Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots August 29, 2017 - Introductions and Preseason Game Three Recap

Episode Date: August 29, 2017

New Host Mark Schofield makes his debut in the big chair for Locked On Patriots. After some introductions, he dives into New England's third preseason game against the Detroit Lions. There is analysis of the offense without Julian Edelman, a look at the release of Kony Ealy, and the first "Schofield on Scheme" segment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You are Locked On Patriots, your daily podcast on the New England Patriots, part of the Locked On Podcast Network. Welcome to Locked On Patriots for Tuesday, August 29th. That is Philger playing us in. A little sampling of the music from them, the great sounds from them, the guys from Chicago. You're probably wondering, okay, that music's nice. But who exactly am I listening to right now? Well, my name is mark schofield and for those of you that don't know who i am i'll get to my bona fides as a pats fan in a moment but first for those of you that are here because you know who i am you read my work

you enjoy what i've been doing for whether it's inside the pylon or bleacher report and you're here because you're supporting what i'm doing, thank you so much for that. Truly appreciate that. For those of you who don't know who I am, again, Mark Schofield here. I'm the new host of the Locked On Patriots podcast, and I'm truly honored to be here and to get a chance to talk about the New Income Patriots on a more regular basis. As I said, I want to kind of establish my bona fides here at the gate. So who am I? Well, for the past couple of years, I've been writing over at a website called Inside the Pylon,

InsideThePylon.com, where I do a lot of scheme analysis, player breakdowns, X's and O's stuff, and a lot of draft work as well where I break down quarterbacks. That's kind of my forte, as well as some work that I've been doing the past couple of years for Bleacher Report, part of their NFL 1000 project. This year I'll be scouting quarterbacks over there, so I'm really excited to get going on that as well. But before all of that, before I was a college quarterback myself, playing the game and learning the game inside and out

and digesting scheme analysis and things like that, before all of that took place, I was just a kid growing up in New England, in Waltham. You can probably still hear the Boston accent. And I was a kid growing up watching a team that I loved, the New England Patriots. And I can still remember Super Bowl XX, getting my heart broken, watching the Pats lose to the Bears.

And so I've been through the highs and the lows of everything that this team has meant to the people of New England and around the world for the past 20 years or so. And now to get a chance to sort of talk about them on a more regular basis, like I said, it's truly a dream come true and an honor for me. So I'm going to do everything I can to bring you some Patriots content, X's and O's stuff, some great guests, some great analysis, and try to be your home for the New England Patriots a little bit each day here as we get into a new season. And I know it's a crowded market out there.

There are a lot of places you can go to for Patriots coverage. There are a lot of people out there doing some really incredible work. And so I'm going to do everything I can to just carve out a little name for myself and a little niche here as you listen to and sort of enjoy the Patriots season. So thank you for letting me into your homes and into your ears. And with that, we can really get started here. And what I want to start with, obviously, we have some things we can talk about. Patriots coming off a win in the third preseason game over the Detroit Lions, 30-28,

sort of the dress rehearsal game. And there were some good points. Obviously, look, starting offense looked really good in this game. You know, we learned a lot about Tom Brady, which we'll get to in a second. He certainly looks ready for the season. Backups looked a little bit tough at times, looked a bit shaky at times. Maybe some issues there that they need to sort out. Hopefully they sort that out going forward, but it was nice to see at the end of this game, Jimmy Garoppolo lead a little bit of

a sort of game winning drive, get a little win, field goal, a little bit momentum for that second unit, some of those third string guys as well. So that was good to see at the end of the game. Some of the stuff, you know, third quarter or so, a little bit shaky at times, but it was good to see the offense under Jimmy Garoppolo get, you know, those last two drives in when they get the touchdown and then field goal to win it. So that was good to see. But, you know, what did we learn and what did we not learn about this New England Patriots team from this week three game? Well, one thing we did learn is, look, like I said, Tom Brady is ready for this season to start. He came out, looked great in the first couple of drives, two touchdown passes early to Chris Hogan.

