Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots April 4, 2018 - A Quasi-Emergency Trade Edition

Episode Date: April 4, 2018

The Patriots send WR Brandin Cooks and a 4th Round Pick to the Rams for a 6th Round Pick...and the 23rd overall selection. Is a QB in play now? Will they address two positions of need. Could they move up again for...Josh Rosen? A quasi-emergency trade edition of Locked On Patriots.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Good evening and welcome into Locked On Patriots for Tuesday evening, April 3rd, 2018. This is going to be the episode for Wednesday, April 4th, but I'll drop it early because this is a quasi-emergency edition of Locked On Patriots. Some news breaking this afternoon, which we'll get into but before we do that a reminder to follow me on Twitter at Mark Schofield. Follow the work over at insidethepylon.com where I'm one of the lead writers covering a variety of football topics from the NFL to the NFL draft. Follow my draft work at Inside the Pylon as well as the Inside the Pylon draft guide as well as youtube.com backslash Inside the Pylon with all of the first sound videos. Also, my debut piece

over at Pro Football Weekly is up. That's a piece where I took on the role of Dr. Frankenstein and created the perfect draft quarterback using bits and pieces from the quarterbacks eligible for the 2018 NFL Draft. You can check that out over at profootballweekly.com. For example, I used Baker Mayfield's eyes, Josh Rosen's mind, Josh Rosen's feet, Lamar Jackson's legs and wrist, Baker Mayfield's heart, and on down the line. So check that out as well. Excited to be contributing over that.

That's a publication that I read religiously as a kid. And now to have a byline over there, it's kind of surreal. But this whole strange little trip has been surreal. What's also surreal, some news breaking this afternoon. Again, we're taping this on Tuesday and word came out later this afternoon or earlier this afternoon, given that's the right expression, I believe, that the Patriots were trading wide receiver Brandon Cooks in a fourth round pick to the Los Angeles Rams for a first round pick. That's the 23rd pick overall, as well as a sixth round pick. Now, before we dive into current state of play for the New England Patriots,

the Los Angeles Rams, my goodness, if you wanted confirmation that given the economic realities of life in the salary cap era, the quickest way to become competitive is to get a good quarterback, play it on his rookie deal. Look at the LA Rams right now. I mean, you add Dominick and Sue. You add via trade Brandon Cooks, you add via trade Marcus Peters, you add via trade Aqib Tlaib. I mean, they are loading up for a run here. Now, yes, the window will close at some point. At some point, they're going to have to pay Jared Goff if he

continues to play well. And given the weapons they're adding on both sides of the ball, you have to think that Jared Goff will continue his good play. So again, the path to being competitive quickly is to get a rookie quarterback on his rookie deal, playing at a sufficiently high enough level that you can be competitive, and then you add pieces around him. So that's, I mean, the Rams add another piece. Brandon Cooks, boom, another playmaker for Sean McVay in that offense. But now you look at the New England Patriots, and strangely enough, again, the offseason of unease continues here. Because as with every sort of Patriots move, there's the usual questions.

Do we trust Bill Belichick? Do we trust what he's doing? Wide receiver was a strange position of need, I thought, coming in to the offseason. You had questions about Amendola, questions about Edelman's health, Malcolm Mitchell's health. Now they trade away Brandon Cooks. They've added Cordell Patterson, sure. They have Brandon back, Kenny Britt, sure. You expect to get Malcolm Mitchell back. I get it. You expect to get Danny Amendola, excuse me, Julian Edelman back. I get it. You still have Chris Hogan you still Philip Dorsett like they have some pieces but you know the loss of Brandon cooks is a curious move and so I I want

to see how this plays out as As with any move like this, your snap analysis is not often going to be correct because you have to see the true return on this. And you also have to take this into the context, obviously, of the Robert Gronkowski situation. Is Gronkowski coming back? Well, I think that the Patriots have to believe he is because I'd find it a little odd

if they were going to trade away a 1,000-yard receiver not knowing that their 1,000-yard tight end was whether he was returning or not. But, I mean, you could look at the Patriots now running out a three-receiver set with Edelman, Hogan, and Dorsett or Mitchell or Britt or Patterson? Is that gangbusters? No. Is that workable with Robert Gronkowski on the field as well? I think so. Do I expect the Patriots to draft a wide receiver now? I do. I did coming in.

Again, I thought it was an understated position of need coming in. And now I think you have to add somebody. But as we're going to talk about in a minute, this instantly kicks off the, okay, well, what else is going to happen? What are they going to do with this pick now? Because when you look at where the Patriots currently sit in the draft, they've got a number of picks now in the top 100. You've got picks at 23 and 31 in the first round. You've got picks at 43 and 63 in the second. You've got a pick at 95 in the third.

