Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - LOCKED ON PATRIOTS - Aug. 5, 2016 - Jeff Howe answers questions on contracts, roster battles, bubble players, running back reps and more

Episode Date: August 4, 2016

Jeff Howe asked the listeners to submit questions, and he answered them for the duration of the show. Nearly every area of the roster was discussed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, where are you going, Jim? The elevator's over here. Taking the stairs. But our meeting's up on 8. Yeah, I know. But that's 8 floors up. That's like 8 times... I don't... a lot of stairs. That's the point. I've already lost a few pounds and earned almost $100 in wellness incentives. Whoa, you're getting rewarded for working out? Yeah, I know. I'm just as surprised as you are, Bob.

Fearless is full of surprises. That's the power of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Federal Employee Program. Learn more about our healthy benefits and sign up at fepblue.org slash choose blue by December 11th. What's up? This is Jeff Howe and this is Locked On Patriots, your new daily Patriots podcast, and it is Friday, August 5th. This is going to be a special edition to wrap up the first week of Locked On Patriots. I want to do more of a Twitter Q&A. This is something I'd like to do as often as possible, really throughout the season, depending on how busy things are. Maybe the topics of conversation settle down a little bit, or maybe I'm just looking for a little more feedback from the listeners.

But this will be the first one. I solicited questions earlier in the day on my Twitter account, at P. Howe if you somehow stumbled upon this corner of the internet without clicking on my Twitter feed. That's how you can follow me. That's how you can submit questions to this when I do decide to use this type of format or hey you know what I might just be able to answer your question anyway if I have a little downtime. I try to go back and forth with you guys as much as possible so I appreciate the amount of questions that I got for this segment here. So let's get right to it. Number one, one of the biggest questions of the season.

This really kind of goes into my first show from Wednesday, August 3rd, if you want to go into the archive and check that out. We're on iTunes as well as Audioboom. You can find all the shows that I've linked on my Twitter feed thousands of times a day at this point. I was getting a little crap from my friend Matt Chatham today who said he had gone 15 minutes without seeing one of my tweets about the podcast. But hey, I'm excited about this.

I want you guys to hear it as much as possible. Anyway, question number one from Kenneth Jergensen. He wants to know if I think Jamie Collins, Dante Hightower, or Malcolm Butler is going to get a contract extension before the season opener. As for Butler, no, he's a restricted free agent. That thing is probably going to drag out quite a bit longer. If you're going to do Hightower or Collins, I think Hightower is the first domino to fall because of his $7.8 dollar cap hit Collins cap hit is about 1.1 1.2 million dollars so I think if anybody gets done before the regular season open or it's

Hightower just because you take down some of that cap hit that gives you room to extend Collins deal so again I don't know if any of these things are going to come together more quickly than the others but that's just the easiest way to go about it by starting with Hightower number two from uh uh sorry I'm having a hard time reading this Patriots fans one that's the name of the Twitter handle what kind of role do you expect Trey Flowers to have this season with the Patriots being so deep at defensive end uh you know what that's a great question and that's one that quite frankly, I just can't answer for you. You know, there are a lot of questions that I'm not afraid to say I don't know, just because you need to see more out of guys. I'm not just going to sit here and promise you the world or say that somebody sucks, when quite frankly, I just don't know. And

there are some guys that you just can't judge too much off of practice. You want to see them more in games. Trey Flowers was a guy last year who showed up a lot in that Packers game before injuring the shoulder and the knee was kind of an issue over the course of the season too. So they had to shut him down, put him on IR. At this point, he hasn't stuck out too much during practice, but it's hard to do great evaluations of the line play and the running backs until the really everything is a little bit more live fortunately we're going to be able to see some live action next week when the saints come into town and they open the preseason on august 11th so you know we'll see more of that but i think it's still a pretty well-defined uh hierarchy at defensive end you're going to have

rob ninkovich and jabal sheared up top you're going to have chrisinkovich and Jabal Sheard up top. You're going to have Chris Long and Shea McClellan backing them up. So there's four guys right off the bat. And then you've got Trey Flowers, Geno Grissom, and Rufus Johnson, who are all trying to make the roster. There might only be one spot for those three guys. Now, I don't think Geno Grissom's had a great camp. Rufus Johnson continues to show up, but he was another guy who had injury issues last year. And it was almost like a redshirt year for him.

