Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots December 27 - Quasi Emergency Edition: James Harrison and Bryce Petty

Episode Date: December 27, 2017

Mark Schofield dives into the James Harrison signing, and looks at New York Jets' quarterback Bryce Petty.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Good evening and welcome to a quasi-emergency edition of Locked On Patriots. It's Mark Schofield here in the big chair for Tuesday evening, December 26th. Wednesday, December 27th. Kind of a two-day show, I guess. This is a quasi-emergency edition because the Patriots made a roster move today, which we're going to get into. Reminder, you can follow me on Twitter at Mark Schofield.

Follow the work over at InsideThePylon.com. Also, Bleacher Report, the NFL 1000 Project. Final quarterback ratings. They are dropping next week. Spoiler alert. Tom Brady created out pretty well this year. But the main thing we're going to talk about today, we're going to start with, of course, the acquisition of veteran linebacker and edge defender James Harrison,

who was cut by the Pittsburgh Steelers, signed as a free agent today by the New England Patriots. Word broke early in the afternoon that Harrison was in town in Foxborough meeting with the Patriots and then came first, I guess, the unofficial announcement. It was followed by the official announcement by the team that they had signed Harrison to make room for the veteran linebacker.

They released special teams player and linebacker Trevor Riley who had played pretty well in some recent action over the past couple of weeks. I say that was the official announcement because, of course, in the social media era, things come out on Twitter or Instagram first, and Harrison himself made the news when he posted a photo, a selfie, of course, in the locker room with Tom Brady. With the caption, I finally have a teammate older than me. So the Patriots, and it was a move that I think many people expected.

I mean, if you were on Twitter when Harrison was cut, it was just a matter of minutes before people were saying that he's going to sign with the Patriots. Oh, how long is it going to be until he's in New England? And it's happened. But I think we should sort of take a step back and look at Harrison's usage this year, where the Patriots might use him, and sort of look at what this signing might mean, you know, and perhaps what it means about the defense as constructed and how the Patriots are viewing the playoffs.

And let's start with Harrison's usage this year because usage is probably overstating what Harrison's done this year. He was only on the field for 40 defensive snaps, just 4.36 of Pittsburgh's defensive snaps this year. He barely used it all. And when this move was announced, the first person I reached out to was, as you might expect, John Ledyard, who's been on this show before, host of Locked On Steelers, as well as the co-host of Locked On NFL Draft.

And so I reached out to John immediately and asked if Harrison hadn't left anything left in the tank. And John's immediate response to me was that he thinks he does. He describes Harrison as a power, rip and dip, situational pass rusher, but that there's value in that for New England. Given the pass rush questions that they have. He described Harrison as a good point of attack run defender and somebody that can definitely still play. Now that begs the question, why would the Steelers let somebody like that go?

And the simple answer to that is this. He wasn't really in Keith Butler's plans for what they want to do from a defensive schematic standpoint. You know, when we got ready for that Patriots-Steelers game, we talked to Alex Cazorra from Steelers Depot. We talked to John

and you probably heard the phrase spot dropping. You probably heard that phrase a ton. Dropping into zone coverage. Well, that's not just in the secondary. Keith Butler, the Steelers defensive coordinator, he asks their edge defenders, their linebackers, to drop into zone coverage a lot, more than most other teams. In fact, if you go over to Pro Football Focus,

check out their data over there, their chart and data over there. You will find that TJ Watt and Bud Dupree, two of the Steelers' edge defenders, are ranked first and third, respectively, in dropping into zones at the edge position. So the Steelers, they do that more than anybody else. But that's not the player that James Harrison is anymore.

They did it with him sparingly last year. They did it with him sparingly in their divisional playoff game against the Kansas City Chiefs. But more than anything at this point in his career, James Harrison is a one-trick pony. He's a situational pass rusher who can do that at a pretty high level. this point in his career, James Harrison is a one-trick pony. He's a situational pass rusher who can do that at a pretty high level. Not for an entire game, but in situational usage. But given the youth and the talent that the Steelers have at that position, and given the ability that guys like Watt and Dupree have at doing both, Butler was able to move in a different direction.

