Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - LOCKED ON PATRIOTS - Aug. 30, 2016 - Knighton out, Sheard up, Long surpassing expectations

Episode Date: August 29, 2016

The Boston Herald's Jeff Howe dedicates this show to the defensive front, which is on a tear this offseason and had a few developments in recent days. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Learn more about our healthy benefits at fepblue.org slash getmore. What's up, everybody? This is Locked on Patriots. I'm your host, Jeff Howe of the Boston Herald, and this is your show for Tuesday, August 30th, the first day of cutdowns this week. Patriots have a handful of moves to make on Tuesday to get down to the 75 man limit. That shouldn't be too difficult. Probably going to be a bunch of roster long shots.

We'll handle some of those on Wednesday's show, but I don't think it's going to be any huge names at this point because they have some guys at the bottom of the roster that they can probably unload to get to 75. But the big news that came out of Wednesday, or not of Wednesday, I'm getting a day ahead of myself, the big news that came out of Monday was the release of Terrence Knighton, which everybody had really seen coming in the last handful of days, but the timing of it was interesting. Now just to back up, Knighton, the 30-year-old,

was playing deep into the fourth quarter against the Bears in the second preseason game, and then was the only member of the Patriots who made the trip to Charlotte last week to play the Panthers, but then was held to the sideline for the duration of the game. That's pretty embarrassing for any player, let alone a guy who is a tenured veteran, has experienced quite a bit or accomplished quite a lot in the NFL. And again, to be held on the sideline for that amount of time, it's pretty embarrassing for a guy to have to go through that and then have to answer those questions and take your hat off to Knighton for doing that after Friday night's game. But the timing was interesting because Knighton met with Bill Belichick on Saturday to discuss his role with the team.

The Patriots were back at Gillette Stadium on Sunday for meetings, and then Monday morning was when Knighton was informed of his release. So I'm just curious, you know, why does it take so long to reach a decision that I think everybody, at least on the outside, and probably even Knighton himself, saw was coming, or at least was a few days in the making? And then, you know, back it it up even more i don't think it's unfair to ask why the the move wasn't made before the panthers game why take him on the trip when even though the patriots didn't tell knighton that he wasn't going to play the patriots had to know the coaches had to have some sort of idea that there was a chance the knighton was was not going to play in that game i mean you saw guys like guys like Woodrow Hamilton and Joe Villano, young defensive tackles, or in Villano's case,

really, I mean, Hamilton's a rookie, but in Villano's case, he's been around with the team for a handful of years now. The Patriots know what they have in Joe Villano, and that's a guy who's not going to make the 53-man roster. So anyway, the financial aspect of that deal is interesting too, because the Patriots gave Terrence Knighton a $250,000 signing bonus. Knighton earned $104,000 and change in an offseason workout bonus, so now you're up to $354,000 that the Patriots had given Knighton in bonuses this offseason. That's a good chunk of change to eat right there, and that's a swing and a miss that the Patriots had in the offseason with Knighton. You add that to last week's cut of running back Donald Brown,

who got $300,000 in guaranteed money, and the Patriots are already out $650,000 on two guys who couldn't make the team for whatever reason. So let's get to the defensive tackle position. This show is really just going to be about the front seven. I have a handful of quick notes that I want to get to. Front seven has been as big of a story with this team as any throughout the offseason and into the preseason, but I just have a handful of things that I wanted to get to,

clearly starting with the release of Knighton. But the Patriots now have malcolm brown and vincent valentine who are two roster locks brown is an easy one of course is their best defensive tackle in a first round pick from last year valentine's a third rounder who is playing better as the weeks go on but as a third round pick there was no chance the patriots were going to release him he's been a lock since day one then you go to the trio of Anthony Johnson Alan Branch and Marcus Kuhn and I could see them keeping all five including Brown and Valentine but you know I wouldn't be surprised if one of those guys doesn't make the team Anthony Johnson what he's done the last two

weeks has been incredible I find out find it really hard to believe that they would release him. Alan Branch, very well respected in the locker room. Coaches love him once he gets his conditioning right and kind of gets back into playing shape, which they know, again, I've been over this before, takes a month or two into the regular season for that to happen, but they keep him around because they know how productive Branch is once the season really gets going. And, again, it would have made sense if the Patriots were going to release him or had thoughts of releasing Branch, you would have figured it would have happened when they suspended him

about a week and a half ago. So Branch is back in the system now, said all is good. He wasn't going to disclose why the suspension happened, because Bill Belichick also didn't give out any information on that. So they're moving forward. And then you've got Marcus Kuhn, who has been, you know, just okay at best, really, I think, so far in the preseason. Doesn't stick out in one way or the other if he's

your fifth defensive tackle on the roster and you want to make sure you have good depth there because you're going to have some three four elements I understand keeping him around but I wouldn't keep Kuhn over Branch or Anthony Johnson at this point so the Patriots go to four you know who I'm getting rid of if they stay stay with five, then again, I totally understand that just because there's going to be some three, four elements here. And I think it's better to have those big bodies in the middle as opposed to trying to wear down some of your defensive ends by sticking them over the guards in those situations.

