Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots December 18, 2018 - Tape Tuesday

Episode Date: December 18, 2018

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Hey there, everybody. Welcome on into a tape Tuesday installment of the Lockdown Patriots podcast. Mark Schofield back in the big chair for this Tuesday, December 18th, 2018. And not going to lie, friends, not quite 100% today. And the reason for that is, and I probably told this exact same story right around this time last year. You see, you have kids, and they're like these little carrier monkeys. Illnesses going around, viruses going around. My daughter's school, my son's school.

My son was home from school last Friday. Kids were kind of under the weather over the weekend. We had them at the doctor's on Monday and they both checked out fine, but sure enough, getting into Monday afternoon, I felt it hitting me. The sinuses, the body aches, the sore throat, the incessant coughing have gone through basically a pack and a half of cough drops already. Hopefully, I can get through this show without coughing violently into the microphone, but not quite at 100%. Neither are the New England Patriots. So hey, maybe it's going to be the perfect marriage of host and topic. What we're going to do today, we're going to dive

into our Tape Tuesday stuff. We're going to talk JC Jackson, his great performance. We're going to talk Tom Brady, specifically the end of that drive, the end of that game more accurately. A little bit later, early look at Josh Allen Allen because let's face it, we didn't see Josh Allen back when Buffalo and New England squared off on that Monday night game, so I get a chance to talk about some Josh Allen stuff before we do all of that. Reminder to follow me on Twitter at Mark Schofield. Check out the work

at places like InsideThePylon.com, Pro Football Weekly, The Score, Matt Waldman's Rookie Scouting Portfolio, Big Blue View, part of the SB Nation family of websites. Friends, I've said it before, said it again. If there's a website that is covering the game of football, chances are I'm doing some work for them. Let's talk Tom Brady. And I want to start somewhere kind of specific before we branch out. I want to start with numbers because there is a

number that has been bugging me. It's been bugging me for a long, long, long, long, long time. And it's time to readdress it. Now, I know I've mentioned this number before. It's Tom Brady's quarterback rating, specifically when pressured. And it's a number that has been floating around. Now, it was actually worse. You know, back in November, early November, his quarterback rating when pressured, when blitzed, was 59.6, which was worst in the league. But he's actually improved over recent time. But as of yesterday, Monday, his quarterback rating versus the Blitz

has gone all the way up to 80.3. So maybe he's getting a little bit better in this regard, but still the bottom five or bottom six, because two players are tied, is Josh Rosen at 49.0, Josh Allen at 54.1, Case Keenum at 70.0, Brady at 80.3, Sam Donald slash Matthew Stafford at 81.6. That's not illustrious company, so to speak. And when you look at Brady over his career, he's always been so good against the Blitz. I found some numbers, you know, this was an article from the 2017 season, a 70 to 0 touchdown interception ratio by that point in his career against the Blitz.

Last year, his quarterback rating versus pressure versus the Blitz, 96.6, which was 10 points higher than the league average on any down blitz, no blitz whatsoever, which means if you're blitzing Tom Brady, he was 10 points better in passer rating than the average quarterback with a clean pocket and all day to throw. What has been the issue? I do not know that answer, but I'm going to spend more time than I probably should the rest of this week trying to figure it out. Because that's an issue. And what's even more interesting is this.

You might think, oh, well, it's a protection issue. They're getting sacks on them and things like that. Their sack percentage is pretty low. Lowest sack rate. Again, these are numbers, again, from NFL Matchup, at NFL Matchup on Twitter. You've got to be following that account. You've got to be watching that show. Lowest sack rate.

This was, again, put out Monday afternoon. Andrew Lux is the lowest in the league at 2.7%. Then Drew Brees, 3.0. Ben Roethlisberger, 3.3. Tom Brady, 3.6. So he's not getting sacked a ton. Now, is it we're seeing him for some throws, poor placement under pressure, throwaways, things like that? Maybe. But the juxtaposition between that low sack rate and the low quarterback rating,

that's something I'm going to spend some time to figure out. So I wanted to open that. Let's get to that final drive. And I want to talk about a couple of plays in particular. The first and 15 play at the New England 35. This was coming out of the two-minute warning. They had the false start on that second and 10. I mean, the first and 10, excuse me, on Joe Thune coming out of the two-minute warning. But this is a great, great play. And what's amazing about this play is Pittsburgh on this drive