So that sort of brings us to his potential usage here in New England now that we've sort of covered why a guy like that was available. And I think we've got to start with what New England's been doing recently on defense. I mean, we know that pass rush has been sort of a mixed bag from the New England Patriots this year. There are times when they've been able to do it with the blitz. There are times that they got spotty contributions from guys like this past week in Malcolm Brown, for example.

But sort of dedicated pass rush help isn't something that they really have in droves right now. They've been more content to play coverage in situations. I mean, look at that game against Pittsburgh. Look at that pivotal third and four play late in the game where they got that stop on that crossing route to Juju Smith-Schuster.

Four down linemen, edge-type guys, seven defensive backs. That's something that they've been doing more of. And you could envision a personnel package like that, but now suddenly you've got Trey Flowers, you've got Dietrich Reis, you've got Adam Butler or Malcolm Brown, and then you add James Harrison to that mix, and you use him in that role maybe 10, 12 times a game.

Doesn't have to worry about dropping into coverage. Doesn't have to worry about anything else. Just go get the quarterback. Harrison can be effective in that role. But let's spin it forward just a little bit more because if the season were to end today, if the season were to end right now, your teams that are hosting games on wildcard weekend

would be the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Kansas City Chiefs. The Jaguars would have the three seed. They would be hosting the Tennessee Titans. The Chiefs would be your four seed. They would be hosting the Baltimore Ravens. Now, provided the two higher seeded teams would win, you're looking at Kansas City making a return to Foxborough for the divisional round. That brings left tackle Eric Fisher to town. Now, Fisher has a bit of a history with James Harrison. If you go back to last year's meeting, that divisional game,

Harrison had two huge plays against Fisher the first of which came earlier in the game six minutes left in the third quarter Harrison beats Fisher with that dip and rip move for a big sack on a third and seven, forces a punt. And he got to Alex Smith so quickly and spun him to the turf that it's a wonder that Alex Smith didn't lose the football. And that sack actually marked the fifth straight playoff game in which Harrison had notched at least one sack. So that was a pretty big play at that point in time. And again, Eric Fisher just struggling to contain James Harrison. Harrison goes right around him on that play.

But later in the game, there's a two-point conversion that would have tied the game, and Fisher's matched up against Harrison yet again, and Fisher is getting beat to the outside, and he takes him to the turf, and he gets flagged for holding. It takes away a successful two-point conversion try. Steelers won that game by two. And I started this little discussion with talking about James Harrison's minimal usage this year.

The Chiefs hosted the Pittsburgh Steelers in the regular season earlier this year. And wouldn't you know it, even though he barely played this year, Keith Butler earlier in the week

planted a seed. He said during a press conference, it's always good to have James Harrison when you play Kansas City and let their offensive tackle see him. I'll just say that. I'll just say that. I'll leave it at that.

You can imagine what might happen. And of course, what happens? Harrison gets run out there. Gets lined up across from Eric Fisher. Only played a handful of plays in each half. And he notched a sack. Working against Eric Fisher. Now, are the Patriots, Brennan and James Harrison,

just on the chance that he gets an opportunity to go against Eric Fisher in the divisional round? Probably not. We've talked about other ways that James Harrison can contribute But the potential is there That potential meeting is there And so if that's the way this plays out You can be sure that James Harrison will be on the field

Taking another run at Eric Fisher A guy that he's been able to do things against in the past. Now before we sort of wrap this segment up on James Harrison and the signing, I want to highlight a tweet from Mike Tenere over

at Bleacher Report, at Mike Tenere on Twitter. And he tweeted this out shortly after the Harrison signing. Patriots can afford to chase 1% marginal gains because they have the other 99% taken care of. And I think that sort of sums up the Patriot way perhaps more than anything else. Because they are so well equipped

across the roster, up and down the roster, they can take a swing on James Harrison because they've signed him for $59,000. That's not a lot. That's not a big time investment. If it doesn't pan out, if they run him out there for 10, 15 snaps a game

and he doesn't record a single tackle, you don't really lose out on much. But if he comes through, even for just one sack in the playoffs, how much is that worth? Up ahead, we're going to start talking about the New York Jets we're going to look at quarterback Bryce Petty do an in-depth scouting profile on him

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I'm going to be putting out a link later in the week to sign up a draft with Locked On Patriots listeners and I hope to see you there. Just remember, use that promo code LONFL when you sign up. Okay, let's talk quarterback Bryce Petty, backup quarterback for the New York Jets, who has started the last two games for the Jets. Coming on in relief of starting quarterback Josh McGowan, who was lost for the season with a fractured hand.

