And in this morning's press conference, he quickly diffused this subject. He cut off a question by a reporter by saying, quote, the football team, the football staff and the coaching staff had nothing to do with what happened. Nothing. We have no involvement in it, unquote. When he was asked a follow-up question about the scout in the press box and what he was doing, Belichick said, quote, he was doing his job. That's what he was doing, unquote. Now, how this will all shake out for the Patriots is anyone's guess, myself included.

There are simply too many dominoes that could still fall here. But one thing is certain. The Patriots have a game on Sunday, and the Pats are in need of a victory as they hit the road for their final regular season road trip this week when they attempt to snap a two-game losing streak against the Cincinnati Bengals at Paul Brown Stadium. Now, a lot more eyes may be on this one than originally thought, for obvious reasons. But today on Locked On, we are going to take a look at the Bengals team and let you know that despite a 1-11 record, they can still put up a fight in Cincy.

And Joe Goodberry and I will break that down in just a moment. However, before I proceed with that, I wanted to take a minute to address all you guys out there. And ladies, you'll appreciate this too. Now, this is a topic that is often taboo, but always commands your attention. And that is performance in the bedroom. Now you can increase your performance and get that extra confidence.

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and I am joined today by Joe Goodberry of Locked On Bengals. Joe, thank you for joining me today on Crossover Wednesday. Should be a great discussion today. Yes, sir. Thanks for joining me too, Mike. And it seems like we've got an interesting matchup, not on the field, but maybe a little bit off it. Well, absolutely.

And we definitely will get to that, folks. It's the story of the day. It's the story of the week. And we will talk about it here on Locked On Patriots and Locked On Bengals. But first, I'll take a little bit of time off of season in Cincinnati for the fans and for the team alike. Obviously, the record is not great. I'm not going to sugarcoat that. But there is talent on both sides of the ball in Cincinnati where they could string together a victory or two if the situation presents itself and if they're able to get there. Andy Dalton right now this season has been an anomaly. Obviously, he was benched earlier this season. He is now back in the lineup and playing,

and actually playing pretty well, believe it or not. When you take a look at the way the quarterback position has evolved all year for Kansas City, how do you see them being able to approach this game against such a stout Patriots defense? Yeah, starting with the quarterback position for the Bengals, I think their focus has been on the future, the entire season. And maybe it doesn't always evolve that way.

You know, I think sometimes teams have plans and either you win games or you lose games and those plans get altered, right? So they go into this and they look good week one versus Seattle, really go toe-to-toe with them in Seattle. And I think we all thought, okay, maybe this team might be decent this year. Maybe they'll at least be able to compete. And then quickly they end up 0-5. And in that range, we go, okay, this offense is really not clicking. Andy Dalton is not playing well. At 0-5, you start to have to think about the future. And it was quickly after that. We go into the bye week after eight games, and Andy Dalton's benched. And he's benched for a fourth-round rookie in Ryan Finley, who was dreadful for his three

performances. In fact, I think Andy Dalton may win two of those games if he was in. So maybe it's a good thing if their eye was on the future. And in fact, that is one of the only things Zach Taylor really said to Andy Dalton was we have to start looking at next year and the future of this team. And, you know, saying that it wasn't so much about Andy Dalton's play. It was more about they've got to have one eye on what's going to happen in April's draft. And I think everyone who's a football fan knows Joe Burrow and the season he's having

at LSU. So I think a lot of Bengals fans are looking at it like, all right, you're in this position now, so let's finish this over the last three weeks and end up with that number one pick. And that's clear goal number one. So the quarterback play hasn't been good. It's been really bad. Andy Dalton's been reinserted. And even though he's better than Ryan Finley, he's still performing as a bottom five quarterback

in the league right now as a starter. And when you have that, it's tough to win any games at all you guys know the difference between elite quarterback play and when you've had backups get in there or when Tom Brady has struggled in games here or there it's a big difference on how your team performs overall it can start to affect the defense too and that's that's definitely the case for the Bengals so that's where they're at right now I think they're okay with evaluating everyone and all the talent around them and just getting to next year. Yeah, and I think you're absolutely right. And that was really my assessment as well. And taking a look at what the Bengals bring to the

table, especially for this matchup, you hit the nail on the head with quarterback play. And look, the New England Patriots are no strangers to having some struggles at the quarterback position this year. It sounds crazy when you employ a quarterback like Tom Brady to talk about quarterback struggles and difficulties. But Brady's been up and down this year. I mean, you have to be honest in your assessment, and I definitely am when it comes to that. He's had his issues being able to get rid of the ball.

