Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots August 22, 2018 - Flores, What I'm Reading and the Helmet Rule

Episode Date: August 22, 2018

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Hello everybody, welcome into Lockdown Patriots for Wednesday, August 22, 2018. Mark Schofield back in the big chair for this Wednesday installment of your favorite daily Patriots podcast. Reminder to follow me on Twitter at Mark Schofield. Check out the work over at places like insidethepylon.com where I'm one of the head writers. You could also check out the work over at places like The Score where I've got a piece coming out, which I'm actually going to touch upon in the third segment of today's show. You can also check out work at Pro Football Weekly,

Matt Waldman's Rookie Scouting Portfolio, Big Blue View, Steelers Depot. As I've told you guys before, if it's a website that's writing about football, chances are I'm writing about football for them. Loaded show for you today. As I said, at the end of the show, I'm going to talk about my latest piece over at The Score, something that's gotten a lot of attention this preseason. We're also going to do what I learned, Patriots edition. Excuse me, what I'm reading, Patriots edition.

Some Patriots pieces that caught my, what I'm reading Patriots edition, some Patriots pieces that caught my eye over the past couple of days. But I want to start on the defensive side of the ball. And as you all know, as a former quarterback, as somebody that really focuses the brunt of his work on quarterback evaluation and offensive scheme evaluation, it's not often that I really dive into the defensive side of the ball all that much. But one of the things that I noticed, and I wasn't the only one to notice something like this, in the wake of New England's preseason game two against the Philadelphia Eagles

was something that really got me excited. Now, one of the question marks facing the New England Patriots headed into the 2018 campaign was the defensive side of the ball, particularly Brian Flores, linebacker's coach who is going to be in charge of defensive play calling, although he's doing it without an official title of defensive coordinator. So one of the big things people were going to be

watching, myself included, this preseason and as we head into the regular season, was how Flores was going to be as a play caller. So I was very excited, and I talked about this in the semi-glorious victory edition of Locked on Patriots last Friday. I'd seen over the first two preseason games sort of the level of aggression, blitzes, for example. And I was really excited at a lot of the delayed blitzes that they used for linebackers at the second level, you saw some of it with Bentley,

you saw some with Landon Roberts, with Kyle Van Nooy, with Christian Sam at times, particularly they were using these green dog blitzes and what basically a green dog blitz is and if you want to learn more about a green dog blitz,

I'd highly recommend Inside the Pylon, our glossary over at ITP where we talk about a ton of stuff. One of the things we talk about is the Green Dog Blitz, which is a linebacker blitz, a second-level defender, sometimes even a third-level defender blitz, where the defender rushes the quarterback after his man coverage assignment stays into pass block. For example, as we say over at InsideThePylon.com on our glossary page, a linebacker or a safety assigned to a running back or tight end in man coverage will often green dog blitz when he recognizes that the offensive player he's responsible for is blocking another pass rusher. This helps the defense get pressure on the quarterback even if the offense protects with six or more blockers by adding a late rusher that the blocking scheme often cannot account for.

And so the Patriots used a number of green dog type blitzes Friday night against the Philadelphia Eagles. So I, for one, was extremely, extremely excited seeing the level of aggression from Brian Flores, starting to wonder, look, is this team going to be more aggressive? We always like to see a defense that can get pressure with a four. But one of the things that we do like to see is when you do blitz, when you do show that aggression, that you get home. Remember a play that we've talked about a lot on this show, that touchdown pass that Jason McCourty gave up against the Eagles that came on a zero blitz. As I said at that moment, you do have

to get home. A lot of the times the Patriots were getting home against Philadelphia on Friday night, they just didn't do it all the time. So I was all excited, all hyped up, seeing this level of aggression. But I've gotten brought back to earth a little bit. And I want to talk about some perhaps misconceptions that myself and maybe others had about Brian Flores and what he was doing so far. Let's start with Bill Belichick himself, who was asked recently about Brian Flores and his Monday press conference, about his play calling to date. And what Coach Belichick said was,

I think Brian and our defensive staff has done a good job teaching the players and installing our system. Now here's where we go a little bit away from what I was thinking. We haven't done much game planning to this point, but we'll see how that goes as we get into the real games. He went on to basically throw some cold water on the fire that was my excitement over Brian Flores' defensive style of calling games. Again, we're not game planning.

