Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots August 4, 2018 - Emergency Edition: Sony Michel's Knee

Episode Date: August 5, 2018

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Hello everybody, welcome to a special emergency edition of Locked On Patriots. Mark Schofield hopping back into the big chair here. It's Saturday night, August 4th, 2018. I'm at Ocean City, I'm at the beach, I'm on vacation. But Patriots news, when it drops, I gotta run to a mic. And that's exactly what I'm at the beach. I'm on vacation, but Patriots news, when it drops, I got to run to a mic. And that's exactly what I'm doing here tonight. We're going to talk quickly about the Sonny Michelle injury, some concerns, some short-term thoughts, some long-term thoughts, even some fantasy thoughts for those of you out here who listen to this show for fantasy purposes.

We're also going to get insight from one of the best sports medicine doctors in the entire Boston area. Excited to drop just a little bit of knowledge from my boy, Chris Geary. Before we get into all that, I want to remind everybody, follow me on Twitter, at Mark Schofield. Check out the work over at InsideThePylon.com. The Score, Pro Football Weekly, Steelers Depot, Big Blue View. Basically, if there's a site that's writing about football, chances are I'm contributing over there. And as I said, everybody, I'm here, I'm on vacation. And one of the great things about being on vacation, particularly a beach vacation, where like today I spent a good six straight hours

just at the beach, had lunch on the beach, just unplugged from everything. It's easy in this day and age to have that phone stapled to your hand and you're constantly scrolling through it, you know, scrolling through Twitter, whatever it is. But when you're unplugged like this on a vacation like this, you can't really take the phone out into the ocean. I mean, you can. I've seen people do it and it makes me nervous because literally today I saw a couple of people, they had this huge, you know, raft flotation thing. Look, it was a slice of pizza. And they're all kind of handing out on it. And one of the women on it had her phone. And she's out well into more than waist-deep water out there. And just one wave, and the waves were rough today, catches you guys

the wrong way. And you're without a phone. That's a complete little sidetrack event there. But be that as it may, I still saw some rumblings this morning. They began early this morning, early Saturday morning. Jeff Howe of The Athletic in Boston, at Jeff P. Howe on Twitter. Sonny Michel suffered a knee injury that concerned the team Wednesday. This is a tweet from him. Source said, he still isn't in practice. No updates since that point. Could be minor, a situation where the Pats wanted to rest him for a couple days. But again, no updates since Wednesday. Hard to know. So that was how the morning basically started. And it kind of just snowballed from there. Later, an update from Jeff Howell

says that it's a minor knee issue for Sonny Michel. Sigh of relief for the team. That was about an hour later. And then seven hours after that, a follow-up tweet to it. Further details with more clarity. Michelle's knee injury requires a procedure that's expected to keep him out of preseason and perhaps even into the start of the regular season, per two sources. So not a major sigh of relief, but the expectation is that Michelle should contribute this season. And let's be honest, that should is doing some heavy lifting in that tweet.

Some other updates from around the football world. Mike Reese, at Mike Reese on Twitter, Sody Michelle underwent a procedure to drain fluid from his knee after leaving Wednesday's practice following a run play. Those close to the situation don't seem too concerned regarding his availability for the regular season, but missing time in preseason is still notable. So that's from Mike Reese on Twitter. That was also confirmed by Adam

Schefter from ESPN. So there you kind of have it. And when this all kind of went down and got pieced together, I went to the person I trust most. You know, when it comes to medical issues, especially when it comes to, you know, injuries, things like that, the person I trust most, hands down, is Christopher Gary. He is at ChrisGaryOrtho on Twitter. He is, again, I've said this before, great time to be a sports fan, great time to be a football fan because there are people out there in all walks of life

doing all sorts of great work. I talk about at Pat's Cap, Miguel Benzon a ton here. He's a must follow. Also, Chris Gary, or should I say Dr. Chris Gary is a must follow because he is an orthopedic surgeon and the chief of sports medicine at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. He's been on this show before.

