Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots August 7, 2018 - Belichick, WR Madness and Gronk

Episode Date: August 7, 2018

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Hello everybody, welcome into Lockdown Patriots for Tuesday, August 7th, 2018. Mark Schofield back in the big chair. Took me a while to get back here, and I'll get into that in a minute. Reminder to follow me on Twitter at Mark Schofield. Check out the work over at InsideThePylon.com. I'm one of the lead writers. Matt Waldman's Rookie Scouting Portfolio. MattWaldmanRSP.com.

Pro Football Weekly. The Score. My first piece over at The Score actually just went up in the past couple of hours. Looking at Alex Smith. The Washington Redskins. Play Action Pass and Boot Action Pass. A lot of nerdy football stuff in that piece. So you can check that out over on The score app or the score.com. Loaded show for you today. We're going

to talk wide receiver madness. I am at a loss, my friends. I am at a loss at the wide receiver position. We're going to try to piece it together together. Also, we're going to talk a little bit of fantasy stuff with a Patriots bent. Robert Gronkowski, his average drafted position right now in fantasy drafts has me a little perplexed. I'm going to tell you why from a Patriots need perspective, from a Patriots scheme perspective. Don't sleep on Gronkowski as far as fantasy goes this season. And I'll tell you all about that in a bit. We're going to open it up with some Bill Belichick stuff, some stuff from Friday, some stuff from today as well. But first, an apology, an apology to the lawyer listeners of the Lockdown Patriots podcast. As I told you all, I was very excited to get this show back to five

days a week. We actually did six shows last week. We did an emergency podcast on the Sony Michelle knee injury. You can check that out if you missed it. You know, it came out on Saturday night. You can check out my Twitter feed, at Mark Schofield, to recap that one. You should be subscribed to the Locked On Patriots podcast. Get subscribed if you aren't already. So I was all excited to do, you know, get back into the swing of things after the trip, after the vacation on the beach. But let me tell you a little something, my friends. There are few certainties in life.

Very, very few certainties in life, very, very few certainties in life. In my life, there is generally one. Well, it's a mix of two. Every year, my family, we go to Ocean City for usually at least a long weekend, if not a little bit longer stretch. This time we went out, we went down there Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, coming back Sunday. So about five days. So every year we do this trip. At least once. Sometimes we make it down twice. And every time we do this trip, your boy gets sick.

I kid you not. Last year it was a stomach thing. I didn't fully recover until about the day before we left. A couple of years ago, remember when recently a Mets pitcher came down with hand, foot, and mouth disease? A couple of years ago, I came down with hand, foot, and mouth disease. And I learned something during that experience. There are actually two versions of hand, foot, and mouth. There's the infant version, which every child can get, which is common among children. We'll come back to that. There's an

adult version of hand, foot, and mouth, which is a really weakened form of it because by that time you've built up enough, you know, immunity in your body where you can kind of fight it off. You get a little bit of sore throat, maybe a slight fever, some discomfort, but it's really nothing. But if an adult somehow gets the child version of hand, foot, and mouth, it can be downright debilitating. And I'm talking blisters all over the inside of your throat, blisters on your hands, blisters on your feet. Well, which version do you think your boy got before the Ocean City trip a couple of

years ago? It was the kid's version to the point where walking on sand felt like I was walking on glass. And now every time we go to the same place, we stay in the same unit. It's a condo that we have access to. It's great. But every time we're back there now, I'm walking on the rugs. It's painful because I just have flashbacks to being there with hand, foot, and mouth.

So, of course, the night before we left for this trip, I wake up with a sore throat, fighting ear stuff the entire time. It feels like a sinus infection. I'm chewing everything. I'm taking any kind of medication, all the stuff I can think of. Get back to the D.C. area. Wake up Monday, and I feel like death. Can't really even get out of bed.

Finally broke down today. Went to the doctor. Boom, your boy's got an ear infection like I'm a child. So between hand, foot, and mouth, the kid's version and the ear infection, I basically got the immune system of a 6-year-old, which is fantastic. So we missed yesterday's show, fighting through it today, but didn't want to leave you guys hanging, so we'll do a show today. Talk with some Belichick stuff, Belichick address in the media,

both Friday, some stuff we didn't get to, as well as today, some stuff we'll touch upon throughout this show. First, what are the things that stood out to me reading through the Friday transcript of Belichick's press conference? He was asked about the Pro Football Hall of Game game and typical Belichick answer, I didn't. I missed it. 17-16. It must have been pretty exciting. Typical Belichick deadpan.