He was among the group of guys who was shut down for a time with that mysterious illness, which was basically a virus that most notably got Jamie Collins. So really, you know, it's just, it's an established hierarchy, like I said, at the position. And it's going to be hard for one of those three young guys to make a name for himself and to overtake one of those veterans. But I wouldn't expect anybody to take the job away from Jabal Sheard and Rob Ninkovich. Moving on a little bit here from the dynasty. Compared to the average NFL rookie Q qb does brissette stand out at all i don't see i've seen one team's camp since 2009 when i started covering the nfl and that's the patriots uh brian hoyer was pretty good pretty decent i should say as a rookie

jimmy garoppolo or ryan mallett had a really tough rookie camp he was very erratic jimmy garoppolo or ryan mallett had a really tough rookie camp he was very erratic jimmy garoppolo was downright atrocious really until the second week of august when he turned it on in that redskins preseason opener back in 2014 brissette to this point again compared to garoppolo was awful uh next level type of bad. He struggled with confidence. He was erratic. I will never forget the throw of the in-stadium practice when he launched one over everybody and Ty Law standing there in his newly minted, fresh, red Hall of Fame jacket, standing probably three or four deep onto the sidelines, ended up catching the pass. Garoppolo only completed one pass that night. I mean, he was bad, but then when he turned it on he's been outstanding which you've heard me

say time and again or you've read me time and again just praising Garoppolo and how good he's been but you know just to say Brissette so far he's been somewhat erratic he's completed 55 to 60 percent of his throws in practice, which isn't very good. You want to have him a much higher number than that. But he makes one or two throws every single practice. Sometimes it's a deep ball. He's got a live arm, but he makes one or two throws every practice that makes you just go, my goodness.

He makes good decisions. He is trying to be careful with the ball which is important especially for a young guy who is going to be susceptible to turnovers he's thrown three interceptions so far in practice in at the start of training camp so he's uh he's gonna have some a learning curve but i guess to this very point a week before the preseason opener brissette is having a better rookie season than Garoppolo did in 2014. That doesn't mean Brissette's going to be better than Garoppolo, but if you're asking me to compare, that's what I'm looking at right now. Another question from my dude Big Wally,

who blows up my Twitter feed all the time, but always good stuff. He asks, will Deion Lewis be ready for the regular season? That's part one of the question. Right now, he's still on the pup list. I don't know. I can't say for sure that Deion Lewis will be ready. What I do know is Lewis, I've heard nothing but great things about his recovery and his rehab since tearing the ACL in November. He's on pace where they need to be. I've heard ahead of schedule.

Sometimes I wonder if that's just a cliche or a marketing sort of ploy. But I know physically, he feels like he's ready to go out there and run around the problem is if you do that too early then you're not going to come all the way back right away so the Patriots are being overly conservative as they should be considering how important he is to this offense because he started camp on the pup list he can remain there at the start of the regular season if the Patriots would like to go that route that means they would rely obviously on in the first six plus weeks of the regular season on guys like Donald Brown, LeGarrette Blount, James White, Brendan Bolden you want to see a little more from DJ Foster, Tyler Gaffney has had some moments at times during camp but we're going to see this running back

group play itself out a little more when the preseason games start because really again it's it's hard to to read too too much into the running backs because the action isn't overly live part two of this question from Big Wally is Joe Tooney taking one of the starting guard spots? Right now, absolutely. He's been the left guard, the starting left guard, since the spring. I was curious if he was a placeholder, really, until Josh Klein, Shaq Mason, and Trey Jackson came back, but seeing Tooney and Pads on Saturday and every day since, or just about every day that they've been in pads since, Tooney looks like the real deal he is really tough strong it's hard for guys to get off him when he's engaged and he's uh he's an interesting guy he's a smart guy i actually heard him on thursday conduct an entire interview in spanish he minored in spanish at nc state so a little trivia for you if you're looking to stump

