Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots December 21, 2017 - Timeline Takes

Episode Date: December 21, 2017

Mark Schofield dives into some Timeline Takes. Talking about Josh Rosen's status for bowl season, Will Grier and Clayton Thorson returning to school, whether trading Tom Brady was "the right football move," if Matthew Slater is a Hall of Famer and yes, the Patriots running the ball on first down...and defending the run on first down.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Good morning and welcome into Locked On Patriots for Thursday, December 21st. Mark Schofield here in the big chair as I am five days a week. Reminder to follow me on Twitter at Mark Schofield. Did something fun today on Twitter. Maybe you saw that, maybe you didn't. I'm actually going to talk about that in a second. You can follow my work over at InsideThePylon.com, getting geared up for the Inside the Pylon draft guide.

If you want to check that out, head to our Twitter account at ITPylon. It's in our pinned tweet. You can get a look at what last year's guide was like. We're getting that cranked up. Going to do some fun stuff with that this year as well. Also follow the work over at Bleacher Report. I am the quarterback scout for the NFL 1000 Project.

Final year end quarterback rankings from yours truly will be dropping January 2nd. That's one heck of a birthday gift to myself, friends. I'm sure everybody out there all across the world will agree with every rank and every trait grade, all that good fun stuff.

That's coming out January 2nd. Tom Brady in the mix, near the top. Honestly, I'm getting close to finalizing my grades on that. The AFC quarterback picture is bleak right now. I mean, you've got Brady, you've got Roethlisberger, you've got Rivers, and then... Oy. Obviously, you have Sean Watson,

but we lost him to injury. Again, God, why are you forsaking me? Also, today's show brought to you by our great friends over at mybookie.ag. Check them out. I'll have more on them in a bit. As I mentioned today, at the dealership for most of the morning, getting the car serviced. Take care of the wheels, everybody.

They'll take care of you. Hopped on Twitter, did a little Ask Me Anything, had some interesting questions pop my way. As always, you can follow me on Twitter, did a little Ask Me Anything, had some interesting questions pop my way. As always, you can follow me on Twitter. Anyway, some of the stuff we're going to get to, actually, in today's show that came up. Something really cool, though. Some nerdy football stuff. Mark Bullock, who I work with over at Bleacher Report, the NFL 1000 Project. He does some work covering the Redskins as well for the Washington Post.

He and I started a little thread, drawn up some football plays on the fly. And then you've got people all over chiming in with some hand-drawn football plays, some route concepts they liked in the passing game, even some run game stuff, some RPO stuff. If you want to check that out, I tweeted it out from my account. Mark Bullock actually created a moment for it. You can find it on Twitter. Also, follow Mark as well. You can follow him at Mark, M-A-R-K

B-U-L-L-O-C-K NFL. Some really cool, nerdy football stuff. We're going to actually make it a little bit of a series. We're going to do some red zone stuff, some different situational stuff. Just one of the many reasons you should be following me on Twitter. In addition to, obviously, the love for Africa by total.

My brand is strong. Finally, before we dive into what's on tap for today's show, which is a timeline takes edition of the Locked On Patriots podcast. It's Thursday, December 21st. Getting down to crunch time. Christmas right around the corner. Charlie Brown Christmas on ABC tonight, 8 p.m. Eastern.

Watch it as a family, kids. It's a classic. Like I said, we're going to do timeline takes right now. We're going to start with some draft QB stuff that came out today, that came up today. Then we're going to get into some Patriot specific stuff, some stuff to get into. First, I want to start with a tweet from Ben Bolsch. He is at LATB, B-O-L-C-H, covering UCLA. Josh Rosen said he's still in concussion protocol, waiting for clearance for contact. And that sort of gets us into, friends, the red flags that are coming.

Because we're getting down into it here. Draft season really around the corner. And you've heard me talk about this quarterback class. There are guys at the top that I like that are going to have the red flags. We hear about red flags all the time. My favorite example of red flag season is Marcus Mariota when he was coming out. Anonymous scout said he has no red flags, which is a red flag. That sort of gets to the absurdity of what draft season is all about but you know here's the issue

with Rosen there's an injury history here with him you know he's had the shoulder injury. He missed time last year with it. Couple of concussions here. He's still in the concussion protocol. You know, if there's a red flag issue with Josh Rosen,

at least a legitimate one, it's the injury history. Now there will be some that will sort of question his, you know, his mentality, his makeup, whether he has interests away from the field. I don't get into that stuff. I don't care about that stuff because unless it's something that's documented, i.e.,

like an arrest history or a medical history, I don't get in the room with these guys, so I can't really speak to that. But with Rosen, there's a documented medical history. He's in concussion protocol right now. So that's going to be an issue going forward. That's something that people are going to have concerns about