We're working on things that we need to work on. That's what we always do in preseason. That's what we've done this year. It's what we've done in the past. That's what we'll do as long as I'm here. That's the way it's always been, and that's the way it's always going to be, because I believe that's the things that we need to do to work on the things we need to work on. He went further. Each game is another opportunity for us to work on that. Whatever opportunities we get in this situation, in the game, based on the situations of the other team's substitutions and so forth, the coaching staff on all three sides of the ball, offense, defense, and special teams,

and the head coach, communications, those units, and so forth. Those are the things that the coaching staff needs to fine-tune and smooth out and to make sure we do a good job on so that the players can do a good job with it. It's all interconnected. And so not only do we get Coach Belichick throwing a little bit of cold water on my excitement over Brian Flores, but then I want to take you to Matt Chatham and an interaction he had with somebody on Twitter. If you don't follow Matt Chatham, you definitely should. He's at Chatham58. He's now contributing over at The Athletic Boston, as well as Nesson and some other places.

He hosts the Real Thing Patriots podcast, and he had some really interesting insight on this, because he was asked if Flores was calling an aggressive defense. And his response on Twitter was, no. These are all the same Patriots install calls. This is training camp. This is basic

stuff. This is game plan stuff. And Colin, this is not game plan stuff, excuse me. Game plan stuff and Colin fingerprints come later in the regular season. Then you may see some differences. But for now, no. And when he was asked about Dante Hightower saying he was excited about Flores' aggressiveness, Chatham's response was, he didn't play last week. So I don't know what he means by that. It sounds like a leading question. These are basic calls that they've done before.

One could find them on last year's game film if they really like, but it's a waste of time. Preseason install is just the normal big playbook stuff. And when he was pressed further by the person he was having this interaction with about the energy feeling different, Chatham said, look, more guys are winning one-on-one. Pretty simple. When more guys are winning, it feels more aggressive, whatever that means. It was a good week last week, lots of positive, but no time for any sweeping statements. And so there you have, perhaps in a nutshell, why your fearless host of the Locked On Patriots

podcast sticks more to the offensive side of the ball than the defensive side of the ball. Here I was thinking, look, this defense, Brian Flores, they're being more aggressive. They're really sort of getting after it on the defensive side of the ball. The center of these green dog blitzes, they're really pressuring the quarterback. But in reality, what we're seeing is twofold. We're seeing guys winning more one-on-one, at least, for example, against Philadelphia. And we're also just seeing sort of the basic vanilla preseason install. guys winning more one-on-one, at least, for example, against Philadelphia. And we're also just seeing sort of the basic vanilla preseason install.

That's what Belichick was talking about. That's what Matt Chatham was talking about, who obviously has some experience being a former linebacker and special teams player for the New England Patriots. Now, that being said, it's not all bad news. This is one of your typical good news, bad news type situations. Bad news is the jury might still be out

on Brian Flores as a defensive play caller and being more aggressive. Perhaps I and others, we were too quick to sort of make that determination. But the good news is when guys are winning one-on-one, it gets us back to a point I made previously. When guys are winning one-on-one, that means you can get pressure with four, you can get pressure with five. You don't necessarily have to blitz. Or maybe you just send one guy on a green dog blitz. And when you can still get pressure on the opposing quarterback, rushing four, rushing five, that means you're not putting yourself at a coverage disadvantage in the secondary. And that's great when it comes to playing defensive football. You know why? Because you don't see zero-blitz situations and failure to get home

like we did on that touchdown pass that Jason McCourty gave up. And so there you go. Some thoughts on Brian Flores, a little bit of a deeper dive into what we've seen so far this preseason. Might he be aggressive as we get into the regular season? Perhaps. We still don't know. The jury is still out on that.

But what we're seeing right now is guys winning one-on-one that may look aggressive to perhaps an untrained eye like myself when it comes to the defensive side of the ball, but it does bode well for the future. Up next, some what I'm reading Patriots edition. We're going to look at some stuff around the league. Keonta Davis, we're going to talk about him a little bit. We're going to talk about, well, one plausible theory from Tom Brady

on why people might hate him. And a little bit later, I'm going to dive into something that's been getting a lot of attention this preseason and a piece that I wrote about for the score that we'll be dropping later today. That's all ahead with me, Mark Schofield, in Locked on Patriots. Mark Schofield, back with you now on this Wednesday installment of Locked on Patriots and doing a little what I'm reading, trying to work this segment into a couple of shows, at least one show a week. Because like I've said before time and time again, this is a great time to be a football

fan because there are so many outlets doing such great work. I'm just happy to have you guys to be in your ears and to be in your homes, your commutes for 25 minutes or so each day. I love hosting this show. But I'm not the only game of talent. And I know that. And so it's incredible that so many of you listen to me. Again, go to iTunes, leave reviews, leave ratings, five stars only. But it's so great that you guys do listen to me. I love it. But I also recognize that there is other great work out there that I want to draw