your friends there but i spoke to the reporter reporter afterward who was very impressed with Tooney's Spanish. So that's not going to get him into the starting lineup. The fact that he is a pretty good left guard or has a really good foundation as a left guard makes me believe that Joe Tooney is locked into one of those spots. And I kind of want to jump off from that point and look at the right guard and center spots. Now, I reported earlier Thursday thatrian stork is dealing with yet another concussion that's his fourth concussion fourth diagnosed concussion in his many years that's really a very difficult sign for him that means david andrews right now is your starting

center and i'm not sure when stork is going to come back you just you can't forecast when a guy is going to come back from a concussion especially especially one with a long history like Stork. So right now, Andrews is your starting center. Right guard is a really interesting battle because Jonathan Cooper started with Tooney back in the spring and hadn't relinquished that until he went down during Saturday's first padded practice with a foot injury. You've got Shaq Mason, who is not even close to all the way back yet. He's participated in minimal team drills, but not with the starting group yet he's a guy that I

really liked as a rookie and if you're looking for a best case scenario for the present the power that Shaq Mason can bring and the future considering he was a a mid-round draft pick back in 2015 i think you probably want mason to win that job if it's not mason it might be klein who was you know klein got a lot of crap from the fan base last year i saw a lot on my twitter feed but he injured his shoulder in week 11 i think it was that required surgery he played through it he didn't play well through it of course but before that shoulder injury he was the patriots best offensive play well through it of course but before that shoulder injury he was the Patriots best offensive lineman through nearly three months of the season so Klein could be a good option there and that puts Cooper in a tough spot getting injured like this pushes him

down the depth chart it allows other guys to make up grounds and if you're Cooper who remember obviously was traded to the Patriots from the Cardinals this offseason in the Chandler Jones move. He's got a $2.39 million cap hit, and that is a significant amount of money compared to the other guards. Josh Glines is at $2 million, and then everybody else is below, I believe, $700,000. Everybody's below $1 million, but I think it's as low as into the $600,000, $650,000 range. Those are all cheap hits, cap hits compared to Cooper. So what I'm getting at here is if everybody's health is equal and Cooper doesn't win his starting job,

he's in a real serious jeopardy of not making the team just because of the cap situation. So he's got to come back quick and he's got to return to that top role. And because we haven't seen him really for more than a few drills and pads it's hard to say what his staying power will be when he comes back and remember it's it was the pads and the practice and pads that sold me on toonie like i wasn't sure if he was a placeholder i can't be sure if cooper was just a placeholder but without seeing him in full pads it's tough to know what the patriots really have there next question from josh saying i need a blue check mark now that i've podcast look i don't want to put a blue check mark

people seem to say that to me every day um i don't need that stuff i prefer the uh and anonymity is not the right word. How am I going to tell people I got hacked if I have a stupid tweet, if I have a blue checkmark? I don't need a blue checkmark. Get that out of here. And moving down the line, I'm asked here by Dan Covey, how has Chris Long looked so far?

And he is curious about guys who could be surprise cuts, you know, the veterans. Chris Long is, you know, he's looked fine. I think, again, you're in that group where you just don't know what you're going to get because it's hard to be truly dominant in a practice situation like this. So we'll see. We'll see how much he's got under him. You know, he's a guy who's had a very accomplished career, slowed by injuries the last two seasons with the rams so you just want to see when the lights come on what chris long has left so i'm not really out rushing to judgment with him the patriots are

trying a lot of different things with their defensive ends trying to make sure that they can get those guys on the field as often as possible chris long is right at the top of that list there if you're talking about a three four rotation, Long is going to get a good amount of playing time. So not a guy I'd really worry about. In terms of the surprise cuts, I think it's a little too early to start throwing names out there right now. It's just there are great competitions everywhere. And it's just, you know, I know LeGarrette Blunt's name was thrown out there before training camp started i i