But then he gets asked about the new helmet rule. And he was asked how he saw it was applied by the officials. And he gets into a lengthy answer. We'll definitely watch that game relative to the officiating, the kickoffs, just some strategy on the kickoffs. I did see a couple of plays on that. But what those two teams are doing, that doesn't mean the other 29 minus us will do.

But you know those are two good coaching staffs. We'll see what they did strategically on the kickoff and kickoff return in that phase of the game. I'm sure the officiating department, which Al Riverton does a good job of, he did it last year. I'm sure he'll do it again. He sends out weekly either videos or memos to the coaches to explain either rules or situations or whatever there is to explain based on what he's seen that week or in previous weeks that are trending and sort of keep us informed on that. I'm sure he'll do that. That will help us in the next few days when we start to prepare for

Washington. That will be part of talking about that, showing some kicking and some kickoff return plays from this game. And maybe there were some officiating plays that were relevant. Cleet Blackman came in here last week and went through his presentation on the rules and so forth, which was very good. But maybe there'll be some things to add from this game to inform the players about that that came up in the game.

And if you missed the Hall of Fame game, the most notable play was the play right before Lamar Jackson's first NFL touchdown pass. There was a throw on a post route into the end zone to tight end Hayden Hurst, rookie tight end out of South Carolina. And safety kind of leads with his helmet. And it looked like to me watching it both live and on the replay that the safety that was penalized for this while he left his feet, he made contact with his shoulder to the head and neck area, but it was still flagged.

And I saw an interesting discussion last week on Twitter about what about the quarterback sneak? We all know how, look at Tom Brady and how he executed. You drop down, you lead with the helmet, right? Is that going to be flagged or is that play now ruined in the National Football League? So that's something to watch. The follow-up question to this really sort of surprised me. Are you going to have the officials come to a practice? Belichick's answer, one word, no. And that sort of really surprised me. Because some years you do see teams,

Brandon officials, I saw some videos, some tweets from the Titans, and they had officials at their practice in order to give you a sense as you're going through team drills and things like that that these are what the teams are going to be doing. These are how things are going to be called. This is what you've got to get ready for. And apparently the Patriots are not going to do that.

So that surprised me a bit because usually Belichick usually does things like that to give them a sense, give the players a more game-like feel of, okay, you've been covering this guy all training camp long. You've been maybe getting away with a couple of hands downfield, things like that. Now you're going to get flagged for it. So now you're going to know you've got to approach it differently, especially as we get towards the games. And so that sort of really surprised me to see that Belichick wasn't going to do that.

Some stuff out of the Monday presser from Belichick, some stuff about the wide receiver group, which we're going to get to in the second segment of the show when we start talking about that wide receiver madness group. Some stuff about Randy Moss and what Randy Moss sort of meant for him as a player. Some stuff on the Red Sox. Belichick took in Sunday night. Red Sox-Yankees.

Red Sox looking great right now. Belichick took that game in. Said he was extremely impressed with how the Red Sox are performing right now. But not really a lot of stuff from Belichick's Monday press conference that we need to get to. Up next, we're going to talk wide receiver madness. Malcolm Mitchell moving on. Cordell Patterson, is he taking on more of a role? Josh Decker's time with Josh—excuse me, Eric Decker's time with Josh McDaniels. Maybe that

can tell us something about where this team's going to go. But first, what's really been dogging me, friends, you know, not, you know, being under the weather, couldn't get to the gym yesterday. What would have been great if I didn't have to go anywhere. If I could have just walked downstairs, walked into the playroom or something, and just gotten in a workout while keeping my sick self away from other humans so I don't infect them, although I did learn today that the infection is not contagious. But still, I didn't know I had an infection yesterday, but I didn't get to the gym. If I had had a Fusion CTS series from NordicTrack, I could have gotten my workout in. NordicTrack has a series of training equipment to give you amazing workouts in the convenience

of your home, including treadmills, exercise bikes, incline trainers, and yes, their strength training series, that Fusion CST series. You can join high-energy streamed workouts any time of day without stepping out the door. Think about it. You can start your day with a run through the streets of Paris. You can end working out on the African safari. Their workouts are led by the world's top personal trainers to ensure that you meet your fitness goals. Here's what you got to do. We have a special offer for Locked On Patriots listeners that allows you to get $75 off your NordicTrack purchase. You go to nordictrack.com slash locked on. You use the offer code locked on.