as we get deeper and deeper into his evaluation process. Next we're going to get to two tweets that came my way from friend of the show John Ledyard, host of Locked On NFL Draft as well as Locked On Steelers. These came in while I was waiting for the car to get done. First one was draft eligible quarterback you watched this year and were like, what am I even watching right now? And the second, Will Greer and Clayton Thorson

going back to school. Good decisions. What's the upside for either? Did you see them as day three guys? We'll deal with that one first. And I think they were good decisions for both guys. Thorson was someone I was really intrigued with this summer when I was watching 40, 50 guys, whatever, getting ready for this year.

I kind of liked what he did at Northwestern. I pulled out my notes on him. And with Thorson, I thought it was clean mechanically, crisp release, good footwork in the pocket, good velocity and placement in the short area. I thought he fit a West Coast system pretty well. Good on the move.

Doesn't really get flustered versus pressure. Didn't do a ton downfield. I wanted to see more anticipation. Accuracy sometimes tended to dip when he was pressured. But he didn't really develop as much as I would have liked to have seen this year. So I think for him, going back was probably the best move. Now for Greer, Greer was interesting. A guy that I kind of liked.

I liked him back when he was at Florida. I wrote about him a little bit back when he was with the Gators. Then he goes to Holdren's office, getting a chance to study the spring game. Quick release. Seemed a good fit for their option stuff. He really impressed this year. I know Kyle Krabs over to NDT Scout

and liked him as well. And he was, I think, in the mix for maybe even a day early to mid-day two type pick. You know, maybe third round type situation. But by going back, he really gets himself into a good situation you know, maybe third round type situation. But by going back, he really gets himself into a good situation because depending on who comes out,

he might be in the mix for QB1 once we start talking about the 2019 draft. So I think for him going back, it was a good decision. Now to John's other point, draft eligible quarterback, you watch this year and we're like, what am I even watching right now? There are a number of ways I could go with this. There were some guys that, you know, frankly, aren't going to get talked about at all this draft cycle because they're not going to get drafted. You know, and there's examples there, but I won't go down that road. again where with Josh Allen I was just like, what are we doing here? I just dropped the video

breaking down his six interceptions and there were moments when I was like, okay, what's going on? And again, I've said it before, I'll say it again with Josh Allen. He will go in the first round. I understand why that's going to happen. It wouldn't be me, but I

understand why that's going to happen. It wouldn't be me, but I understand why that's going to happen. So there we are. But there were decisions that he made, throws that he made, times that he tried to do too much where I was just like, man, you're not going to get away with that in high school. But that's me. That's Josh Allen. I mean, not much more I can really say about that.

Next, we're going to dive into some more Pats-centric timeline takes. That's ahead. But first, friends, as I teased at the outset, look, Christmas is right around the corner. Your shopping is probably done, but the bills are coming. You know that day when you get to the mailbox or the email hits, the notifications come in on your Mint app, the credit card bill is due. You don't want that day to be a stressful one. And you know what's going to be coming up over the next couple of days and the next couple of weeks. We're getting down to crunch time here with the football season. It's

bowl season. There's a lot of football to be played, a lot of football to be watched, and a lot of football to be played on. It's time to get in on the action with MyBookie, but are you tired of getting the runaround when it's time to get paid? Sign up at mybookie.ag today and get paid fast when you win. And listen, you can even deposit using Bitcoin. And frankly, my friends, do that before the bubble bursts. I've said it before. Where you bet is just as important as who you're betting on. If you want to make money betting this bowl season, you've got to go to mybookie.ag.

They're the only site I recommend. I trust them, but don't just take my word for it. Check them out yourself. They have odds on every matchup as well as in-game live betting on all this season's NFL action as well as every bowl game. Join now and MyBookie will match your deposit with up to a 50% bonus.

Use promo code LOCKEDON to activate that offer. Visit mybookie.ag today. You play, you win, you get paid. Next, some more Patriots timeline takes. Okay, here we're going to get into some more Patriots-centered timeline takes, and we have to start, obviously, with the Alex Guerrero situation, right? No. No, we don't need to go down that road because here's the thing.

There are shows that you can go to. There are radio shows you can go to where if you want to dive into the soap opera type aspect of the Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, Alex Guerrero, are people mad at each other, doctor being ousted, what's the situation there? If that's what you want to listen to, there are certainly places you can go to listen to that.