We're going to break down those plays in a little bit. Finished the night 12-15 for 174, two touchdowns, one interception, which came on his last throw of the game. Looked to be a little bit of a route miscommunication between Brady and Hogan. Hopefully they get that sorted out. Looked like Hogan didn't come back for the ball like he should have. But again, that's why you play the preseason. That's why you sort of iron out those kinks while you can, because when the games start mattering, you don't want to have plays like that. So again, Tom Brady looks like he's ready for the season. The only other two incompletions that he had were basically dropped balls, one by Brandon Cooks, another by Rob Wiermkowski, where the ball kind of got punched out of his hand. And so Brady looks ready to go, which is a good thing. Something that we didn't learn, or maybe it's kind of hanging up in the

air a little bit, staying with the quarterback position, and that's the future of Jacoby Brissett with this team. And it's something to watch going forward, particularly as we get ready for the final preseason game. We're not going to see Brady in this game, so we'd expect to see a lot of Jacoby Brissett. But we didn't see him against the Lions.

And you typically would see the third string quarterback at least get a series or two. Now, this may have been a decision where, look, coaching staff wanted to get Garoppolo another drive. They didn't want to get him in. They didn't want to get him out of the game. They wanted to give him one more drive, see if he could sort of come up in a little clutch

type situation, something you might want to practice. You know, Bill Belichick stresses that, situational football. And so maybe that's the issue here. But we've seen with some other quarterbacks in New England in the past where that third preseason game, that QB3 doesn't get snaps. They end up getting cut. That's happened before with some guys. It happened most notably, I would say, with Tim Tebow.

So now we've got a little bit of a question mark regarding Jacoby Bursette going forward. And it might come down to a mere numbers game. Obviously, the injury to Julian Edelman, which we're going to get to in a second, that roster spot, they might need to carry an extra wide receiver or an extra running back, depending on how they address the loss of Edelman going forward. And so maybe just because of a pure numbers reason,

Jacoby Brissett might find himself sort of on the outside looking in. Now Brissett is somebody that I really liked coming out of NC State. Brissett I think is a very talented, athletic, strong quarterback. Played fairly well for New England in the time that he saw on the field last year. And that win against Houston on that Thursday night game obviously struggled in Buffalo the following week, against Buffalo the following week. But I think Brissett certainly has a future in the NFL. And in my mind, he can be a starting quarterback in this league.

Obviously, Bill Parcells is certainly in this corner, who spoke highly of him during Brissett's draft process. So while I think Brissett does have a future in the NFL, you start to wonder right now, does that future reside in New England? Now, maybe again, this was just a situational thing. Coaching staff wanted to get Garoppolo more snaps and sort of a pressure type situation, but it's something to watch going forward. So that's one thing we didn't quite learn coming out of preseason game three, the status of Jacoby Brissett.

And another thing which we're going to get into now is sort of an incomplete, and that's what this New England Patriots offense might look without Julian Edelman. Obviously, Edelman suffers the non-contact knee injury. It's an ACL, lost for the season, and that's a big loss for this New England offense because if you've watched this team the past couple of seasons, particularly last year when

they lost Rob Gronkowski, this was an offense that almost ran through Julian Edelman in the passing game. Now, Brandon Cook's a tremendous addition, so it's not as if they're lacking for wide receiver talent. But the question becomes is when you get that sort of third and seventh situation, when Brady needs to make a play, Edelman was often the guy he would look to first. With Gronkowski back, perhaps it becomes Gronkowski again, but it's going to be interesting to see how this offense looks going forward. Now, an early guess for me, this team simply just moves on. You know, this is an organization that sort of prides itself on that next man up mentality. Now, we've heard some rumors,

Jarvis Landry down in Miami, perhaps he's an odd man out down there. Word on the street is that that offense looks to move towards a Devontae Parker-centric passing game. They want to sort of build the passing game through him rather than Landry, who's a very talented slot receiver. But I would be very, very surprised if New England made a move like that. Now, they might make a move and bring in somebody sort of in the back end of the wide receiver core, maybe a wide receiver four or five type. That wouldn't totally surprise me, but it would really surprise me to see them go out and get sort of in the back end of the wide receiver core, maybe a wide receiver four or five type. That wouldn't totally surprise me, but it would really surprise me to see them go out and get sort of a big name signing or a trade or something like that.