That's four picks in the first two rounds, five in the first 100. That's a lot that you can get. And if you go to, for example, tankathon.com, which is one of the many sort of draft-related, draft order sites out there. I'm looking at it right now. And judging on sort of big-board rankings,

the players that you could get with those picks, Leighton Vander Esch at 23, the linebacker out of Boise State. We've talked about him a lot. Maurice Hurst, the defensive tackle from Michigan, who's probably a top 10 talent, but because of the recent heart concerns, he might slide a little bit. And then you're getting a potential top 10 defensive tackle at 31. Ronald Jones, the running back from USC at 43. Carlton Davis, the sort of bigger corner. We talked about him with Luke Ingman at 63. And then Duke Adjafor, the defensive end for Wake Forest. With your first five picks, five players that if you talk to various people,

they're all really high on. I know the Wake Forest defensive end was getting some attention the other day on Twitter. That's a pretty impressive haul. Now, as we're going to talk about on the other side, there are some other players that people instantly thought of when this trade was made. That's ahead. That's next with me, Mark Schofield, and Locked On Patriots. Mark Schofield back with you now,

and we're doing a little instant reaction to today's news. The Patriots making a move, trading Brandon Cooks in a fourth round pick to the Los Angeles Rams for a sixth round selection as well as Los Angeles' first round pick in this draft. That's a 23rd pick overall. Now obviously, when teams start to make moves up the draft board, the first thing that people think of is the quarterback position. And this move was no different, particularly off the bat from yours truly. Obviously being a quarterback guy,

my first thought was they're at 23 now. They're closer into that range where you might see a Mason Rudolph come off the board. Or my first reaction was a Lamar Jackson. And we've talked about Lamar Jackson a lot on this show. I've talked about Lamar Jackson a lot on other places as well. I have a firm belief that Lamar Jackson can be a very good quarterback in the National Football League. But like with most quarterbacks, not all, as we're going to talk about in a second, but like with most quarterbacks, Lamar Jackson's ultimate success or lack thereof in the National Football League will be determined because of two things.

One, his own work. Of course, that's true for anybody. And two, what's true for most is the landing spot, where he ends up, the team he ends up with, the scheme he ends up playing in, the coaches he ends up playing for. And for a variety of reasons, I've long felt that the New England Patriots was the perfect destination for Lamar Jackson. You have a scheme that he's familiar with, the Ernst Perkins system, which he ran at Louisville. In the show that dropped earlier today, I talked about how you saw development in Lamar Jackson as a pocket quarterback over the past season. And I talked a little bit about the piece over Monday Morning Quarterback

where Petrino put more on his plate from a decision-making standpoint, gave him freedom and autonomy to make checks at the line of scrimmage. These are the types of mental decisions that NFL quarterbacks have to make. They want to show some development in him as a pro-style quarterback. And for whatever you want to say about his offense and his style of play, were there times two years ago when he relied too much on his legs? I certainly believe that's the case. But I also believe in the past year, he took a great step forward as a pocket passer. So you have that.

You have the fact that, yes, he needs work, but he'll get time to work on what he needs to work on because he won't have to play right away. He's somebody that I think you can build an offense around and he can be effective as a quarterback early in his career, perhaps as a rookie. But obviously, if he comes to New England, he's not going to see the field unless Tom Brady is hurt and they decide that he's a better option than Brian Hoyer. So it's an ideal type situation. There's a schematic marriage that makes sense. There's the fact that he won't have to play right away so he can work on what he needs to work on. So I instantly tweeted it out when this trade went down. I work on my gift game all the time. I tweet it out. Me, when Lamar is on the board at 23 and it's a picture of a happy Ron Swanson doing a little dance. But then reality sort of sets in and my follow-up tweet was that was another gif of larry david

kind of giving you a little meh and the caption to that was me when the patriots draft sam hubbard and colton miller 23 and 31 because let's face it as excited as it is to sort of consider the Patriots making a move up the draft board, they don't typically go up and get first-round quarterback types. That's not a Patriots move. That's not a Belichick move. They might get into the first round, have double picks in the first round.

When they did that the last time, when they had two picks in the first round, it was Chandler Jones and Dante Hightower. So, you know, something similar with an edge defender in Hubbard and the offensive tackle they need to replace Nate Solder and Colton Miller, that's probably in reality what the New England Patriots are going to do, right? I mean, we've all seen scripts like this before. So the idea of a quarterback at that first initial moment, it hits you. It's like, oh, they're coming up the board.

They're going to go get a quarterback. They're going to go get their guy. Maybe it'll be Lamar Jackson because that would be fun, right? Or maybe it's Mason Rudolph. And while I've admitted to being sort of underwhelmed about the prospects of Mason Rudolph, if they believed in him and I could see a situation where it could work in this offense, then I'd be all for it. Okay.