He's been pressured. Now, a lot of that has been because of the offensive line problems that the Patriots have had. Some of it has been because of infamiliarity with some of his offensive skill position players. Some of that is being worked out, but we still saw that. Even Raritz ugly head in the Patriots lost to the Kansas City Chiefs over the weekend. That's definitely been an issue that they will need to shore up. I think that Taylor definitely did a good job by seeing what he had in Finley.

And obviously, the experiment didn't work out so well. It really, you know, it struggled. But it showed the Cincinnati Bengals what the future was and whether or not they needed to roll the dice and take their chances of getting a guy. You mentioned Joe Burrow. Obviously, I think there's probably a lot of eyes on him in Kansas City, excuse me, in Cincinnati. And I think he'll be a good fit if everything plays out the way it should. But ultimately, you're right. A team has to make that step. They have to be able to see what they have at the quarterback position, and eyes are on the future.

I will just transition off into the Bengals' defense a little bit. And we talked about some of the offensive struggles that the Patriots have had this year. Obviously, one of their biggest struggles has been running the football. Sonny Michel has not been as prolific as a runner as he has been in years past. James White is typically being covered by defensive backs, which means that his productivity has been limited, even though when he does get looks, he makes the most out of them and is able to go with the Cincinnati Bengals. The run defense right now, I think is probably their best bet to try to slow down this Patriots offense, especially with the, I should say, even with the difficulties that the Patriots have had through the passing game.

I think that it probably is better for the Bengals to be able to try to stuff the run and try to have, you know, the Patriots beat them through the air. If you're the Bengals defense, being that you'd see this team day in, day out, you cover them, what is probably their best strength of their defense? And how would you attack this Patriots offense, knowing that Tom Brady could possibly go off and have one of his Tom Brady-like games at any time? I would say their strength is, it's kind of hard because our expectations for some of these players and what the strengths of this team should have been coming into the year definitely did not manifest. And I think part of that is having an inexperienced head coach, having an inexperienced defensive coordinator. They hired the defensive backs coach from the Giants because they couldn't

find anybody. They pieced together a bunch of different 3-4 multiple-look position coaches and tried to get this defense together in time for the season. And that's what they are. They're a multiple defense. They'll play some 5-2 fronts. They'll play some 3-4, some 4-3. Obviously heavy on the nickel package, as the rest of the league is. But it's a tale of two teams so far. When they got to the bye week, they were horrible.

I mean, you could fire Lou Anarumo during the bye week and no one would have batted an eye because it was that bad. You hear a lot of rumblings of fighting in the locker room and just responsibilities and roles and what are we doing and do the coaches know what they're doing and this and that, but then they come out of the bye week and they've been really, really good. And really, they've shut down, and it has been great opponents. I mean, the Raiders, the Jets, and the Browns, but they've been really good getting their hands on the ball.

Linebacker play has increased phenomenally. They were like a dreadful unit. They released Preston Brown. They insert third-round rookie Jermaine Pratt, and all of a sudden, they're more athletic, and they're actually playing defense like a team. So the strength should be their pass rushers. It should be Geno Atkins, Carlos Dunlap, Carl Lawson, and Sam Hubbard as your four-man line. And that line should get after you. And there are times when it really does.

But when the offense doesn't score any points, quickly they fade away as other teams can lean on the run and really keep you on your heels as a defensive line. So the last four weeks or so when the offense has scored a little bit more early in the game and the defense has held their own and kept the game close, those defensive linemen up front really shown out a lot. And that's their strength. Besides that, it's really Jesse Bates and William Jackson in the secondary. William Jackson can be a shutdown type guy. He can follow guys on the boundary left and right, and he will with number ones. He did with Odell Beckham last week, held him to one catch when he was covering

him. And Jesse Bates at safety, second year guy, just seems to get his hand on the ball a lot. He should have four interceptions over the last four weeks. One was called back due to a weak pass interference call, but still three interceptions over the last four weeks. One was called back due to a weak pass interference call, but still three interceptions over the last four weeks. He looks really good again. Those are their strengths. If you're going to attack them, though, I think right now B.W. Webb playing the other boundary corner is where I want to attack, and I think you can

beat him deep. He doesn't have great ball skills, and sometimes I think you can get him on double moves. Other than that, I think you still want to try and isolate the times when the Bengals get into their 3-4 or 5-2 looks. And they do these fire zone blitzes. And they're going to drop Carl Lawson or Carlos Dunlap or Sam Hubbard in the coverage. And these guys are true 4-3 ends. They have no business dropping out. They're not Cal Van Noy or anything for the Patriots.