I had him on when Tom Brady was, you know, there were some rumblings about Brady and an injury during the regular season. Dr. Gehry has a website which you should check out as well, chrisgehOrtho.com He does some stuff there when it comes to the Patriots, the Boston sports scene and injuries.

He's got some great stuff. If you wanted to revisit Tom Brady's hand injury right before the AFC Championship game. Great piece there sort of breaking it all down. Talking about the concerns that he had for an ulnar collateral ligament injury, which is something that I suffered. So that was the first person I turned to was Dr. Gary. Paid my copay. That's a joke. That's a private joke that we have, but reached out to him, you know, thoughts on it. And his quick response, again, outside looking in, he's not going off of any sort of personal knowledge here, but he potentially, potentially, potentially mentioned that Michelle might have gone on, had a scope for a potential meniscus tear. But the fact that we're also seeing that this stuff get drained, that's a sign that there isn't a tear here to deal with.

And so that's probably a good term. That's probably a good sign. Again, follow Dr. Gary at ChrisGaryOrtho on Twitter. Also check him out, his website, ChrisGaryOrtho.com. He's a must-follow when it comes to sports injuries, particularly on Twitter because, like everybody else, Dr. Gary will be watching the games. Somebody goes down, he usually chimes in pretty quickly

with what his sort of quick prognosis is, what his expectations are, what he believes that player might have suffered with respect to an injury right there in the moment. He always does great stuff. And for those of you that like InsideThePylon.com, you can see some of his work over at ITP.com as well. When we started ITP, he was one of the people that started that

with us. He did some great stuff on Rob Gronkowski and his ACL injury from a few years ago. You should definitely check out that piece. So that's sort of the medical thing. Procedure to drain fluid, probable potential scope there to see if there was a meniscus tear. Doesn't seem to be any sort of rumblings or rumors that there was anything torn. So now we're hearing that probably going to miss some time for the preseason. Should be back for the regular season. So now let's talk short, long, and fantasy prognosis, okay? We'll do some fantasy stuff because let's face it.

We all get our hands into fantasy. And part of the reason I'm doing what is now, unbelievably, the second emergency podcast of this summer, you might remember back in June, when the Edelman suspension went down, great friend of the show, Erica Prohl, at Erica Holmes for you, the letter U on Twitter, give her a follow, great Pats fan up in the great white north in Canada.

She reached out about a potential emergency podcast for the Edelman suspension. And so when the people ask, I try to deliver. Same kind of situation tonight. Great, great, great, great buddy of mine. Lives up in Monkey County, Maryland with me at Captain Huggyface at C-A-P-N-H-U-G-G-Y-F-A-C-E. A great denizen of the great county monkey, County Montgomery County in Maryland. He reached out, emergency pod on Sony Michelle. And part of the reason I'm going to include fantasy stuff is because Captain Huggyface listens to this show

for some fantasy insight. So we're going to dive into that in a second. But short-term prognosis is this. This is a tricky situation. If you start missing time in the preseason, the team's got to get ready to go. You know, they got to get their guys ready for week one. You know, at some point, they're going to start installing the game plan to go up against Houston in week one. And if Michelle can't be out there, if he can't get reps in practice, if he can't get

preseason game reps, when they start installing that stuff for week one, he's going to be behind the eight ball. So you have to wonder, the more time he misses in the preseason, the more likely it is that he's going to be brought along slowly. So I would be surprised to see him, unless he's really back on the field and he starts getting run and plays in at least the last two preseason games or plays in the last three preseason games, I would be surprised to see him getting a significant game-time run

until, say, week three, maybe even week four. The more time he misses, the more likely it's going to be that other people are going to have to carry the load at the running back spot. Long-term prognosis. This is a concern, and it brings us to some of the things we've been talking about this week. Todd Gurley and that piece from Joe Ferriola, Jack Duffin, who reached out to me when this happened today,

and basically said, hey, don't draft a running back high. They're replaceable. And that was a follow-up to his question that he asked for the Friday show about why Belichick drafted Sonny Michel high and how it seemed counterintuitive to how Belichick constructs a roster, particularly at the running back position. And so the knee issue was a concern with Sonny Michel coming into this season.