Honestly, when push comes to shove, I would think that New England just stays with who they've got, and we're going to see sort of that next man up philosophy sort of play out over at least the early part of the season. Now, when this team goes 11 personnel that's one time had one running back three wide receivers my guess is look you're gonna see a lot of cooks and Hogan with a mix of Amendola and Malcolm Mitchell working in there as well depending on sort of the route concept situation what they're looking

to do Mitchell really like what he does sort of outside along the boundary I think he's a bigger body type receiver. Obviously made some great catches, some bigger plays for New England, you know, at the end of the Super Bowl. Amendola is more of your, again, your slot guy. But Edelman was a guy that could do both. And so it might take two guys to sort of replace him in his production and what he means to this offense from a schematic standpoint. Another thing that wouldn't surprise me was to see New England go a lot more 12 personnel. This is something they did a little bit last year, obviously, when Gronkowski was healthy and then Martellius Bennett. You get two tight end looks.

It gives you a little bit of flexibility in both the run and the pass game because obviously you can pound the ball a little bit more with the extra tight end on the field. But with guys like Dwayne Allen and Gronkowski, you can still look to get downfield in the passing game. A question becomes, do they keep a third tight end in James O'Shaughnessy? That's probably something that gets sorted out over the next couple of days in that fourth preseason game as well against the New York Giants. But for now, I think New England probably sticks with what they've got. Next man up philosophy. And we'll probably just see a lot more of Danny Amendola and Malcolm Mitchell going forward.

And these are two very talented receivers. They can each do some things and replicate some of the things that Julian Edelman meant to this offense. And they'll duplicate what they lost in Edelman as best as they can. Another thing to possibly consider here is the role of the running backs in this passing game going forward because another option for New England is, and we've seen this, they've done things like this before where you've got guys like James White or Dion Loeser,

even a guy like D.J. Foster who they definitely like. He was a healthy scratch for 13 games last year. They kept him on the roster. They did a lot of things with him this preseason so far. He saw a lot of time against the Lions. It wouldn't shock me to see DJ Foster sort of step into more of a slot type receiver role with this team. Maybe they use him in some situations and get him a little bit more playing time and move him into that role as well. And finally, another name to sort of watch going forward for this spot is Austin Carr,

the rookie wide receiver, the undrafted free agent out of Northwestern. A lot of people really liked Carr coming out. He's done some really nice things for New England in the action that he's seen so far. But again, when we get into sort of a numbers game and this team, this organization has to get down to 53 players, Carr might still end up being the guy on the outside looking in, particularly if the Patriots decide to use more of a DJ Foster type. Carr still might find himself on the outside looking in. Some more news over the weekend, and somewhat of a surprising move, at least to some, was the release of Coney Ealy,

the veteran defensive end that the Patriots traded for in the offseason, right before the draft. Send him pick 64, the last pick of the second round, to the Carolina Panthers in exchange for pick number 72, as well as the defensive end, Coney Ealy. Now, there were some that sort of looked at it as, you know, sending a second round draft pick for a third round in return and Coney Ealy. Maybe you'd want to have that second round pick, but the Patriots really just moved down eight spots. When you kind of look at it like that, they didn't really give up a lot for Coney Ealy. And in return, they got pick 72. New England doing what they often do. They traded that pick away. They turned that into

Derek Rivers and Tony Garcia. Obviously, they lose Rivers to an injury. Garcia, offensive tackle, added some depth there. But in a typical Belichick-style move, they trade down again, stockpile some picks, and get two more guys. And so, you know, the loss of Ealy and just making the decision to release him, it's one of these situations where I think if you take sort of a step back and look at what New England's trying to do defensively, how they've liked to play defensive over the past couple years and sort of their favorite defensive formation, it makes sense that Ealy trying to fit them in where they wanted to

on the defensive side of the ball didn't make sense. Matt Chatham, Chatham58 on Twitter, does great work on there. Definitely somebody who knows a ton about the game. You know, he sort of made this point on Twitter, you know, the past couple days is that, look, you know, New England's, you know, they're using a bit of a different defensive front. It almost looks like a bare front. A bare front is typically where you get a nose guard, head up over the center, and then, you know, two defensive tackles, head up over the guards. And then you bring linebackers down on the edges. And the Patriots have been playing sort of a modified bare front a lot more in the past couple of years,