So they get attacked as soon as they drop into coverage. And that's been the Achilles heel the last few weeks while the defense is playing well. I think offenses are waiting for you, okay, drop into coverage, and we're just going to attack Carl Lawson. Why wouldn't you? Yeah, and I think at that point, that's a very, very good point. And you mentioned the front seven just a little bit ago

before you started talking about the secondary. And to me, I think that's where the Patriots right now need to be concerned, because if there is one area on this team on offense that has really struggled consistently all year, it's been their offensive line. And even with the return of Isaiah Wynn, it's still been a problem for Brady to be able to be protected. He's been constantly forced to throw the ball away in the face of a lot of immediate and heavy pressure. That's led to a lot of problems with his completion percentage. And I'm sure if you've taken a look at Tom Brady's stat lines the last couple of weeks, his completion percentage is very un-Brady-like.

Dunlap is a talented edge rusher. You mentioned him. Atkins, I think, is capable of collapsing the pocket on the interior. The matchup to watch, if I'm a Patriots fan and a Bengals fan, is James Ferentz is actually probably going to be the starting center this week for the Patriots. Ted Karras is out once again with a knee injury, or it looks like he will be. I shouldn't say that he is out because that has not been confirmed yet. We'll know more on the practice fields Wednesday and Thursday, but it's looking like he probably will miss this game coming up against the Bengals. So if that's a possibility and this Bengals front seven can start getting pressure on

Brady, this could be a tougher game than people think. So I like what you said about the secondary and about, you know, the Patriots being able to challenge or maybe have some skill position players that could end up being either shut down or have some difficulty being able to get open against the secondary. So I actually think this is going to be a better game than a lot of people think. And that gives us something to think about when it comes to the New England Patriots and the Cincinnati Bengals this week. Well, Joe, it's been great definitely talking to you and picking your brain a little bit

about the Bengals, getting to know a little bit about their offense, their defense, some of the struggles and some of what they bring to the table. But in just a moment, we will flip the script here on Crossover Wednesday. a little bit about their offense, their defense, some of the struggles, and some of what they bring to the table. But in just a moment, we will flip the script here on Crossover Wednesday. Joe will put me on the hot seat when it comes to the New England Patriots' offensive woes, some of their defensive strengths. And yes, folks, we are going to get to that videotape. So in just a moment, Joe and I will flip the script and we'll continue here on Crossover Wednesday.

All right, we've got Mike from the Locked On Patriots. You've got me, Joe Goodberry, Locked On Bengals. And Mike, I want to ask, I want to, I guess we should kick it off. Let's start first with the videotape thing, because I think a lot of people are waiting for that or trying to get our take. This is the first time I've talked to a Patriots guy about it at all. I think we've kind of get into our own bubble and worry about it. And, you know, what does it mean for the Bengals? You know, it's a one in 12 team.

Why do they even care? I wonder what the Patriots first, like when you hear the news, are you shocked? Are you like, no, come on, they didn't do this or they didn't do it again. I guess you can kind of say, or what is your first reaction when you hear the news like this? To be honest, my first reaction was, what are they dredging up now? Because unfortunately, when it comes to Spygate, and Joe, there's been so much misinformation, I think, that's been put out about Spygate and even Deflategate throughout the years here with regard to the New England Patriots, their role, exactly what happened. It's difficult to take some of the national narrative seriously. So you at it and you say okay what's going on now now what are they accusing the patriots of and is this really something that we need to pay attention to

and then all of a sudden the story starts to take off and it starts to have legs a little bit you start to think that maybe it's not a big deal and then they issue the statement last night and when they issued the statement or i should say issued the statement on monday night and when they do that and they say we take full responsibility and you start to see this then all of a sudden that malaise that you had about this a few minutes ago all of a sudden starts to turn to oh my god not again what is going on here how could something like this have happened bottom line when, when it comes to the New England Patriots in this story, here's what we know for sure. Here are the actual details of what we know to be true when it comes to this.