That will get you $75 off your purchase. Again, visit nordictrack.com slash locked on. Use that offer code locked on during checkout to save $75 off your purchase. Up next, we're going to talk wide receiver madness, trying to make some sense out of a Patriots receiver room. A little later in the show, Robert Gronkowski from a fantasy perspective. Later on this week, it's game

week. We're going to do a little My Expectations on Wednesday for the Thursday night game. We're going to have Taylor Kiles from Pat's Publix on for your game day edition of Locked on Patriots, our first game day edition of the 2018 season. That will be Thursday, and then Friday we'll recap in the preseason opener. But up next, wide receiver madness.

That's ahead with me, Mark Schofield, in Locked on Patriots. Mark Schofield, back with you now on this Tuesday edition of Locked on Patriots. And let's talk wide receiver madness because I'm losing my mind trying to figure out this Patriots wide receiver group right now. A player that I've talked about a lot on this show, Malcolm Mitchell, officially released by the Patriots on Monday, and it does not seem like he will be back. The Patriots released the wide receiver without an injury designation. So look, if he goes through waivers unclaimed, he's a free agent. If the Patriots release him with an injury designation, and he cleared waivers, goes through waivers unclaimed,

he's going to come back to the Patriots injured reserve. So as I tell you, he's probably not coming back. He's probably just going to go through unclaimed and become a free agent. Now, Mitchell has been struggling with knee injuries basically since college. Missed all of last season. Really struggling to get just onto the practice field this year. He would basically stretch for practices and then just go rehab. His rookie year, finished with 32 catches for 400 yards, 401 yards, four touchdowns.

The game that really I kept coming back to was Super Bowl 51. Six catches for 70 yards, a number of third down receptions, including one along the left sideline that sticks out in my mind. I believe a third and five, a third and six. He actually slipped, got up, made the catch. That was a big play at that moment to help the Patriots get back into that game. But now he's gone. And so we again have to wonder about this Patriots wide receiver room.

A group that coming into, say, June, people were extremely excited about. I mean, you've got Edelman coming back. You've got, obviously, Chris Hogan still in the mix. Year two with Philip Dorsett. You had Jordan Matthews. You've added Cordell Patterson. You're bringing Kenny Britt back. You're thinking, okay, well, they could put together a good group here.

Yeah, you're – oh, but they traded Brandon Cooks. Oh, well, okay. Oh, they lose in Amendola. Okay, well, that's another shot. But still, they got this group here, right? Oh, well, they're going to cut Jordan Matthews. They're going to release Malcolm Mitchell. And now, you go to one of my favorite websites, rlads.com,

which has depth charts for all NFL teams and all college teams. It's a fantastic resource. I've got it bookmarked. You pull up the Patriots depth chart right now according to what rlads has it as. Cordell Patterson, Chris Hogan, Julian Edelman. Those are your starting wide receivers. Yeah, they've brought in Eric Ducker. And they might keep seeing Inchel

with Braxton Berrios, but that's neither here nor there. So how do we make sense of this wide receiver group right now? And I don't know if we can. I honestly don't. And we're reading reports reports we're hearing about Coral Dell Patterson who apparently

has kind of been standing out so far you know people have been talking there was there was a piece over at Roto World which obviously has more of a a fantasy bent

but Roto World was talking about how Patterson which obviously has more of a fantasy bent. But Roto War was talking about how Patterson is really a standout in camp right now. And you know, I'm pulling the piece up right now. And they reference a piece from Mark Daniels of the Providence Journal. Basically saying, Patterson has been turning heads as a receiver during training camp.