But then the reality sort of sets in and you start to realize that, okay, well, it's probably not going to be that. We're back into the sort of Kyle Lauletta realm of the draft, which I'd be perfectly fine with, especially in the third round or so. And if you bring in a nice little haul before that, with those four picks before, that 95th pick, which might be the sweet spot for Lauletta, great.

But then a thunderbolt from out of nowhere comes from a form of a tweet from the one and only Benjamin Aubrey. Who, again, great, great guy. Got a chance to spend some time with him down at Mobile at the Senior Bowl. Fantastic guy. Looks great in that fuchsia dinner jacket, which he did wear to the bars, which was a hilarious thing to see. But he texted at around six o'clock, five o'clock, six o'clock at night on the East Coast, just got a text about the Patriots and interest in Josh Rosen. And that's a tricky question that's a tricky proposition because let's do it sort of the simple way you look at that sort of draft pick value

chart that always gets bandied about this time of year. And the value for that second overall pick is 2,600. And if you take all five of those Patriots picks in the first three rounds, you're not matching that. So you're obviously going to have to throw in some future first round picks as well. It's a big lift.

It's hard to imagine the Patriots being able to get to two. Which is where I think you might have to get to if Josh Rosen's your guy. But what if it's four? What if, sake of argument, you see Donald come off the board at one, Saquon Barkley come off the board at two, Josh Allen or Baker Mayfield at three, and Rosen's sitting there at four? Pick 23, pick 31 31 and pick 43 that's at least by this chart slightly

worth worth slightly more than that fourth overall pick at least by this chart so is there a scenario where Josh Rosen could be on the board at four? Yeah, I think we just walked through it. Could the Patriots get up to four from where they are right now and draft Josh Rosen? It's theoretically possible. Would they do it? It would stun me beyond belief. Again, I'm a huge fan of Josh Rosen. He's my favorite quarterback on the field in this class. I think he's plug and play.

I'd be overjoyed if he was the guy to take over. But it would stun me. I still sit here tonight, the evening of April 3rd. I can't imagine the Patriots moving up to four to draft a quarterback, knowing that he's probably not going to play for at least the next two years.

They would have to absolutely love him. Maybe they do. Maybe they read my work. Who knows? But maybe they do. But the read my work. Who knows? But maybe they do. But the fact that Ben tweeted that out and Ben's plugged in, Ben knows people.

There's got to be some truth to that. And we know that they've been doing their homework on quarterbacks. And so the ability, just the mere thought of them going up to get a Josh Rosen, it's exciting, but again, let's come back to reality for a second. The truth of the matter is, we all know what's going to happen. This is Sam Hubbard at 23, or Leighton Vander Esch at 23,

or Fred Warner at 23, or whoever you want to say a 23 and then Colton Miller or Tyrell Cosby, the other offensive tackle from Oregon, a 31, right? Or maybe it's an Isaiah Wynn, a 23 and Sam Hubbard at 31. Or maybe Mike Hughes at 31 and they go

corner. I imagine they're going to use this to fill two more immediate needs rather than going up to get Josh Rosen. And it pains me to say that as a quarterback guy. But it gives us more stuff to talk about, right? And it's interesting to see the Patriots moving a bit up towards the top of the draft now. And there are some things they can stay moving.

I mean, you look at the pick chart, you look at the value chart. Again, not everybody swears by it, but those two first-round picks, you can package those and get up into the early teens at least in value and here's a fun one to think about in this I will admit I got a variation of this thought tweeted to me this evening from Hatham Winterbottom, who is at Hathiam, H-A-I-T, H-A-M underscore Winters, W-I-N-T-E-R-S on Twitter. He sent a tweet. It was basically like, could they get,

and the gist of it was, could they get to nine and where the 49ers are picking right now? And you add the, again, you go to this chart that ninth pick is worth 1350 points dollars whatever you want to call it chips trinkets fluff and bottoms whatever whatever word you want to associate with What's 23 and 31 worth? 1360. It's just slightly more than that ninth pick. Could the Patriots get to nine? Sure.

They could possibly do that. And then who knows what happens from there. If they somehow get to nine in the next couple of weeks, then it's game on, friends. Wouldn't that be something? If the Patriots maneuver another trade or two here involving the 49ers to go up and get Josh Rosen. Talk about life, full circle, circle of life, Simba, all that stuff. But these are the things we get to do for the next couple of weeks up until the NFL draft.

It is fun. It is exciting. It's like playing Madden all over and over and over again. And that's why you keep coming back, right? Because it gives us something to talk about each day. Speaking of something to talk about, I will be back. Again, this is Wednesday's show that I'm dropping earlier than Tuesday. I will be back Thursday.

Who knows? By then, Patriots might have the second overall pick. Who knows? If something breaks, I'll hop on the mic. Until then, keep it locked right here to me, Mark Schofield and Locked on Patriots.