I remember people asking me on this show, are we concerned about Sonny Michel and his knee? And my sort of thought there was, no. I said that I trusted the Patriots at the right thing from a medical profile. They probably got him worked up by doctors. They were comfortable enough to draft him in the first round. Well, don't I have egg on my face right now?

Because here we go. We're getting a knee injury this early into his career in the National Football League. And so you wonder if, you know, Sonny Michel's shelf life is a little bit shorter than, say, your average running back coming into the National Football League. And so it's a concern in the short term. It's a concern in the long term. It's a concern. I'm term. It's a concern in the long term. It's a concern. I'm supposed to be having fun right now.

I'm on vacation. And instead I'm worried about our rookie running back's knee. I'm too old for this. I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue. I just worked in two movie references there. I'm proud of myself for that one. Let's get to fantasy implications for my boy Captain Huggyface as well as the other listeners

to the Locked On Patriots podcast who might have an inkling to explore the options of the Patriots running back room. We can deal with it the same way. Short term, if you can get yourself some Rex Burkhead shares, I think that's probably the way to go.

You know, we saw Dion Lewis and Rex Burkhead sort of share the bulk of production on the running back spot last year. And what's interesting about sort of the idea of Rex Burkhead sort of picking up some of the slack, we talked a lot about Deion Lewis last year. Lewis sort of became a featured workhorse type running back for the Patriots. But what's interesting is last year from week 8 on, Deion Lewis ranked 7th and Rex Burkhead was 19th among running backs in PPR. But when you look at their PPR points per game, those two guys, all of last season, Burkhead had 12.98 points per game.

Deion Lewis had 12.69. Again, that's PPR scoring because Burkhead was more of a factor in the receiving game. And so you bring in Sonny Michel, you think he's going to be a contributor on third downs in the pass game as a receiver. Now with him out, you look at some of how they used Burkhead last year. I think Burkhead is definitely the guy to try to get some shares in, you know, whether it's, you know, redraft leagues, you know, my fantasy league stuff's my FF, MFF leagues, things like that. You know, best ball leagues, try to get yourself some Rex Burkhead, particularly early in the season, A little bit longer term, I think if you're a Dynasty player,

you could probably hold on to your Sonny Michel shares. I wouldn't try to sell them right now. I'm probably not going to get much from them right now anyway. But hold on to him because it does seem to be a minor injury that he's going to contribute to the Patriots at some point this season and beyond. So you could probably hold on to him. And if you are in a redraft league, you could probably get him for cheap right now.

If you're lucky enough to be doing a draft in the next couple of days, don't be gun-shy. From what we've heard, from what Dr. Geary told us, it does seem to be a minor thing. There might be long-term worries, as we talked about down the road, with respect to his shelf life. But for the interim, in the meantime, if you can get him, I'd still get him because I think he is going to be a three down back in the National Football League who can do things

in the pass game, in the run game, and pass protection. Those sort of three phases we talked about for a running back. So that's sort of a quick emergency pod looking at the Sonny Michel injury from a bunch of different angles. Shout out to my boy, Dr. Chris Geary, at Chris Geary Ortho on Twitter. Please, please, please give Dr. Geary a follow. Of course, shout out to at Captain Huggy Face, my boy from Montgomery County, for giving me the prod to drop an emergency podcast episode.

As you can see, friends, if ever news breaks, just ping me on Twitter, shoot me an email, send up a smoke single, carrier pigeon, send a raven from Kinsland if you have to. I will hop to the mic even if I'm on vacation, even if I'm as far away from my phone as I ever am, which is when I'm in the ocean because my phone is still in my beach bag, which is usually as far as I will ever get away from it because let's face it, it's 2018. Everybody's addicted to having their phone in their hands. But I will hop to the mic. I will do what I can

to give you my thoughts, as much information as I can from as many sources as I can get my hands on as many will talk to me. That will do it, though, for this emergency episode. I will be back Monday.

Until then, relax, everybody. Sky's not falling yet. But the summer of unease rolls on here in Foxborough. But until Monday, keep it locked right here to me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on Patriots.