He's made highlight reel catches. They've become routine. He struggled as a receiver throughout his career, but his playmaking ability is undeniable. And New England has serious questions behind Edelman and Chris Hogan. So do we start to wonder, have we been underselling Cordadel Patterson? And there's another piece out, look at Patterson, how his off-season training regimen was kind of focused on explosiveness. He sort of changed up his off-season regimen. He's got tremendous, tremendous lawn speed.

But they needed to work on the short area quickness type stuff. That stuff that makes the difference between being a good route runner and a great route runner. They zeroed in on his acceleration, which as Patterson put it, his receivers coach, Richard Mann, who he worked with this summer put it his acceleration did not match up with his top end speed he worked with this coach Richard Mann they introduced new tactics

in hopes of polishing his fundamentals and as you know they put it you know you could put this guy against anybody

he's got legit 4.3 speed at 235 pounds but what they found was that he was over striding as if he was running a 200 meter dash

he could blow past anybody at the 15 yard mark of a sprint but his starts were things that needed work they shortened his stride length and increased his stride frequency

and incorporated some mobility work to help loosen his hips. This is from a piece over at the Boston Herald by Kevin Duffy, which I highly recommend. The difference? Well, here you go. His 10-yard split

and the 40-yard dash, which is something that people look at in terms of explosion and things like that acceleration it went from 1.55 seconds which is good down to 1.47 that's going to make a difference in route running because a lot of times when you're running routes

that's where you win them even deep routes you win them within the first 10 yards of the line of scrimmage. That's going to get you separation. And at the end of his six weeks training at Velocity, which is the training camp he went, the training program he went through to work on his acceleration. Hartigan's velocity sports performance in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The coaches there thought that he was very comparable with the fastest players they have ever seen in that 0-15 yard range. So maybe the answer to the sort of wide receiver question has been staring us in the face for most of this offseason where we've wondered about guys like jordan matthews or malcolm mitchell some of the other guys like kenny brett maybe all along the answer has been cordell patterson and that's going to be one of the main things i'm going to be looking for you know as we get through the rest of the preseason how much does he really get involved on the offensive side? Because remember, the expectations were he was going to be kick returner, gadget type player, gunner on the punt team. But maybe this is just yet another example of the Patriots

identifying traits, how he's going to fit in, and finding a diamond in the rough. That remains to be seen, though. Up next, speaking of diamonds in the rough, is Robert Gronkowski's ADP too low? We're going to talk a little bit fantasy about the Patriots' tight end. That's ahead with me, Mark Schofield, in Locked on Patriots. Mark Schofield back here on this Tuesday installment of Locked on Patriots. Trying to gut through the end of this episode here.

You've probably heard the voices a little off. Things seem a little bit off. Not 100% today, kids. I need that Z-Pack to start kicking in. We're going to close it out with a quick talk about fantasy stuff. And as somebody that sort of dabbles into the fantasy realm and is going to be doing a little bit more of that this year, stay tuned for news on that,

I've often viewed a couple of outside resources, outside the typical turn on the tape and break it down yourself as ways to sort of understand and project and predict. Obviously Vegas, look, they know what they're talking about. Vegas is always a good reference to have. But fantasy football, particularly ADP, average draft position, is also something that, you know, is a good resource to sort of look at to see how people, you know, whether it's, you know, just regular basic fantasy players

or even the experts, sort of view players. And so I saw a discussion the other day about Robert Kernkowski and his average draft position. I'm looking at it right now over at fantasypros.com. PPR score, which is point per reception, which is very passing game friendly. His average draft position in that is 22nd. He's still tight end one.

He's tight end one by almost any sort of, you know, average draft position type ranking when it comes to fantasy football. But 22 probably slides him into the second, even the third round, depending on the size of leagues. And that puts him behind, for example, Jarek McKinnon, who's running back 12. That puts him behind, say, an A.J. Green, a Devontae Adams, a Leonard Fournette, a Christian McCaffrey.