blunts looked really good blunt has probably looked like their best running back through the majority of camp donald brown's had his moments before missing the last couple practices but blunts look good i wouldn't put him you know i'm not saying he's absolutely safe but to this point he's above that. I wouldn't worry about him getting cut. Sebastian Vollmer is a guy that needs to come back and look good as soon as he's off the pup list with something. I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's related to the ankles that have given him issues throughout his

career. I don't know if it's something different, but you want to see more out of Vollmer. Marcus Cannon has caught a lot of heat for his his play at right tackle as he should and has a significant cap hit so you know but that wouldn't really be classified as a surprise cut I think at this point the biggest name you know would you include Aaron Dobson as a surprise cut the way he's playing right now if they caught him yes I would be surprised now I know that there's a lot of Aaron Dobson criticism out there most of which is deserved because he's been injured for the majority of his three seasons with the Patriots and it wouldn't be overly surprising if they didn't keep six wide receivers so

Keyshawn Martin he's a guy who I would be surprised if they caught him because they gave him a $600,000 signing bonus in January when they gave him his contract extension. Keyshawn Martin has been injured the last couple of practices, has not been as good as Aaron Dobson, so I think the Patriots would be pretty ticked off with themselves if they were in a position where they had to cut Keyshawn Martin. So I think I would go there, but I wouldn't go too, too much.

I don't think anybody has really firmly put themselves on the wrong side of the roster bubble at this point. And kind of a similar question from Matt McGllan's not getting cut he got a boatload of money i would be very surprised if long got cut knighton got a boatload of money harbor got a boatload of money i wish i i should have done a better job and put these contracts in front of me really what i what i mean when a team pays a guy to make the team out of camp if you look at their signing bonus and it's higher than 150 to 200 000 the team expects you on the 53 man roster out of camp all of those guys eclipsed that mark by a considerable margin so when the patriots pay those guys especially on a short deal those are guys that they want on the team now there's an exception to those rules all the time reggie wayne is the most famous recent example

got a 400 000 signing bonus in 2015 didn't even last two weeks with the patriots before he decided he wanted to keep the money and basically retire from the game so that's not to say these guys are firmly locked into the 53 man roster but they were paid to be here they're getting quality reps with the starters or at least rotating with starters and i think unless one of these guys completely falls on their face over the next four weeks all of those guys are going to be around mcclellan no doubt about it he's absolutely going to be on the team from j from jaron b here do you think there's any possible way the patriots patriots extend martellus bennett to keep with Gronk if he does well?

Martellus Bennett is in the final year of his contract. He's looked pretty good. He's been spotty. There was a key moment during the conclusion of Wednesday's practice when he caught five consecutive passes from Tom Brady to close down the practice. One of them was a deep touchdown down the right sideline. Another was a play when Brady was in the shotgun before the practice. One of them was a deep touchdown down the right sideline. Another was a play when Brady was under center before, or I'm sorry, in the shotgun before the snap. Noticed something with the defense, walked over to the left slot to say something to Martellus

Bennett quietly. Bennett beat McCourty to the left corner of the end zone for the touchdown, so that's a good sign right there. But before that stretch of five consecutive completions from Brady to Bennett Brady had only completed three of his first 78 completions to Bennett so you know he's been hit or miss and Bennett mentioned the difficulty of when you're not the guy and in Bennett's situation when Amendola and Edelman are back and Gronk's out there you know Bennett might not be more than the fourth or fifth guy. So you just have to be able to keep your head right, keep yourself in the game. You've got to be able to produce even if the quarterback isn't looking your way for periods at a time, whether it's practice or series at a time if it's in a game.

So that's going to be his challenge. But in terms of extending him, there's really no reason to do it right now. I think the Patriots most likely have the best 1-2 tandem they've had since they lost Hernandez a few years ago. But look, if you're skeptical of me saying that, I don't blame you because we've said the same thing about Tim Wright. We've said the same thing about Scott Chandler. Now Tim Wright just never really got the offense down.