where they've got, you know, nose tackle, you know, Allen Branch typically head up on the center. And then they have sort of hybrid defensive tackle, defensive end types that don't necessarily play head up on the guard, but usually shade outside shoulder of the guard. So it's sort of a modified bare front. And then they bring again, you know, outside linebackers outside shoulder of the guard. So it's sort of a modified bare front. And then they bring again, you know, outside linebackers down over on the edges, you know, so and then what they were asking either to do was sort of slide sort of inside into that area. And, you know, maybe the fit just wasn't quite what they were looking for. But look, they've got depth there. You know, they've got guys like, you know, Malcolm Brown and Trey Flowers and Vince Valentine and some other guys that they've got to call upon to fill in that role. And then the edge guys,

you think of the term edge, you think outside pass rusher. Well, that's how they use their linebackers. Think of the role that Rob Ninkovich played for years for this team, and now Shane McClellan's going to be doing that sort of outside edge rush type stuff, but still be asked to do things in the coverage game as well. And so this was one of those situations where, you know, they tried to move Ealy into that role. It didn't quite work out. And so New England, as they're known to do,

they simply accepted the fact that it didn't work out and cut bait earlier rather than later. And what's interesting about the timing of this, this gives Ealy time to get picked up, and he did get picked up by the Jets, so it gives him time to get into New York, have a preseason game with them, and see if he can make the roster. And that's something that this organization sometimes does is cut bait on a guy sooner rather than later, and he still now has a chance to stick with a team because if they made this move after week four of the preseason,

rosters are going to be set. And that's going to be, you know, don't forget that we're going from 90 to 53 now without extra cut down weeks and cut down days. And so there's going to be a lot of player movement here at the end. And so a guy like Kony Ealy might have sort of gotten lost in the shuffle, but by cutting him, by releasing him when they did, they give him a chance to sort of stick around. So I want to now move to a segment that I'm going to call Schofield-Lonski. And this is really the

sort of stuff that I love talking about. Sort of breaking down the X's and O's of the game and talking about why a play worked or why a play didn't work. And taking you sort of inside what happens on the field, what a team's trying to do, and how a defense may have stopped them or vice versa. And I want to look at the two touchdown passes from Tom Brady to Chris Hogan that we saw in the first quarter of this game against the Detroit Lions. The first one comes with just over 12 minutes left in the first quarter. It's a second-and-goal situation, football on the right hash mark.

Patriots have 21 offensive personnel on the field, which is two running backs. They've got James Devlin as well as Deion Lewis. And they actually split Devlin out wide to the left, which is sometimes what they do with him. They like to sort of split him out, force the defense to sort of make a decision whether they run a linebacker out there or they stay with what they've got and put a cornerback on them. So Devlin split wide to the left, and he's got a receiver to the inside of him

and Brandon Cooks in the slot. And to the right side of the formation, you have Gronkowski. A three-point stance is an in-line tight end. You've got Chris Hogan with a wide split at the start of the play. And Deion Lewis, the running back, he's to the right side of the formation as well, standing to the right of quarterback Tom Brady. And what we're going to see here is something called sort of the spot or snag concept. And it's a three-receiver route concept that sets up sort of a triangle.

We're going to get Gronkowski at the inline 10, and he's going to run sort of a deeper out corner route. Lewis, the running back, he's going to run to the flat, sort of a quick flat route. Hogan's going to run what we call sort of a quick flat route hogan's going to run what we call sort of the snag or sometimes called pivot route option route whatever you want to call it where he's going to sort of come inside what looks to be a slant route and then of his choice sort of either to sit down there against zone or sort of break to the outside if he sees man coverage sit down versus zone run away from man coverage and what's about this, and we'll see it again with the next play,

is how the Patriots sort of use motion as a pre-snap tell for the quarterback. Because as I indicated, Hogan starts this play, split wide to the right, but he's going to come in short motion, coming from the right sideline, almost towards the bottom of the numbers on the field. So when the ball is snapped, he's almost in a wing alignment just to the outside of Gronkowski. And in response, the cornerback to Hogan's side of the field trails him a little bit, but doesn't stay right on his face. He sort of drifts back a little bit. Now that tells Brady sort of pre-snap that this isn't tight man coverage. It's sort of going to