It doesn't always work out. Not everybody is cut out to do that. I think you also take away from a guy, let's say, in the past it's been Chandler Jones. This year we've noticed Chris Long sliding inside a bit. You don't want to take away a player's best asset by sliding him inside as basically a defensive tackle. So that's why I would keep five if that's what they want to end up doing. Moving on from there, speaking of Chris Long, check out a story that I have in Tuesday's Herald on Long and the way that he has really surpassed expectations this offseason, really this preseason.

He's been outstanding, and you could tell that a weight has really been lifted off his shoulders and definitely his brother's shoulders. here with the Bears a couple weeks ago was saying that it was he was really excited that Chris Long looked explosive athletic and strong the way that he had before the last two years of injury issues that he dealt with so I think that was a good sign that somebody as close to Long as his brother is beaming over the fact that he looks right again and And I was asking Long about this, and he said, hey, you know, I've narrowed my focus. And I was led to believe that it kind of wore on Chris Long to have those injury issues, to continuously hear the same questions, to hear the criticism about the former number two overall pick

and why he can't get on the field or stay on the field during his last two years with the Rams. So he's kind of narrowed his focus. And he said he understood that was cliche to go day by day. But you know what, whatever it takes when you're 31 and you're trying to get through this phase of the calendar, trying to get toward the regular season, if you're going to go with that day by day mantra, hey, I get it. But again, it's working for him. If you're seeing the results, hey, who cares if it's cliche, right? And right now, Chris Long is a team high or tied with Trey Flowers with five quarterback pressures in the three preseason games. They've actually all come in the last two preseason games for Long.

He's also drawn two holding penalties against offensive linemen, or against the offense I should say one was against a tight end so that leads the team that shows a level of disruption a holding penalty in some cases is almost as good as a sack so Chris Long's been really disruptive and what I think is important for him when they get Jabal Sheard and Rob Ninkovich back and they can pair those two guys with Long and Trey Flowers. You've got four defensive ends that you can rotate. That means you're making sure a guy like Chris Long, nothing's guaranteed,

but you're going a long way toward ensuring Chris Long doesn't wear down over the course of the season as a 31-year-old. Ditto for Rob Ninkovich as a 32-year-old, especially coming back from an injury. You're not asking too much from a guy like Trey Flowers, who was going to play his first full season in the NFL after injuries cut his rookie season short. And same with Jabal Sheard. I kind of hyped him up as a guy who was going to play 95% of the snaps this season, but he had an ankle issue last year that kept him out of three games. He's got a sprained MCL right now that is going to keep him out for about four weeks, or at least up until the regular season opener, you would think. So a guy who has had injury issues for two years now, maybe you just don't want to give him the burden of playing 90 to 95% of the snaps. So if you've got four guys right playing 90 to 95 percent of the snaps so you got four guys

right there who are able to rush the passer and you trust all of them in all three downs you're in a great you're in a great situation and i said it before i wrote it earlier this summer this is the the first time bill belichick has had four guys that he can trust to play extensively now assuming that he does believe that trerey Flowers is a three-down player, I don't think there's anything we've seen over the last three games that suggests otherwise. I mean, the kid is trying to pull off his best Khalil Mack impression so far this summer. He's been just tremendous, an absolute firecracker as a pass rusher, and a guy who deserves as many snaps as he can get in the regular season. So, the Patriots are in a good spot there,

and part of the story that I wrote about Chris Long again in Tuesday's Herald is the way that he has surpassed expectations and you look at the contract that he got it's a one-year 2.5 million dollar deal that took him four weeks to get four weeks to the day after he was released by the Rams and this was a guy who the entire league could have gone after right away and it took him four the Rams, and this was a guy who the entire league could have gone after right away, and it took him four weeks to sign, and it was said that Chris Long turned down money to join the Patriots, but, you know, who knows how much money he actually turned down. It's a little, it probably wasn't a lot, I mean, you just, yeah, he's made enough