The New England Patriots organization, and I should say Kraft Productions, and this is not the football operations end of the Patriots. This is the Kraft Productions end. This is basically audio, video and a separate production company than what goes on with the with the with the Patriots film operations. A camera crew accompanied a Patriots advanced scout to the Bengals Browns game on Sunday, December 8th. And that was at First Energy Stadium in Cleveland. The scout was being filmed for a feature that was that was produced by Kraft Productions, and it's called Do Your Job. And it's basically a series of vignettes where people will get up and talk about what their

job is within the Kraft organization and supporting or within the New England Patriots organization. Now, the video crew was credentialed by the Browns, who were the home team. They shot the video in the press box, and the Browns PR person was aware that they were indeed present. Now, the production crew, again, is separate from the football operations team. That may have led to some of the miscommunication and whether or not to notify the Bengals and to notify the league. That definitely should have been done. There's no question about that.

And that's what the Patriots were apologetic for in their statement. Now, that's what we know for sure the footage and i know that i did dig by due diligence to paul denner jr's article this morning in the athletic where he wrote that according to sources who have viewed the tape it shows about eight minutes of footage focusing on recording the bengals sideline it's a direct view of the sideline the players run on the field and the coaches are making signal plays. That sounds damning, but when you take a look at what the actual intent was of this video that the Patriots were trying to shoot, it's really, it's a documentary on what, it's almost like a day in the life of what an advanced scout is supposed to do. And yes, I think the video right now,

my concern, my eyebrow raised when I found out there were eight minutes of footage seems a little excessive if you're going to just be, you know, uh, you know, videoing something for a documentary and just getting an idea of what an advanced scout does all day. So ultimately it's going to be, it's going to lie within the hands of the league. I did see a report early on, and this was just reiterated, I think, late on Tuesday evening, that the NFL is going to be very quick to make a decision on this. They want to find out exactly what happened. They want to see the footage. It sounds like several people have seen that footage. So at this point, it really is in the

hands of the league. My assessment of this and from the people that I've talked to within the organization, it does lend merit to the fact that these two entities, Kraft Productions and the football operations team, may not have had their lines crossed, may not have been in sync when it came to what was going on. Football operations team might have been aware that something was going to be filmed, but probably wasn't intricately involved. And I think that's what led to the miscommunication here. Ultimately, I don't believe that the Patriots had any malicious intent. I don't think they were necessarily trying to steal the Bengals' signals.

If they did that, they were very nonchalant and very sloppy about the way they were doing it. First of all, the press box is not really the place where you want to try to get away with that. There are a lot of eyes on you. You're doing this wearing New England clothing, which obviously was there. And second of all, the fact that they're stealing signals is really, I think, something to maybe a little bit more of an archaic circumstance than it has been in years past. I think right now, anybody in the stadium could possibly do what the Patriots were doing from the press box if they were looking to try to get signals. You can get guys in there with a smartphone to be able to pick that up,

do it a lot more discreetly and under the radar than what the Patriots had done. So ultimately it's going to be in the hands of the league to be able to do this and find out exactly what went wrong. But I agree, the optics are definitely difficult to swallow. And ultimately, it's going to rest with the league about how lenient or how diligent they want to be about any type of punishment or any type of sanctions against the team. Yeah, and from my perspective, I don't care. I look at it like, yeah, this stuff probably happens to some level all across the league.

Yeah, the Patriots may have been in trouble for skirting the rules as many times as they can over the years. And to me, I don't care. I think if you're not trying to cheat, you're not trying to win. And I mean that in an honest way because I think there's always a competitive angle to getting the signals or the information from the other team as much as possible. So I think this stuff happens way more. I think it's very weird, and I think whatever happens, it doesn't benefit the Bengals in any way. So it just happens to be the Bengals.

So I guess I have to talk about it for a few minutes. But to be honest, it's whatever. I'd rather care about what's going on on the field. And speaking of which, we like to focus on the lockdown Bengals, a lot of player evaluation. You guys got a couple former Bengals, some of our favorite players, especially of the podcast, Rex Burkett, Muhammad Sanu. How are they fitting in? What are their roles right now? Especially Sanu, I'm kind of interested in because I'm not sure he's taken off the way. I thought he fit really well, and I'm not sure he's been the guy they've needed so far at receiver. Yeah mean I think a lot of what's been going on with Sanu is probably still