your attention to from time to time. And so that's why I do the What I'm Reading segment. And I'm going to start with a piece from Phil Perry over at NBC Sports Boston on Keonta Davis and how he's proven to be a very intriguing pass rush option for the New England Patriots. I read this piece the other day, and I think it's a fantastic look at Keonta Davis, who is a player that admittedly is somebody that does not do a lot of scouting on the defensive side of the ball. Man, this show is just me admitting how much attention I failed to pay on the defensive side of the ball but that's beside the point you know I thought it was a really good piece it's not only gets you into the background of Keonta Davis as a player and what he went through

but some of how he's being used by the Patriots so far this preseason and remember Davis was a guy who was unsigned undrafted undraft, signed as an undrafted free agent. As a two-time All-American off the edge, he even was good enough that Belichick went to put him through a private workout out at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga. A guy that had 31 sacks in college. A guy that, as we've talked about, was projected to be a mid- to late-round pick last spring, but went undrafted due to that bulging disc that was found during his physical NFL scouting combine. And the Patriots signed him, but he was placed on the non-football injury reserve list ending his year before he began. But that's not the end of the story, as we know. He got two sacks against the Eagles on Friday night, and on both plays, as pointed out by Phil Perry,

it looks as if Davis was working as a three technique off the outside shoulder of the left of the guard in front of him. And this brings us to something that I've been talking about for a long time, both in the run-up to last year's Super Bowl and into this season. The ability of the Patriots to replicate what we've been seeing from other teams, which is getting pass rushers, attacking interior linemen. We saw it on perhaps the most pivotal play of Super Bowl 52, and now we're seeing the Patriots started to replicate that with a guy like Keonta Davis. As Perry points out in this piece, although he arrived, Davis did, to the Patriots as a true edge defender, he has bulked up and spent plenty of time working from the interior.

He has a quote from Davis, there's been a Lurving curve. I did put on some weight up to 280 now, but my body feels great. I don't feel a difference. Moving inside, everything moves a bit quicker. It's something I haven't done before, but I'm being asked to do it, so I try to get in there and master it the best I can. And with the ability of guys like Davis and Trey Flowers, who have done this as well, to kick inside and attack guards,

attack centers, attack guys that aren't always used to pass blocking edge-type defenders, it's definitely an added weapon to this Patriots defense. And let's take it a step further. When you look at this in defense and the guys that they're looking to have on the edge, you can keep a Trey Flowers outside. You can keep a Dietrich Wise outside. You can keep a Derek Rivers or an Adrian Claiborne outside. You know, when you have a guy like Keonta Davis then lined up against the guard, I mean, you could look at, you know, a pass rushing type package of Flowers and Claiborne on the

edges, either Brown or Shelton as one interior defender, and then Davis as the other. And that's a nice third and long speed type rushing package. Or the Patriots can do that little 3-2-6 look that we've seen, where they have guys like Flowers and Claiborne and Brown as your three up front, and then Derek Rivers as a second-level defender basically lined up Scherer in the A-gap. And so the ability of Davis to come in and add some versatility and attack from the inside is a huge boost to this Patriots team. So that's definitely something to watch as this preseason rolls on and if he makes the

team into the regular season. Some other stuff that I'm reading, I found a fairly humorous piece from Darren Hartwell over at Nesson, who pointed out, trying to answer the question, why do so many people hate Tom Brady and the New England Patriots? And he shared the fact that Brady has a rather interesting theory on that. Brady was doing an interview Tuesday morning on WEI's Craig Callahan show as part of the WEI Ness and Jimmy Fund radio telethon. And he had an interesting thought on this. The way Brady looks at it, he thinks it's a different thing about football

in America. He says, I mean, if you look at a lot of other sports around the world, at some point, maybe you get to represent your country, like watching the World Cup in the summer. I see all these soccer players that play for these different clubs and then come together for their country at some point. In America, we never get a chance to do that. So most Americans that live in the other parts of the country, they don't like the Patriots. They don't like me, and I can understand that. And the piece goes on to point out that since the NFL doesn't have an international competition, there are zero instances where fans of other teams would root for Brady,

especially if he and the Patriots continually beat their favorite clubs. Teams. Well, I see why Hartwell uses the clubs there since we're going with the soccer profile. As Brady continued, I was a 49ers fan at one point. They want to see their team win, and when they don't, I think they've got to direct that frustration somewhere else. When you've been successful like our team has been, I just think that frustration gets directed at us,

and that's just part of it. So I thought that was a very interesting point. What was the best part about this piece, though? Brady talking about his mom, Galen, who has finished treatments for breast cancer a little over a year ago. Brady telling the listeners that she's been doing really well. She still gets her scans every three months, and she's done really well. It's been a while since she finished her treatments. They're always praying and hoping that they come back clean, and so far they have.