money over the course of his career, especially as a second overall pick in 2008 before the rookie wage scale. But this is a guy who wasn't going to get overloaded with a huge contract with a ton of guaranteed money, but ultimately we can only go by what he signed. And that was a one-year $2.5 million deal that included $1 million in guaranteed money and a $500,000 signing bonus. So you look at the defensive ends who signed as free agents, as unrestricted free agents, not including the restricted guys or anything like that this offseason. There were 25 defensive ends who got at least a million dollars

in average annual value in their contracts, whether it was a one-year $1 million deal or a two-year $2.5 million deal, deal whatever if your contract included a million dollars in average annual value there were 25 of those defensive ends this offseason and chris long signing bonus again 500 000 was the 12th most among that group his guaranteed money of a million dollars was tied for the 15th most along with jared crick and derrick shelby so i mean two fairly average defensive ends and then average annual value he was up to the 16th most so this was again not a big fish in in agency. And, you know, the Patriots didn't give him, they didn't know that this was coming. They couldn't be completely sure that Chris Long was going to be off to this

type of start. And that's, you know, I'm not trying to get too far ahead of myself and say that there's no way Chris Long doesn't, you know, wear down at some point because we just don't know. But what we've seen or what we can judge him by is three preseason games where he's been really, really good. And he is surpassing those expectations and giving the Patriots just another weapon on that defensive front, which is again being made deeper. I mentioned Sheard in the sprained MCL. He was out of practice on Monday, participated in positional drills, and then it looked like he was going to get ready to

participate in team drills when the media session ended. And that's the most work that he's done since spraining that MCL on August 11th. So the four-week recovery timetable gets him ready in time for that regular season opener against the Cardinals, and his participation in Monday's practice goes a long way toward validating that claim because Monday was 13 days before the opener, so he's still got time to build up strength in that knee to make sure that he can be back for that game. These guys are generating a really good pass rush, as you've seen through these three preseason games, and it's leading to turnovers. The Patriots have six interceptions, two fumble recoveries on defense right now. They've scored two defensive touchdowns this preseason. And, you know, obviously that's massive, but it's big for a couple of reasons.

And the one reason, I mean, clearly you want to be as good as possible with Jimmy Garoppolo in those first four games. But it was an area of weakness that the Patriots had that was uncharacteristic in 2015 for a Bill Belichick defense. These guys, they got off to a pretty good start from a turnover or a takeaway perspective, but their last 10 games, when they went five and five, they had more than one takeaway in just one, one of those games. And it was a victory in the Jaguars game, but excuse me, I'll figure out exactly what game that was in a second. I don't know if it was, I got that part wrong, but it was, there was only one of those games in the last 10, including the playoffs, when they had more than one takeaway.

And ultimately what it led to was the Patriots having just 21 takeaways last season, which was ranked 22nd in the NFL. Just uncharacteristic for a Belichick defense. How uncharacteristic? It was the second fewest takeaways the Patriots had in Belichick's 16 seasons as head coach. So they weren't able to take the ball away when it counted, and it hurt them. Because, I mean, how many times are you watching this offense slump down the stretch especially in the AFC championship game I absolutely remember thinking to myself these guys need to take away because the Denver defense was playing too good and the Patriots offense was just a little too sloppy because

guys like Edelman and Gronkowski just you could just tell they just weren't completely themselves or I shouldn't you know Gronk was pretty good but Edelman you know it just takes away from being able to do exactly what you want to do on offense in terms of just moving the ball keeping drives alive there just wasn't enough consistency it was too reliant upon the big play when I said the Jaguars earlier I meant the Titans game so it was too reliant on the big play and now and they needed a turnover they needed short fields if jimmy garoppolo struggles which he undoubtedly will at various times in the first four games there's going to be a time when they're going to need the defense to help them out

and even if the defense is a top five unit you know i spoke to devin mccordy on monday about them being a top five unit he says i spoke to devin mccordy on monday about them being a top five unit he says it doesn't really matter what they are where their ranking is of course they want to be as great of a defense as they possibly can and if they're top five defense that's great but it doesn't matter if they're not playing well week in and week out you go into a cardinals team in week one that could ultimately turn into the highest scoring team in the regular season this year at least has the firepower to do so you got to think that they're going to have their way i shouldn't say have their way they're going to have some success against the patriots defense