be a zone type look because he's not sort of trailing right with him. He's sort of drifting back. And the play side linebacker, the rookie Jared Davis out of Florida, he sort of rotates to the outside a bit. So that tells Brady, look, this is going to be more of a zone look. This isn't going to be an actual true man look. And when the ball is snout, Hogan comes inside and he sees that linebacker,is sort of squat open his hips towards the sideline and look to wall him off the read there is look again this isn't true man coverage this is more of his own look because if it was man he was going to davis would rotate out towards him more. But instead, Davis sort of squats on that. Hogan sees that, stops, and just drifts ever so slightly. He doesn't fully break away.

If it were man coverage, he would fully break back to the outside. But here he just sort of drifts a little bit, turns those shoulders, gives Brady a good target away from the defender. Brady sees it in rhythm. Receiver and quarterback are on the same page. Easy throw, easy catch, picking on the rookie linebacker for the touchdown. Now I want to talk just for a little bit about the other touchdown to Hogan, which comes on a first to 10 situation after a fumble recovery

by Malcolm Butler. And what we see here, again, we see pre-snap motion this is sort of a vertical concept here patriots start in a three receiver bunch look to the left well you've got gronkowski in a win hogan toward the outside and amandola in the middle amandola comes in motion across the formation so they now have two by two when the ball is snapped two receivers left two receivers right the defender across from Amendola trails the receiver across the formation. What's that tell Brady? Look, straight man coverage. Brady sees that. He knows pre-snap he's got man coverage. They run a vertical concept with out-and-up patterns both sides of the field. Hogan on an out-and-up to the left and another

out-and-up to the right. And we get a pretty bad defensive breakdown at all levels in the secondary. Lions run cover one here, which is man across the board with one free safety deep read in the play. All three receivers that run vertical routes are open, and Brady really has his choice here. He could have gone to any of the three receivers he could have thrown to. But with the football on the left hash mark, he takes the easiest throw, which is Hogan, who is open on the left side of the field.

Brady makes a great throw. Safety can't get over in time, and it's a touchdown. And again, what we see, the use of pre-snap motion, like we saw with the previous play, helps the quarterback know pre-snap, okay, this is the coverage that I can expect. Now, just because they rotate that way doesn't mean it's always going to be that way. But on these two plays, we saw the pre-snap motion. He gives Brady that little pre-snap indicator. He confirms it immediately after the snap, reads

the coverage, makes a great throw. I hope you've enjoyed the first episode of Locked on Patriots with myself, Mark Schofield, as the host. I'm going to be rotating in some guests as well. We'll get a great guest lined up. For our next episode, we're going to bring in Matt Waldman of the Rookie Scouting Portfolio. He's been doing some scheme stuff this offseason.

He's going to have some thoughts from him on what the Patriots are doing offensively. We're also going to talk about Austin Carr because Matt does a great job scouting receivers and skill position players on the offensive side of the ball each and every draft season. And he puts it out in his rookie scouting portfolio, which I would highly recommend. So Matt will have his thoughts on Austin Carr and we'll get into the quarterback situation as well because Matt also had his write-up on both Garoppolo and Jacoby Brissett when they were coming out of college. So we'll dig into his thoughts on those players. And then later in the week, we're going to talk to my good friend Dan Hattman,

former professional scout, now director of the Scouting Academy. Dan spent years in the National Football League, and I want to talk to him about that fourth preseason game and just how important it is for the players that are suddenly on the roster bubble and need to make one last good impression to stick with their NFL team. For now, I'm Mark Schofield. Thank you so much for listening to Locked On Patriots. And to play us out again, my friends at Filger,

give them a shout, check them out online. You can find them at filger.com. Also, they've got a new album out, Keepsakes of the Interior, so check that out as well. You can find them again online at filger.com, that's F-I-L-I-G-R dot com. Thanks again for listening to Lock on Patriots. I'll be back tomorrow with another episode. Is democracy in danger or decline?

Condoleezza Rice, William Galston, and Carlos Gutierrez and others take on this question in the fall edition of The Catalyst, a journal of ideas from the Bush Institute. Surveys show Americans place less trust in institutions like the media and business. Others contend America has faced far more challenging periods and emerged strong. Thank you.