And that is, more than anything, the best news out of this quick interview with Tom Brady on WEEI. One last thing that I wanted to talk about in the What I'm Reading segment. We've talked about Keonta Davis. We've talked about Tom Brady. I do want to briefly talk about predictions. Andy Benoit over at Sports Illustrated

has his NFL predictions up. Team by team records, playoffs, and Super Bowl 53 champion. He has the Patriots going 12-4, which, spoiler, is probably going to be where I am on a preseason prediction record for them. He has them beating Jacksonville in the divisional round, which I can see happen. He has them losing to the Steelers in the AFC championship game

and Atlanta beating Pittsburgh in the Super Bowl. And while i can understand that on paper i can understand why you might sort of think that the pittsburgh steelers could you know beat the new england patriots in the super bowl but the one thing i will say on that is he has the patriots with the best record in the afc coming in at 12 and 4 he has the Patriots with the best record in the AFC, coming in at 12-4. He has the Steelers at 11-5, the Jaguars at 10-6, the Chargers at 10-6, and he has two interesting wildcard teams in the AFC. He has the Jets getting in as the 6 seed, and the Texans getting in as the 5 seed. So in the wildcard round, you've got Chargers over Jets, Jaguars over Texans.

But back to the original point, by having New England with the best record in the AFC, you're not only saying that the Patriots are going to lose to the Steelers in the AFC championship game, but they're going to lose at Gillette. That's when I'm not quite ready to go down. Now, if he had had those records flipped and said, look, the Patriots, they're going to go into Heinz Field and lose, I can almost understand him making that case, because the Patriots have played some tough games at Heinz Field, including last year, for example. But I'm just not ready to go there. I'm not ready to say that the Steelers are going to come into Gillette and win an AFC Championship game. It could happen. But sitting here in August

on the Locked On Patriots podcast, I'm not going to say that it will. Up next, we're going to say that it will. Up next, we're going to talk about the biggest story so far in this preseason and why I'm saying it's not time to panic just yet. It's not time to say that the defensive game is dead just yet. That's ahead with me, Mark Schofield, and Locked On Patriots. Mark Schofield, back with you to close out this Wednesday installment of Locked On Patriots. Mark Schofield back with you to close out this Wednesday installment of Locked On Patriots. Just a reminder before we finish this up with our final segment of the day, the Locked On Patriots podcast hotline is up and running.

240-670-6016. Text anytime, call and leave a message anytime. I don't want to scare people off when I say, you know, call anytime and you're not going to get me picking up the phone. It's a voicemail line. Leave a message. Send me a text. Let me know your thoughts on anything, anything under the sun, even if it's Toto. I just did a radio show for ESPN Nashville a couple of hours ago. And I kid you not, the first question I was asked was, what's with the deal with Toto? I don't understand it. I'm just riding my brand here on the social media on this

wonderful app that is Twitter. But I digress. Let's get into the final segment of the day. And I'm going to talk about a piece that I wrote up yesterday that's going to be dropping over on the score momentarily. It might even be up by the time you get around and listen to this. If you listen to it in the afternoon on the East Coast or in the morning on the West Coast, time zones, they screw me up sometimes. What can I say? But it's not often that I get asked to step outside my comfort zone. A lot of people, they know what I bring to the table as a writer. And it is a lot of scheme heavy, quarterback heavy, trying to break down concepts. For whatever reason, people think I do that well. So I get asked to do a ton of it. But every once in a while, I get asked to

step out of my comfort zone and the score asked me to do that. And so I did, and that's the piece that's going up. And I want to preface the piece by talking about how I opened it. And stop me if you've heard a scenario like this before. You have a preseason where you're looking at an NFC team potentially trying to repeat a Super Bowl champion. You have excitement in Cleveland about a first round draft choice at the quarterback position who's a little bit unorthodox, plays the position a

little bit differently, and you're not quite wondering if it's going to work out. He might be a little bit undersized, but he's a very brash natured quarterback, brash natured football player, so he's hoping to win the starting job. And you've got defenses struggling with a seemingly overwhelming number of penalties thanks to new rules and heightened enforcement of those rules, leaving fans and writers to wonder if the new rules are heard in that game. Does that sound familiar? Does it?