especially at home so they're going to they're going to have to play good complementary football and getting that pass rush is going to go a long way toward doing that uh logan ryan's interception the other night against carolina is a good example jamie collins blitz kind of threw everybody off at the line of scrimmage and then you had trey flowers coming in and forcing a quick throw so logan ryan knew the check at the line knew that the ball was probably going to be coming out soon knew that there was a good chance because of the check that he recognized that it was going to be going in his direction so they're working in tandem they're working in conjunction with one another the pass rush the back end you've got defensive backs with good ball skills so that's why you know you're seeing

things work as well as they are and it's the the deepness, I guess, the amount of guys that they can throw, the Patriots can throw at you from a defensive perspective, it's impressive. And the depth, you can't sleep on that depth. When you overuse your defensive ends, like the Patriots have done in years past with Rob Nankovich and Chandler Jones, those guys wear down, especially in late December or January when the Patriots play a lot of their football. Those are the games that count for this team a whole lot more than the ones earlier in the year when the weather's hot. You know,

it's cold out. You just don't want those guys to be wearing down. So to have this depth is is really important so sheared coming back is big we'll see what happens the rest of the way with that roster but you know barkevious mingo made his practice debut and he was used as a 3-4 outside linebacker during the positional drill portion of practice that doesn't mean that he wasn't going to change or whatever. His practice went along and they closed the doors. It doesn't mean that they won't do something different with him Tuesday or next week or what have you, because Bill Belichick said they're going to try him and see what he's good at and where they can put him. Now, Mingo really is an edge player. The Browns tried him as an off-the-line linebacker, more of an inside linebacker type, but again, he was doing that with their third and fourth stringers, and they

weren't going to keep him on the roster, so he wasn't doing it good enough. So that means Mingo is added to the mix as an edge guy, and you right now have, we'll go through it again rob ninkovich and jeval sheared chris long and trey flowers shay mcclellan's an edge guy or at least a 3-4 outside linebacker if you want to call them that you know maybe they kick them inside and then you've got barkevious mingo there's six edge guys right there and that you know that's tough for a guy like Geno Grissom, a guy like Rufus Johnson, two guys who have played well in the preseason only when the backups have been on the field. Geno Grissom was a third-round pick last year. It's tough to cut bait with a guy who's that high of a pick as quickly as the Patriots might have to,

but when you're talking about keeping a minimum of four defensive tackles and maybe five, like I discussed earlier, and then six defensive ends or edge guys, if you want to call them that, then you're getting toward double digits there in terms of guys who are going to play on the defensive line or right on the first level of the defense, however you want to term it. And that's not to mention a guy like Dante Hightower, who can play a 3-4 outside linebacker type.

So, you know, the Patriots have a lot of options up there. They also have a lot of talented bodies, and they've got some guys that they've given or devoted some high assets to, namely Geno Grissom, who might not make the 53-man cut. And it'd be surprising if Grissom slipped through waivers because a third-round pick from a year ago on a very affordable deal, some team you would think is going to take a flyer on him if the Patriots have to cut him on Saturday. So we'll see what happens with him. And the Patriots have to cut him on Saturday. So we'll see what happens with him.

And the Patriots have some interesting choices to make. One more thing that I wanted to get to on Knighton that I didn't mention earlier when I was discussing the money, the Patriots saved just a tick shy of $1.7 million against the salary cap by releasing Knighton. So they already had roughly $10 million in cap space. So that's going to increase a bit more throughout the week. million dollars against the salary cap by releasing night so they already had roughly 10 million dollars in cap space so that's going to increase a bit more throughout the week so anyway important day a somewhat eventful day at practice even though we didn't see much more than you know 15 minutes of it or so but rob gronkowski went down to the conditioning field after positional drills we didn't see Matthew Slater.

I don't know if that's something that should be concerning or if it's going to be a lingering issue or maybe it was just an excused absence, what have you. But there were some things that we learned. And, you know, with Mingo back, with Sheard doing more, got that long story coming out, with Knighton cut. There was a lot going on in that front seven. And it was a front seven that played extremely well Friday night

for the third straight week, and the Patriots have big things in store for that group going into the regular season. So wanted to get to that. Wednesday's show, we'll go through some of the cuts, start to look ahead a little more at the Giants game, the preseason finale, what should the Patriots do at quarterback there?

Bill Belichick might have hinted at what's going on on Monday with that situation. So we've got a lot more to discuss Wednesday in one of the busiest weeks of the NFL calendar. So that's Locked on Patriots. I'm Jeff Howell of the Boston Herald. You guys have a good one. Whatcha doing? I'm running out of space on my phone, so I'm Jeff Howell, the Boston Herald. You guys have a good one. Whatcha doing? Ran out of space on my phone, so I'm deleting some stuff.

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