Scott Chandler's knee was a whole lot worse than he ever let on last season. So there are just other factors that can sometimes sabotage the possibility of having such a great one-two punch. Now, Bennett is far more talented than both Chandler and Tim Wright, so there's reason to think that he can be that guy. Physically, you love everything that he brings to the table, and he should be extremely productive. But again, we'll have to see it just because certain guys looked good

at this time of year, and then it wasn't necessarily able to translate. Carrie asks, what's standing out on defense? Not seeing much on Hightower and Collins. Look, Hightower and Collins are guys similar to the line play that I was discussing earlier Hightower and Collins are guys that really shine when the light's on I mean there was a play during a running drill earlier this week when it's mostly like front seven guys against offensive linemen tight ends and then the running backs one of the running backs I can't remember which one it was thought he had a hole jamie collins closes up real nice and might have might have separated his head from the running back's body he was ready to you

know knock a guy right in his rear end there so those are the plays that hightower and collins make when the lights are on you know collins had an interesting moment again during thursday's practice jimmy garoppolo's final period of team drills was basically a walkthrough, which the defense is just standing there. They're not competing or anything like that. And Garoppolo threw a ball over the middle and Jamie Collins kind of jumped up and caught it and intercepted it. And it wasn't a bad thing. It was kind of funny and it stuck out mostly because back during my days covering the Celtics from 07 to 09, it looked a lot like Kevin Garnett jumping up to the rim when a guy would shoot the ball after the whistle.

So, you know, those are guys that, you know, you haven't heard much from us about Collins and Itauer. Those are the last two guys I would really worry about at this point, especially on defense. Art wants to know what my favorite cereal is. Cheerios with strawberries. You know, that's easy it's boring whatever i like it deal with it going on a little more uh if i if i was ever given a

microphone to ask goodell one question what would i ask i'd probably ask why it took so long to get this microphone uh but you know i don't want to get too too too much into that if you followed me on twitter for a little while you know exactly where we're going get too too too much into that if you followed me on twitter for a little while you know exactly where we're going with that one uh let's see trying to find a little bit more somebody asked i don't want to call him out uh if shack mason could move to center like you did in college i actually looked this up before the podcast because i didn't know if i was missing something but uh from what i could tell shack mason never played center at georgia tech he's a guy who i believe has a very good chance to win the right guard spot,

assuming he's able to work his way fully back from that offseason surgery as quickly as possible. Got a question here. How good has Cyrus Jones been playing during training camp? Right now, he is the fourth cornerback on the depth chart. Malcolm Butler and Logan Ryan are solidified at one and two. The third spot is still up for grabs Justin Coleman's playing really well Coleman played really well last season as a

rookie before he got hurt or he had a couple different injuries there but when he was healthy he looked good played him way better than I expected him to and the bottom never really fell out on Coleman so it was a solid rookie season for him. Cyrus Jones looks strong, very powerful, especially when he's pressing, and he can play across the line. I think he could eventually steal that third job from Coleman, but at this point, right now, he's fourth in the depth chart. Another interesting battle to watch, really, is at the fifth spot, where Jonathan Jones, the undrafted rookie, is having a really good camp.

This is a kid who was an all-state sprinter in high school in georgia and is he's a little shorter i believe he's 5'9 smaller in stature but has terrific speed and is around the ball quite a bit has a handful of pass breakups bill belichick was asking about him on thursday morning and his tone of voice just by how excited he sounded about jonathan jones uh made me really think that he's got a chance to make the 53 and that's going to put daryl roberts and submit in in a problem because that pushes roberts down to sixth is assuming jones is able to keep uh the recent promotion he had to basically the uh or if i said yeah to jones bumped up to fifth that pushes roberts down to sixth i'm not

sure they're going to keep six cornerbacks so you got to see roberts play better uh get back to the level that he had back in his rookie season or his rookie camp of 2015 before he dislocated that wrist another question from james bauer here is skarnecchia going to get the O-line together, or are they going to be rotating every game? Skarnecchia said before camp opened that he really didn't want to use the rotation. So he wants to settle on five guys and use them. There was an interesting ploy last year in order to get a handful of guys playing time. And I think to a degree it worked, especially with so many guys like David Andrews, Shaq Mason, Trey Jackson,

who were rookies, didn't have a lot of experience. It gave them a breather. It gave them a different way to kind of look at the offense or study the defense from the sideline. There were a lot of positives to the rotation, but I still think having five is probably the best way to do it. I was asked here by David Evans, any chance Terrence Knighton plays fullback in goal line situations? That'd be fun to watch. I don't see it happening because the Patriots continue to say they have the best fullback in the NFL in James Devlin. Devlin, for some reason, doesn't make the 53.