showed Brady a couple of different looks getting into the same basic coverage. They were getting into Tampa 2, and what they were doing was they'd have three safeties. They would put one down, Alain Hema is the guy that you would expect to be that Tampa 2 linebacker spot where you're in the intermediate area of the field between the safeties, behind the linebackers, helping that middle of the field, that soft spot and that cover 2 look. But then they would rotate one deep. They'd rotate another safety down, so they'd have the three safeties basically playing a three-card monte shell game type thing who was going to be

the guy in the middle of the field which guys would be dropping and on this one they do that brady reads it so well anticipates a throw to edelman split in the middle of the field it's just a thin of perfection brady could not have done it better on that play. Edelman could not have run a better route. Very impressed with that play. But then we get to later in the drive, and I tweeted some of these clips out with some analysis. Check the Twitter account out, at Mark Schofield on Twitter.

You get the second and 15 play, which is after the hold and penalty on Shaq Mason. Patriots go double verticals to the left with Gordon with Edelman on the slot on the inside and then Gronkowski he'll run sort of an out and then he'll break it up when Braid doesn't throw immediately and a post route from Chris Hogan on the outside Pittsburgh does that same type of thing where they show a single high safety look and then they rotate the two safeties deep the two safeties that were down in the slot. They drop them deep.

The safety that was deep as a single high guy, he comes down. So again, they show cover one, cover three, rotate it into a Tampa two. Brady sees it, reads it perfectly because immediately he goes to Gordon on the left boundary who's going to be running that vertical route.

Maybe you try to get him into that sort of turkey hole, honey hole area on that cover two along the sideline before the safety can rotate over. It's covered though. The cornerback gets on top of it. So then Brady starts to look to the right and works that sort of post-out concept with Hogan, splitting the safeties, and Gronk on the out.

The out is covered. Corner does a really good job sort of squatting on that. There's probably a window where if he wants to pull the trigger on this, Brady can split those safeties with Hogan because that third safety, the one that drops down into the middle of the field, he opens away from Hogan and towards Edelman because that side of the field has three receivers

because technically the third receiver, James White, in the backfield is three. So he has to open to that side. So there's a window to get that throw in there, but Brady doesn't pull the trigger. Conservative decision, perhaps, but given the second 15 situation, I kind of get it. You've got 33 seconds left. Do you really want to risk it all right here when you don't have to? The problem with that is,

though, what he does after that, because there's a window where he can get James White in the left flat, who, yes, he is six, seven yards behind the line of scrimmage. He's chipped the defensive end. He's starting to release to the flat. So he's behind the line of scrimmage. But you've got the nearest defender to him is about 20 yards away. The nearest defender is standing at the 11. White is standing at the 28. So 17 yards, 18 yards maybe.

There's a window where you can dump this off. White can either get upfield and maybe you'll be down to the final play there or he can get out of bounds. Maybe get you 5 yards. Get into a 3rd and 10 situation. There's a lot of criticism

about Brady not hitting White on the play we're going to talk about next. This might have been the better time to do it because the next play, third and 15, you get another sort of rotation look. Again, they show single high. They rotate it into another Tampa 2 type look. They really sort of drop this.

It's almost more like a cover four. They really go soft here. Patriots go four verticals not a lot of plays in the playbook for third and 15 from the 21 yard line when it's basically third and goal from the 21 Brady gets flushed to the right on this play a lot of people sort of looked at this one and said look he's got white in the flat again and he does he's got white standing alone at the 24-yard line. Nearest defender is down by the four.

He dumps it off here. White probably gets you maybe to the 14 or so and can get out of bounds. You got a fourth and seven now with about maybe 15 seconds left. So maybe things look better. But Brady does get flushed to his right. And Matt Chatham had tweeted this out. I agree with him. I don't think once he gets flushed to his right,

he can then come back and throw left. So I understand why he didn't see that and didn't throw that. He forces the throw to Edelman, excuse me, to Gronkowski in the middle. It goes incomplete. Then you get fourth down. And again, it's basically fourth and goal from the 21.

Pittsburgh just has everybody sort of inside the 10-yard line. They've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven defenders inside the 10. They run four verticals yet again. Not creative, certainly not, as Evan Lazar pointed out on Twitter. But the thing with that is you don't have a lot of plays in the playbook for that. And so it's not the most creative design, but it's what they had to go to. And it's not there and incomplete. The interesting thing about that is watching it sort of from the end zone angle,

he gets credited for throwing this to Edelman, but Gronkowski is sort of breaking over the middle once he sees it released. There's a slight chance that Gronk maybe gets there if the defender doesn't tip this. The other thing I will mention, you watch these plays, particularly the incompletion on second down to Gronkowski,

you watch it from the end zone legal, Gronk almost flinches and before the play has begun, before the ball has snapped. And the defender points it out. T.J. Watt points it out and says he jumps off sides. Gronk was laboring. He was tired.