And so that got me thinking a little bit. Are people's expectations of Robert Gronkowski a little bit too low this year, or are mine just too high? Now, if you've watched the Patriots over the Gronkowski years, you know that the offense, while it doesn't totally run through Gronkowski, if there's a player that they want to get a good matchup for,

if there's a list of players, let's put it this way, Gronkowski's at the top of that list. You know, they try to get good matchups wherever they can, but the guy that they really strive to get the best matchups for is Gronkowski. And so that's the first thing that stands out to me. If there's a guy that the Patriots are going to sort of gear their offense towards to have success, it's Gronkowski. And so you have Tom Brady. You're a team that throws the ball a lot. You're a team that's expected to win a lot of games, to put up a lot of points. There's issue one in Gronkowski's favor. Issue two is the fact that the guy's a freak. And he might, when it's all said and done, be the best tight end to ever play the game.

There's point number two. But here's point number three that builds off of what we were just talking about. Where else are they going to go? Especially early in the year. The rest of the passing game is somewhat of a work in progress. Let's put it that way.

A work in progress at best, a question mark at worst. Yes, they'll get Edelman back into the mix. Yes, they still have Chris Hogan. But for the first four weeks, it's Hogan, it's Gronkowski, and it's a big question mark. And even when Edelman gets back,

it's Edelman, it's Hogan, it's Gronkowski and question marks after that. And so I do think, at least sitting here right now, you know, August 7th, head full of gunk, basically. Maybe it's the illness, but I think that the rest of the

sort of fantasy community, in a sense, is undervaluing Rob Gronkowski. I think that the rest of the sort of fantasy community, in a sense, is undervalued in Rob Gronkowski. I know that there are potential risks. The injury history, yes. The fact that sometimes when you bet on Patriots players, it doesn't always pan out because they are a matchup-based team. And what if, you know, the matchups go other ways?

Also is the fact that, look, if you're a defense, who's the guy you want to stop? Rob Gronkowski. So he's going to see coverage rotated to him. There are times when he doesn't get the ball thrown to him as much because he's doubled, because he's bracketed, and things like that. So I get the hesitation. I just think, given the other circumstances,

particularly the wide receiver room, the hesitation probably isn't as warranted this year as much as it was in years past. And so for the fantasy players out there, those in the redraft leagues, those looking some best ball stuff from week to week, Robert Gronkowski is still a very, very, very good option for you. Don't sleep on the big guy.

And before we go, one last shout out to Rob Gronkowski himself. I don't know if any of you saw this today. He sat down for an interview with a reporter from the Disability Channel. Ben Volin and others tweeted out photos. Rob's basically sitting on the field, on the grass, leaning up against a fence. And there's a reporter interviewing him. And the first thing you see, first thing you notice about the pitchers, the reporter does not have legs. And somebody noted that, look, Gillette, the practice sales, sometimes they're tough to get around. So Gronk just sat down on the field with the guy and signed a bag of Tide Pods for him, which was humorous. But shout out to Gronk for doing that interview. Tremendous, tremendous to see things like that.

Follow the Disability Channel. You know, you should follow them on Twitter for the work that they do. You know, because there's, so obviously friends, and you probably know this from listening to the show, there's more to life than just football. So follow the Disability Channel at T-D-C-H-A-N-N-E-L, the number one,

the Disability Channel. They showcase abilities around the world. It's a subscription service. You can get on Roku. They're also on YouTube. But check them out. Show them some support and some love because it's important the work that they're doing. That will do it for today's show. The work that I'm doing, not as important, but I hope it gets you a little bit of laugh. If nothing else, you can just laugh at the fact that the host of the Locked On Patriots podcast has the immune system of a six-year-old. I expect all of you to make fun of me with hand, foot, mouth jokes, with ear infection jokes, because if you don't, I'm going to be disappointed. I expect you guys and girls out there to step it up and make fun of your boy because it's all about having some fun out here.

Like I said, I will be back tomorrow. We'll do sort of my expectations for preseason game one as well as we're going to engage in some wild-eyed fantasy to kick off tomorrow's show about Khalil Mack. I know it's crazy Madden simulation type stuff, but why not? And then later this week, we'll have our Thursday game day edition

talking to Taylor Kyles and Pat's Pulpit about what he's expecting to see on Thursday night. And then Friday, our first... I mean, I think we saved the Glory's victory editions for the regular season, but I don't know. Maybe we'll bust one out if the Patriots do win on Thursday night. That's all ahead.

Until next time, keep it locked right here to me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on Patriots.