I think Knighton at fullback in the goal line would be pretty fun stuff to watch. One more, the running backs. Who's on the bubble from uh sorry i lost the name here my tweet deck just decided to uh skits out on me but just in terms of breaking down the running back depth chart when dion lewis comes back you know he's the one from there right now if there was a preseason game today like er Blunt would be the guy now I don't know what Donald Brown's issue is why he's missed the last couple practices Donald Brown's looked a whole lot better than I expected him to look he had uh look I I had very low expectations for him just because he hasn't been productive he hasn't lived up to that first round hype and he's been quick

he can get through the uh through the line pretty well between the tackles. He's catching the ball better than I think he probably ever has. He said that's something that he's worked on considerably, so he looks the part. Now, we'll see whatever injury or whatever situation has kept him off the field, how long that lasts, but I think he has a chance to jump over James White, who looks good, but I'm not sure how high James White's ceiling is or he's he's a guy that he's limited until he can really run between the tackles that's not something that he's ever really been proficient at but we'll see you know he's he's sneaky in the screen game and he's a guy that I'm looking forward to seeing when the preseason starts DJ Foster is another guy I want

to get to he was on my my very short list of guys I wanted to see when camp opened up. The undrafted guy was just a good athlete, really fast, amazing footwork, showed up a lot during the spring, but he's had a tough time working his way up the depth chart, so we haven't seen too much of him. Now, it wouldn't surprise me whatsoever because of that quickness. He's a guy that could come in in the third, fourth quarter of a preseason game against a handful of backups and light it up, have some huge runs,

some highlight reels, wind up on SportsCenter. And because of that, he could find himself getting into more of a rhythm. I pegged Deion Lewis as a guy who could do the same thing last year, and look what happened. So we'll see what DJ Foster's made of. I think he's an extremely intriguing talent. I just want to see. I'm curious why he hasn't gotten the chance to elevate himself in that depth chart.

So we'll see more out of him. Tyler Gaffney is a guy who I wrote down the other day. He runs hard. We'll see more out of him tyler gaffney is a guy who i wrote down the other day he runs hard that we'll see how that translates you want to talk about a guy whose career has been marred by injuries his first two seasons have wound up on injured reserve so uh have really no expectations for gaffney but we'll see how that hard running really pays off i am going to cut it off there. That was a fun show. That wraps up the week. Again, first week of Locked On Patriots.

My name's Jeff Howe. If you don't know me, I've covered the team since 2009. I've been with the Boston Herald for the last five seasons. And this is a new project that we've started up this week. This is the third podcast in the books. We're going to do this Monday through Friday. Throughout the regular season, we'll probably just go until we burn down the internet. So I'm ready.

I'm geared up. I'm ready to do this. I want to hear your feedback. This is the first time I've ever hosted a podcast. This is the first time I've really ever just talked aimlessly by myself, at least this loud, for this long. So if you guys have any feedback, any suggestions, again, I want to hear it.

I want to know what you guys have to think about this. I want you guys to have as much of a voice in this as possible. I want to know what you guys want to hear me rant about for 10, 20, 25, 30 minutes at a time here. And again, I plan on doing this type of podcast where I just solicit a bunch of questions from you guys on Twitter, and we'll let that drive the show. So let me know. I'm having fun with this.

And if you want to advertise, hit me up, jeff.howe at bostonherald.com. Read your ad on every show. We'll get that underway. And that's it. Hey, everybody have a good weekend. We'll see you on Monday morning on Locked on Patriots. Is democracy in danger or decline? Everybody have a good weekend. We'll see you has faced far more challenging periods and emerged strong. Leading policymakers, Bush Institute experts, and respected journalists take on this debate.

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