They were going 10 points up. He was definitely laboring there. So, that's kind of a look at the end there. That's kind of a look at what people have been talking about. Up next, we're going to talk J.C. Jackson, talk about some good stuff that we saw on tape. Obviously, a lot of the plays we already talked about, we'll revisit some of those.

But then, some stuff we didn't get a chance to talk about because once you see it sort of on film, stuff that was thrown away from him, seeing how great a job he was doing. That's ahead on this Tape Tuesday installment of Locked on Patriots. Mark Sofiel back with you now on this Tape Tuesday installment of Locked on Patriots. And as I alluded to, we're going to talk some J.C. Jackson here. And a lot of the plays that he really showed out on against the Pittsburgh Steelers,

we already talked about. For example, we already talked about the open and play of the game. Right out of the gate, Pittsburgh Steelers, they already talked about, for example, we already talked about the opening play of the game. Right out of the gate, Pittsburgh Steelers, they say Juju Smith-Schuster, a line against J.C. Jackson. They try to throw a nine ball in his direction. Jackson's in fantastic position. Incompletion.

The final offensive play of the game, well, except for the kneel down at the end, that fade ball out of the slot. Actually, Smith-Schuster, I believe, was aligned as a number three receiver. Again, J.C. Jackson wins sort of the catch point, rakes up through the pocket, perfectly technically sound play, breaks that up, loses his shoe in the process. Great pass breakup.

So, you know, we've talked about some of the stuff that, you know, he did on tape, but what was good about sort of seeing it in the All-22 is, again, you get a chance to see sort of away from the ball, times when the passes weren't thrown in his direction or even times when the ball was thrown in his direction. You miss some stuff on the broadcast angle. For example, you look at one of Pittsburgh's long drives where they start deep into their own territory.

It's near the end of the first quarter. This is the drive where they get a false start or a holding penalty on first down, so it's first and 14 from their own four. They try to go another deep route to Juju Smith-Schuster along the right sideline. And Juju comes and makes a good inside move off the line of scrimmage

and then breaks to the outside around him. And he actually gets good separation initially because he gets J.C. Jackson to bite to the inside and then J.C. Jackson does the baseball turn so he sort of turns his back to him for a second to wheel around. But he stays over the top of him. So even though Juju Smith-Schuster technically gets some separation, he gets the separation away from him towards the

outside. So JC Jackson is inside and over the top of it. So when Roethlisberger tries to throw this as a vertical route down the field, Juju Smith-Schuster is in perfect position to take it away. He won't let the receiver, I mean, JC Jackson is in perfect position to take it away. He won't let the receiver, I mean, J.C. Jackson is in perfect position to take it away. He doesn't let the receiver get deep. Doesn't let him beat him deep. Now, the Steelers saw that and made the adjustment because on the very next play is when they throw that sort of back shoulder throw. And the realization was, look, if you can't get him deep, can't get over the top of him,

we'll just do this back shoulder. And again, J.C. Jackson is in perfect position to take this away if Roethlisberger tries to put this down the field. But because of what they saw in the previous play, they adjust, they go back shoulder, the timing is perfect, and it's almost an indefensible pass. So I more than understand, especially seeing how those two plays sync up, why the Steelers were able to get that one completion in there. The touchdown pass to Antonio Brown. Obviously, J.C. Jackson wasn't on coverage on Brown on that play. What I loved about this is, for the most part, Jackson isn't somebody that's going to jam you.

At least he hasn't been that way seeing him in the NFL so far. But he actually gets a good jam on Juju Smith-Schuster here. Gets right into him, gets his hands on him, controls him, controls his shoulders, pushes him towards the boundary, and never lets him get a single step, a scintilla of separation. He just wins this route, dominates him physically. And Juju's a pretty physical wide receiver, and I was very impressed by that one rep loved loved loved seeing it another play we're going to talk about they started to move Juju inside they thought look what we're seeing from JC Jackson is you know he's using the boundary he's using the sideline

as leverage he's staying over the top of routes let Let's get him. Let's get Juju to the inside where it's much tougher to cover somebody one-on-one. You're facing potential two-way goes. You don't have the boundary right there to really give you some help. A perfect example of this, playing the second quarter at the 6-11 mark, they moved Juju back into the slot.