I don't care. Period. Full stop. So we're just going to breeze right on past that issue to a tweet from Scott Zolak, the color analyst on 98.5 The Sports Hub covering the New England Patriots

former Patriots quarterback Scott Zolak tweeted earlier Wednesday afternoon got this text from two beat writers in Patriots workroom from Ben Volan quote the right football move

was to trade Tom Brady. Okay. All right, let's dive into this one for a second because we had Miguel Benzon on this show before the Garoppolo trade went down. And if you listen to that podcast, I invite you to go back to listen to it. If you're following Miguel on work, on Twitter, at Pat's Cap, if you listen to the podcast, if you've done either of those things, you know that a move had to be made with either Brady or Garoppolo

because of the impendent salary cap implications. Garoppolo was going to want to be paid starter- type money. It's difficult, nay impossible, in the salary cap era to have two quarterbacks commanding big time money, especially when one of them is Tom Brady. It's just not possible. It's not feasible. Period. End of story. And so, one of those guys had to be moved.

That just had to happen. Now, was trading Tom Brady the right football move? No. No. Anybody with two eyes can see that Tom Brady is still playing the position at an extremely elite level. You're not going to trade that away. What you get in return isn't going to be enough. And I'm not saying that as a Patriots fan. I'm not saying that as a fan of a team that was led out of the darkness and led out of the desert by this guy.

There is no emotion to that. I'm saying this as somebody who is paid to evaluate quarterbacks, who is paid to evaluate every NFL quarterback, and who has just finished grading every NFL quarterback this year, who sees the landscape of what life without Tom Brady can be like. Now, if you want to make the argument that perhaps the entire situation with the quarterback room should have been handled differently given how they traded Jacoby, and then they were in a situation where maybe they didn't get enough in return for Garoppolo, that's okay. But I don't think trading Tom Brady was the right football move. Here's the other thing. And if you've been listening to this show, you probably know what I'm going to say here. The Patriots address quarterback every other year in the draft.

16 drafts since Brady, eight quarterbacks have been drafted. They drafted Jacoby Brissett two drafts ago, which means they're going to be in on a quarterback this year. And this is kind of the year to get a quarterback that you might need to season a bit. And if you've still got Tom Brady playing at Tom Brady's level or close to it for the next year or two,

that gets you ready to turn over the reins to a Sam Donald or a Josh Rosen or going down into the draft a little bit, a Josh Allen, a Mike White, a Kyle Loretta. Because there aren't many quarterbacks in this draft class

that are plug-and-play, day-one type guys. But there are guys that you can season a bit and that can become NFL starters. And that can become good ones in the right situation. Now, also what's at work here is the fact that Jimmy Garoppolo has balled out for the last three weeks has allowed some recency bias to come into play here. If Garoppolo was throwing pick after pick

and the Niners were 0-3 with him under center, this wouldn't be suddenly a topic of conversation. But since he's playing well, it makes the deal look poor in hindsight. Hindsight being 20-20. But let's settle down here.

Let's calm down. Trader, trading Tom Brady was not the right football move. It was not some sort of emotional decision to hang on to him. At least from where I sit, I don't think it is.

And I'm sure that they have a plan in place to address the quarterback position in the offseason and we'll see what happens. The sky's not falling. Although sometimes, sometimes we act like it is. Two more topics to get to.

That's ahead in this Timeline Takes Edition of Locked on Patriots. All right, let's close it out with two more Pats-related topics from the timeline. The first from Matt Chatham at CHATHAM58 on Twitter, former Patriots player and special teamer. And that's what we're going to talk about for a minute here because on Tuesday night, Matt tweeted out. And Matt, by the way, great follow on Twitter, does a lot of breakdowns of Pat stuff, has a podcast as well.

Again, I've said it before, this is a crowded Patriots market and I get that. Believe me, I understand. But I'm going to recommend Matt and his show. It's good stuff. If you're a Pats fan, put it in your rotation. Just make sure you listen to this one first each day. I'd appreciate that. But he raised the argument. Matthew Slater is a slam dunk Hall of Famer. The argument against it sucks, so don't bother. You don't just make seven consecutive Pro Bowls as a special teams coverage player. It just doesn't happen, unless you're special. And special gets a gold jacket. And that argument was pretty much met with almost immediate

blowback and consternation. Part of it was led by the guys over at Pro Football Focus, Mike Renner among them. I like the PFF guys. They do really good work. But they were sort of pushing back on the idea that a special teams player is a first ballot Hall of Famer, particularly Matthew Slater.

And I get Matt's point. Particularly in this era, Matthew Slater is the premier special teams gunner. The best special teams player of his kind right now. Plays a critical role for the Patriots. Heck, I gave him a game ball after Sunday's game. Down on a punt inside the five in what was

a pretty big moment in that game. But the Hall of Fame has not been kind to special teams players. We got one punter in the Hall of Fame right now in Ray Guy.