suffering a little bit from the high ankle sprain and I think that when you take a look at game film from him he looks like he's still pulling up and holding up a little bit from that burst that he's capable of getting he looked very good in the first game that he played in New England and the synergy with Tom Brady looked to be right on the money. And then after the injury, it seemed to tail off a bit. Now, I don't know if that's because there's been some practice issues with not being able to get on the same page, or again, if it's really labeled to his problems that he's had with the ankle. But ultimately, I do look for Sanu to be a productive member of this wide receivers core,

and I think he'll fit in nicely. When it comes to Burkhead, Burkhead has definitely been an asset since he's got here. The problem with Rex has always been keeping him healthy and keeping him on the field. When he's on the field and when he's in coverage, or when I should say when he's in, when he's available to get into the game, he's able to break coverages. He's able to create mismatches. Quite frankly, I'm a little surprised that Rex Burkett has not been utilized more out of the shotgun in the play action and being able to take and create a mismatch, maybe being matched up with a linebacker. A lot of times we've seen now with, especially with James White, who's being covered by a defensive back, either a safety or a cornerback, each of the games, they're game

planning now for James White because they're doubling Julian Edelman so much. That leaves Rex Burkhead with a lot of opportunity to create mismatches against the linebacker in coverage. Rex can be able to utilize that. I'm a little surprised we haven't seen that yet. I think we may see it this week. I think Rex right now is someone that's poised to come out and have a big breakout game. I don't believe he's hampered by any injuries. He has not showed up on any type of injury report. He's been a full participant for a good number of weeks now. So I look for him to be a much bigger part of this

offense. But ultimately, he is a guy that I think does have Tom Brady's trust simply because of some of the big moments he's had in New England since he's come here. Yeah, I I'm sure he'd like to have that game against the Bengals too after, you know, there was kind of seemed like they never really gave him the opportunity. Every time he played, he played really well for the Bengals. He's the same guy he was. This isn't a case where a player wasn't really good and the Patriots turned him into something other than that. He was good. They just, they kept drafting running backs and never gave him the opportunity. They drafted him the same year as Giovanni Bernard in the second round. They followed that up next year in the second round with Jeremy Hill,

and then ultimately went from Hill and Burkhead with Gio into Joe Mixon. So they just transitioned and just really left him in the dust, only giving him a few opportunities. The other guy I want to ask about is Isaiah Wynn. I know he's been injured really the last two years, and when he's played it seems like he's played well, but that was the guy we debated a lot for the Bengals with the 21st pick that year because the Bengals took Billy Price. Bengals really needed offensive line help.

You really felt like that's the way they would go. I advocated for Isaiah Wynn. I was a big fan of his. He was a top 12 player for me, number 12, so top 12 player for me. And I was not a huge fan of Billy Price, and now Billy Price is not starting for the Bengals. He's the backup center at this point to Trey Hopkins. How is Isaiah Wynn playing when he's healthy? When he's healthy, Isaiah Wynn is very effective.

He's definitely their starting left tackle when all is said and done. And look, they thought enough of him to be able to let Trent Brown walk in free agency. A lot of people think that, oh, he just walked away and the Patriots weren't going to match his deal. They very easily could have franchised him. Now, it would have been a hefty price, but the Patriots placed a high premium on offensive line talent. So it's not as crazy to think that they would have franchised Brown. They did let him walk because they had that much confidence in Wynn.

Unfortunately, the knock on him has been injury. The turf toe this year set him back it did hamper him a little bit and you can still see he's getting his legs back and trying to become that player that everybody thinks he can but there has been a difference in this offensive line since he's been able to come back the problem is is it's been offset by now the loss of Ted Karras who is going to be you know probably sidelined was sidelined against the Kansas City Chiefs as I alluded to earlier it's likely that he'll be sidelined for this game against the Cincinnati Bengals. Although we don't know for that for sure yet, and probably won't know until the end of the week, but when is

definitely a guy that can create some issues for defensive front sevens, he can block. He's a very good, he knows his, uh, his assignments and he's very good at being able to protect the blind side of the quarterback, and I know that's something Tom Brady appreciates. You've noticed a lot of times where Brady is either pressured completely up front and really has no time to be able to throw the ball, or he's back there for a few seconds. Against Houston, he actually was averaging more than three seconds per play to be able to get rid of the football. That's almost unheard of for a Tom Brady offense and the offensive line that's been protecting him this year and a lot of that was due to Wynn's presence so the healthier he gets the better the offensive line produces

and I think they're going to need him to be healthy down the stretch all signs indicate that he is healthy and he is playing at a high level I think it's just a matter of him getting his timing back at this point so my last question, so we can talk about the defense a little bit, because that is the strength of this Patriots unit. It's really what's carried them, I think, this entire season. How would you attack the Patriots? It's a top, if not the top defensive unit in the league, especially that secondary. How would you, if you're lining up and you don't even have to be the Bengals, so you're a generic team coached by Mike DeBate. How are you attacking this team?