This is a first intent. And they try to throw short to him, and he's working out of the slot. And now that brings J.C. Jackson down into the slot. This is a first intent. And they try to throw short to him and he's working out of the slot. And now that brings JC Jackson down into the inside and they try to run this little wheel route, a little out and up. And JC Jackson is in perfect position over the top of it. Doesn't bite on the out route, maintains his good sort of trail position back in the hip pocket. When he breaks vertically, he's able to get over the top of that. Roethlisberger is flushed.

He tries to throw basically a scramble drill situation coming back. Juju Smith-Schuster coming back towards the quarterback, but it's really not there. It's more of a throwaway than anything else. And on the very next play is the first of Harmon's two interceptions where Jackson is in great position again, covering Juju Smith-Schuster on sort of that bending route across the middle of the field once more they had dropped him down to the inside he's the number three trips receiver

maybe a bit of unfamiliar territory but Juju Smith-Schuster again in really good position there played late in the second quarter this is a play at the 356 mark it's a second intent this is a completion that goes to juju smith schuster for eight yards and they again drop him sort of inside to the slot he's the middle trips receiver they put him in motion trying to get him free they run some traffic where they have him run a sort what looks to be a slant route number three receiver releases vertically so it creates a stack or rub. And then he pivots back to the outside, so there's separation there.

JC Jackson thinks he has to sort of come over the top of it. And then when Smith shoots the brakes back to the outside, great recovery, closes in on it. There's some hand fighting and stuff down the field, but he eventually drives him out of bounds for an eight-yard gain. But it could have been worse. It was a great recovery on the next play.

It's a third and two. Roethlisberger tries to hit Juju on a pivot route again, and J.C. Jackson is right there. Finally, play in the fourth quarter. We already talked about the final play, but a couple of plays before that. This comes at the 321 mark. This is a second and nine situation.

This is that deep ball to Antonio Brown late in the game that's kind of under thrown the reason why I want to talk about this play initially Roethlisberger wants to go to the right on a deep out route to Juju Smith Schuster the reason why he doesn't it's a deep out route it's probably over 15 to 18 yards downfield. J.C. Jackson is running step for step with Juju. So Roethlisberger has to come off of that. So he comes to this vertical route along the other sideline late in the play. A little bit of pressure getting there, and it's underthrown. Because Juju was so good with his coverage,

he forced the quarterback to go to a different read late in the play. It's underthrown, and it's an incompletion. So Gilmore was certainly step for step with Antonio Brown. He forced the quarterback to go to a different read late in the play. It's underthrown, and it's an incompletion. So Gilmore was certainly step for step with Antonio Brown. Maybe got away with a little bit of a hold there, but he could at least give half of the credit to this incompletion to J.C. Jackson. So all said and done, I thought this was a fantastic, fantastic game from J.C. Jackson. Really impressed with his development and maybe perhaps the only bright spot from Sunday.

Up next, we put Pittsburgh in the rearview mirror. We look ahead to Buffalo. Some early thoughts on Josh Allen. That's ahead on this Tape Tuesday installment of Locked on Patriots. Mark Schofield back with you now to close out this Tape Tuesday installment of Locked on Patriots. We're going to look ahead now, put in Pittsburgh behind us, Buffalo firmly in our field of vision. And we're going to talk some Josh Allen here.

And what's been interesting about sort of Josh Allen over the past couple of weeks is that, you know, the narrative has certainly begun to shift, especially, you know, if you pay attention to our friends up in upstate New York, because the mood about Josh Allen has certainly turned a little bit. There's a lot more optimism about where Josh Allen is as a quarterback,

how he's sort of developing, how Buffalo has been playing lately. And there are a couple of reasons why this might be the case. You know, you look at sort of, you know, Josh Allen over the past couple of games, and you can see why people are starting to maybe think, look, maybe we missed on this kid. Because you look at, obviously he was hurt in Week 6, but he's been back for Weeks 12, 13, 14, and 15.