Steve Tasker. Arguably the greatest special teams player ever. Very much in a role much like Matthew Slater. He doesn't have a bust in Canton you know it's hard to talk about this right now

not thinking my good friend Chuck Zotto who made special teams great again you know in the world of football media coverage Chuck was doing some great stuff for us over at Inside the Pylon and you know we tried to stress over at Inside the Pylon. And we tried to stress over at Inside the Pylon that it's a three-phase game. Bill Belichick stresses it all

the time. You have to be good in all three phases. But the fact of the matter is, special teamers haven't gotten the same sort of treatment that guys on offense, guys on defense get. It's just kind of the way things are. And while I understand where Matt's coming from, I just think that, you know, he just unfortunately plays a position, serves a role that doesn't get valued when it comes to Hall of Fame voting. And that's kind of the way it is.

And it stinks and it sucks and it stinks, but life goes on, right? Let's close this out with some tweets from NFL Matchup on ESPN. At NFL Matchup. It's, you know, for

whatever you might want to say about ESPN, how they handle sports, how they cover sports. Look, this show with Louis Riddick, whom I love, Greg Cassell, whom I love, Sal Palantonio, whom I love. They do really good work. You should check it out. A lot of X and O stuff.

It's really, really good nerdy football stuff, which you know I like. And I saw some tweets today that were right up our alley. Here's a tweet. Running the ball well on first down keeps your offense on schedule to move the chains and is a quarterback's best friend. Here are the most efficient teams running on first down Saints averaging 4.9 yards per carry on first down Chiefs

4.88 Eagles 4.87 Falcons 4.79 Cowboys 4.66 Patriots 4.66. Patriots, 4.60. How about another little victory lap for your boy, right? Because we've been talking about that, and I tweeted it at them, that we've been talking about that here over at Locked on Patriots for a while now, and it continues to this point.

Patriots, 4.6 yards per carry on first down, 6th overall in the league. And if you don't think it matters, the Saints are the top team. They're in first place in their division. The Chiefs are number two in this category. They're in first place in their division. The Eagles are number three in this category. They're in first place in their division. The Falcons are in a wild card spot. They're in fourth place in this category. The Cowboys are

still in the hunt. They're in the fifth spot on this category. And then you have the Patriots who just clinched their division. So it does seem like this matters a little bit. You know, and something that we do need to think about

going forward, though, is a later tweet from them, which is, getting an offense off schedule and forcing them into uncomfortable second or third down situations is key for defenses, and stopping the run on first down

does just that. And they have their top 10 first down rush defenses, and then they have the worst and right at the bottom are either New England Patriots giving up over five yards per carry on first down but if you remember you know watching the game Sunday afternoon against the Steelers Tony Romo talked about this. He said, he was saying all game long,

I think the Patriots have just come to this determination that they're going to try to get off the field on third down. They'll give you yardage on first down. They'll give you yardage on second down. They don't care about that. They're more concerned with what happens on third down. And maybe that is what they're doing. Maybe that's their approach. But hey, running the ball effectively on first down.

We've been talking about it here. I've locked on Patriots. Now the big media is picking it up. The locked on Patriots Army doing work. One last thing on this point. I was curious, so I looked it up. Buffalo. They are among the top teams defending the run on first down.

They are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. They are 11th. They're giving up just 3.84 yards per carry on first downs. Something to watch going forward. Something to look forward to on Sunday. On a Christmas Eve meeting between the Buffalo Bills and the New England Patriots. And to get you ready for that, we will have a crossover show as part of your game day edition of Locked On Patriots. And to get you ready for that, we will have a crossover show

as part of your game day edition of Locked On Patriots. I'll be talking with Kevin Masseri. We had him on a couple weeks ago. Great show with him. We're going to talk to Kevin again. Sort of refocus the energy on the Buffalo Bills. Then your usual game day edition features. My thoughts on the game as well as final predictions.

Also, don't forget, check me out on Twitter, at Mark Schofield. Like I said, I was in a dealership today, doing some work, grading some quarterbacks, taking questions on Twitter. It was a ton of fun. The DMs are open too. If you've got a question and you want to just slide it into the

DMs, hit me up. Also, Matthew Crook, a book is coming your way finally. I know it took a while for me to get out in the mail. My apologies, but it should arrive in time. Maybe you'll be able to rent it in the new year with a fantastic copy of 17 Drives. Hope you enjoyed today's Timeline Takes edition of Locked on Patriots. I will be back tomorrow. Until then, keep it locked right here to me, Mark Schofield,

and Locked on Patriots.