Well, conventional wisdom would be to say that you would attack them by running the football. I think that's been their biggest difficulty all season long. The problem with that is the last few weeks, the Patriots have become much better at stopping the run. Guys like Lawrence Guy and Adam Butler have come up big in that front set to be able to stuff the run. And Danny Shelton really has been a good anchor at nose tackle all year long. So maybe running the football is not as much of an attack as you would want to see.

The key that I think you've seen teams like the Baltimore Ravens, like the Houston Texans, and just the other night against the Kansas City Chiefs, is using those run-pass options, utilizing the tight end. That's a difficult position for the Patriots to be able to defend. Prolific big tight ends sometimes can give them difficulties, and you've seen that. Ultimately, mobile running quarterbacks are definitely going to be a problem for this team. So they're going to have to develop a scheme.

They're going to have to develop some sort of synergy on their defensive line to be able to stop that. It's very difficult to attack this team in the secondary. You've seen so many times this year where the secondary has been challenged and they've won out. They've either shut down the opposing team's best option or they've been able to pick off quarterbacks with ease. You even saw J.C. Jackson pick off Patrick Mahomes in the first quarter against the Kansas City Chiefs. The challenge, the secondary, is very, very difficult. They're well-conditioned.

The linebackers are very athletic. Maybe don't have the speed that they need to. And to me, I think that's where this team really needs to be a little bit better going into the playoffs. The speed of the linebacker position is something that has been a problem, and that's where you can have some sort of success running the ball against the Patriots and maybe even short passes either in play action or getting up and going no huddle in the line of scrimmage. But if you have to challenge the secondary, that's definitely not the way to beat the Patriots. It's either try to run the football or try to exploit the speed of the linebacker position. Well, great.

So it doesn't sound like the Bengals are going to be able to exploit them at all. So you want to do a projection? You never know, Joe. That's why they play the games on paper. The way the Patriots have been playing the last couple of games, it's all up in the air. So you know what? You never take anything for granted. You want to give predictions?

Sure. I'd be more than happy to give a prediction. I know I said that this game might be a little bit closer than people think. I still believe it will. I still like the Patriots in this. They're coming off of two very difficult losses for the New England Patriots, and that's an organization that's not used to losing two in a row, let alone three in a row. I know the Bengals want to give them a game, and I actually think they will give them a little bit of a game.

But at the end, I do think that the Patriots offense a little bit and the defense continues to make stops. I like the Patriots in this one 24 to 14. That's good. I was going to say 26-13, so we're pretty close. I think the same thing. I think we'll come away at halftime and go, wow, this is a 17-10 game or something in that range, or 16-10.

I'll be like, it's a pretty close game. And then the better team will pull away. Well, we'll see. Again, you know what? Again, that's why they play the games on the field, not on paper. So we will see. And hopefully it'll be a good game. And I think the Patriots, I think it's safe to say, Patriots are going to leave the cameras at home, folks.

Yes, they will. All right, Mike, this is Joe Goodberry here, Lockdown Bengals, Lockdown Patriots. Enjoy the weekend. Absolutely. Enjoy the weekend. Thank you very much for today. Always a pleasure to join you guys on Crossover Wednesday. And I enjoyed this, Joe. Enjoy the game on Sunday.

Take care. And I hope that you have enjoyed this Crossover Wednesday episode between Lockdown On Patriots and Locked On Bengals here on the Locked On Podcast Network. As for me, I will be back tomorrow to bring you the latest news notes and analysis from Patriots Nation and I'll also continue to look ahead to the

Patriots matchup against the Cincinnati Bengals this Sunday at 1pm. As always, be sure to join me each and every day on Locked On Patriots on the Locked On Podcast Network. Please subscribe and download via your preferred podcast provider. I thank Joe Goodberry of Locked On Bengals for joining me on today's podcast. But most of all, I thank each and every one of you for listening and staying locked in to Locked On Patriots.

Once again, I'm Mike DeBate. Best wishes and have a great day, everyone.