They've won two of those four games. They beat Jacksonville. They lose at Miami. They lose to the Jets, okay, but they come back and they win against Detroit. You look at some of what he's done, the numbers don't really jump out at you. For example, that game against Jacksonville, the win, completes eight of 19 passes, less than 50% for 160 yards and a touchdown. Throws for two tutties, two picks against Miami. Hasn't completed more than, he's completed more than 60% of his passes in just one game this year. That was that game at Buffalo when they won 27-6,

which in a year filled with kind of head-scratcher type results, that one stands out league-wide. You know, the Bills going into Buffalo and winning by 21. But he was 15 on 22 for 196 yards and a touchdown with no interceptions in that game. So it's been interesting to sort of watch him. Another reason why I think

he's sort of getting the attention over the past couple of weeks is for one reason and one reason only. And it's something that I admit I sort of had to buy in on in the Scott Fish Bowl. Field Yates tweeted this out on Monday. The number one scoring quarterback in fantasy over the past four weeks has been Josh Allen. And the reason for that is the run numbers. The win over Jacksonville ran the ball

13 times for 99 yards and a touchdown. The loss to the Dolphins, excuse me, nine carries 135 yards. The loss against the Jets, nine carries 101 yards. And then last week against Buffalo, nine carries for 16 yards and a touchdown. He had a touchdown in all four of those games, for the Dolphins' one, so three Russian touchdowns in the past four weeks. That's been part of the reason that people are really starting to buy in because you see that production from a Russian standpoint. And so it brings up, of course, the old area of concern for the New England Patriots

and their defense, a mobile quarterback. So that is going to be an issue with them. As far as him as a passer, look, the arm is as expected. The arm is as advertised. He can sling it. And the velocity with him gets him out of some sticky situations. He is still slow with his eyes. He is still slow with his reads. He will make some progression reads for sure, some full field stuff for sure. But he's, like many rookies, slow with those decisions and perhaps slower than most rookies. But the arm is the equalizer. So he can make a late decision, but because of the velocity he can generate, he can get

the ball out quickly. He's shown some good developmental strides in the area of, say, decision making. For example, back when they played Green Bay, this was back in week four. He had a bad interception before halftime where he got flushed to the right and did what we usually saw from him in one of those hero ball moments that he would see all the time on his film from Wyoming. Trusts his arm too much, tries to make a risky throw over the middle and it gets intercepted early in this game against detroit they dial up wide throwback they have him fake a handoff he rolls out to the right they're trying to hit the tight end leaking back to the left and then vertically it's covered what does he do he eventually after buying a little bit more time evading the sack throws it away that's the kind

of developmental stuff you want to see from him in those moments you know taking what the defense gives you and if the defense gives you nothing throw it away live for the next down you know those are the types of things that he needed to do you can still confuse him with coverage looks for example one of the things that they love to do is sort of you know whether it's ohio or whether it's gaudy which is the patriots version of it you have the vertical on the outside and then it's either a straight out route from the slot receiver or an option route from the slot receiver that option route that would be gaudy in the new england patriots playbook they love that concept they hit it against detroit a couple of times where he would hit that slot

route again if you see whether it's a linebacker over the slot receiver or you know somebody with inside leverage you can throw that easy slot route it's a nice easy throw you can make the decision pre-snap detroit adjusted they ran cover to trap which is basically instead of that outside corner and cover two would run with that vertical route on the outside, he starts to run with it, and then he sort of peels off of that and tries to cover that out route, basically jumps it. That's why we call it two-trapper palms. He got that look from Detroit and what you want to do there

if you're a fast enough quarterback with your decision-making. Once you see that cornerback peel off, you've got a window to hit that vertical route. He had that window. It froze him. He missed the opportunity. There's a chance to hit it. He comes off.

He gets flushed to the right, forces a throw late, and it's nearly picked. Again, back to that stuff we were talking about against Green Bay. So what you want to do with him is confuse him with coverage. I think that's what you want to do. You want to play zone looks against him because, look, let's face it. If you play man against him, you turn your back on him, he's going to turn into a runner, a guy that's ripped up 135 yards against Miami, 100 yards against Jets, 101. That's a recipe for disaster. I want to see the Patriots play zone, try to confuse this kid, keep your eyes on him,

don't turn your backs on him. so that's kind of an early look at josh allen later in the week we're going to do some crossover action like we usually do with the guys over locked on bills we'll have take thursday get some questions in at mark school field on twitter friday will be our game day edition i will be back sunday for sunday morning tailgate i know our great friend at pat's cat miguel ben's on he was out there lamenting the fact that look i didn't do a Sunday show. I apologize for that. And then the Patriots lost a big one. Maybe it's on me.

I don't know. I feel guilty. Either way, because of that, I will be back on Sunday. But that will do it for today's show. I will be back tomorrow on Wednesday. Until then, keep it locked right here to me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on Peacocks.