It should. Because these were major storylines of the 2014 NFL preseason. Back in 2014, the NFL looked to heighten the enforcement of defensive holding calls as well as illegal contact penalties. As a result, that preseason was dominated by penalty flags. The frequency of defensive holding and illegal contact penalties called in that preseason was like five or ten times more than NFL fans and defenses were accustomed to seeing in the previous year. And so that preseason, people were just frantically worried about the future of defensive football. People were worried about defenses just being ended, games taking hours upon hours to finish.

Now let's come to this year, because obviously one of the big points of contention this offseason this preseason excuse me was the new tackle and rule focus upon player safety under the new rules there's now a 15-yard penalty when a defender lowers the head to initiate and make contact with his helmet against an opponent and that has admittedly resulted in some baffling penalty calls and we've all seen them whether it was the sack in sack in the Vikings game or some of the tackles, even the Patriots game or a penalty in the Hall of Fame game. And so that's left players and coaches like Bill Belichick scratching their heads and wondering how they're going to deal with this.

Similarly with how coaches were reacting to the drools in 2014. And you can go back and some of it's linked in the article that I write where people are wondering, how are we going to deal with this? But I'm here to sort of caution everybody against overreaction right now. Because there are a couple of things in motion and a couple of things to consider. First is, look, the NFL is at least trying to address and discuss and refine this. There's a conference call set for Wednesday, set for today, and while major changes are not expected to the helmet rule, there might be some additional language released

to clarify how the rule is supposed to be called and enforced on the field. So that's one thing. There's also speculation on ESPN and elsewhere that the league might impose sort of a three-year window for implementation of the rule, similar to how the league handled penalties for hits involving defenseless players. So that's another thing to consider.

Another thing, third, the league has already begun the process of refining their approach to this rule, and Al River, the league's vice president of officials, he's going to release a video offering guidance on how the rule is to be enforced on the field. So you're going to get a new video headed out to everybody

on how the rule is supposed to be enforced. The rule itself is still a work in progress. So there's hope there, but there's also hope for two more reasons. First, as with many rules or penalties implemented by the league, there's a learning curve for players and coaches and officials.

NFL official Brad Allen held a press conference members of the Patriots media early in August. And here's what he said about it. He said, in the preseason, we want to err on the side of putting the flag on the ground and then evaluate it if it's correct. We want to be right by the time we get to the season. So will it be subjective to some degree?

I think it will. We have to remember that safety is a priority, but there are a number of fouls that are subjective. So in other words, some of the penalties we've seen, once a league gets a chance to review that, it's going to be likely determined that those should not have been flagged. And Allen went a step further beyond this, and it gets to the point where just as coaches and teams want to get film on guys, the league and the league offices, they want to get film on refs. So Allen says, up until now, we haven't seen these plays okay the players haven't experienced this rule we're going to have to get a library and frankly in the preseason we may go throw the flags and come back and say no

this is really not what we want so a lot of the plays that are getting flagged right now they might not be getting flagged once the regular season, once the NFL looks at all the film on these penalties and sees, oh, you know what? I understand why you called this, but this really isn't what we're looking to enforce. So that's one thing. Here's the other thing. Let's go back to 2014. And again, there was all this fear back in 2014 that once the regular season started holding penalties, defensive holding penalties, there would be continued to call this overwhelming rate once the season began

in line with the preseason numbers. Well, what really happened? Was there an increase? Yeah. But it wasn't nearly the jump in line with what we were seeing in the preseason. In the 2013 season, there were 171 defensive holding penalties called, an average of.67 per game, a total of 827 yards in 2014 after that preseason where everybody was losing their mind there were 216 defensive penalties called an

increase to be sure but just a jump of from 0.67 per game to 0.84 per game for a total of 1054 yards and penalties penalty yardage lost. An increase, yes, but not nearly equal to what we were seeing in the preseason in 2014 that had everybody so riled up. So my diagnosis, my prescription for now, relax. It seems like the league's going to get a handle on this, and they're going to handle it differently in the regular season once we get to the regular season,

as opposed to how they were handling it in the preseason. History, as well as the league's actions, show us that all is not lost. At least not yet. That will do it for today's show. I will be back for tomorrow's show doing some Patriots timeline takes. Then on Friday, we will have your game day edition. Evan Lazar is going to join me. We're going to talk our expectations for Friday night against the Carolina Panthers,

as well as how training camp and preseason has been going. And then late Friday night, I will have a post-game installment. Hopefully another semi-glorious victory edition, but we will see. Hopefully the Patriots do put on an injury-free performance on Friday night. Until next time, everybody, keep it locked right here to meet Mark Schofield and Locked on Patriots.