And what I want to say might come as a little bit of a surprise, coming from the host of the Locked On Patriots podcast, but I admit to having a pretty big soft spot for Bryce Petty. I know it comes as a surprise, but here's the thing. Back when a group of us got together and started InsideThePylon.com back in the mid to late summer of 2014, we didn't really know what we were doing. Little did we know what we were getting ourselves involved in.

We had no real idea of just how crowded the football media landscape was. So we started off, since we were a group of people that knew each other from Sons of Sam's Horn, the Red Sox message board, we've had a Patriots focus.

That's where we started. Most of us were Patriots fans. And luckily, that was a year that we got to cover Patriots winning the Super Bowl over the Seattle Seahawks. But when that game ended, we were like, okay, what do we do now? What do we do until the season starts? So we figured we'd dip our toes into covering the draft. And we didn't really get started until February. Again, we didn't know much.

Little did we know that the draft now is a year-round endeavor. So in the wake of that Super Bowl and coming off that incredible sort of experience, I sit down in January and start scouting quarterbacks for the draft. And the first guy I sat down to watch was Bryce Petty. And I thought it'd be interesting to sort of pull up my draft profile on him, which you can find. It's over at insidethepylon.com.

First off, at the outset, man, I've gotten a little bit better at doing this. I'll say that. But I did want to highlight some of the things that I saw gotten a little bit better at doing this. I'll say that. But I did want to highlight some of the things that I saw in Petty when he was in college. The first thing to remember is he was coming from Art Briles' offense,

which was highly dependent upon vertical routes along the boundary, hitch routes, quick curl routes, and screens. There wasn't a ton of variety to what Bryce Petty was asked to do and asked to throw while he was in college. Now, some of those routes you could still see things like arm strength.

That was a box that he checked pretty well coming out of Baylor. Accuracy on some of those quicker routes near the line of scrimmage, those hitches, those curls, threw those pretty well. Deeper routes, threw some of those pretty well. Those were the things that he was asked to do

and since he did it so much, he was pretty good at it. You know, but the biggest question mark surrounding Bryce Petty when he came out was, you know, I identified three, really. It was, first, it was how was he going to adapt to an expanded playbook or, and this is sort of how you can tell I've evolved myself as an evaluator, the pro system readiness. Yeah, I went down that road. But as I wrote, look,

the majority of his plays in college were one-read pass and plays. Baylor's offense was designed to simplify his reads and exploit mismatches in one-on-one situations. There were times when he would get to a second read, but he wasn't doing a lot of full-field progression reads type stuff.

Footwork was another area. He was a one-step shotgun quarterback. That's what he did. Now he's being asked to line up under center and do those other things, and the footwork is still sort of an issue. And finally, there was inconsistency in the deep vertical passing game.

And at times I almost found myself pulling my hair out because Petty missed a number of big plays downfield in college to open receivers. You know, when you're running an offense like that, you expect the guy to be able to make those throws, to be able to hit those throws, and he just couldn't do it on a consistent basis. You know, so those were some of the issues

that I had with him in college. And, you know, I basically said he's probably a third-round guy. He's going to need some time to transition. He's got some flaws in the deep passing game, even though that's kind of what he was doing. He's a bit of a project. How does he look now? Has he shown

signs of development? Has he progressed at all? That's what we're going to get to. We're going to get to Bryce Petty's season so far and what we can expect to see to. We're going to get to Bryce Petty's season so far and what we can expect to see from him on Sunday. That's ahead with me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on Patriots. Okay, let's talk now about Bryce Petty here in 2017. He started the last two games for the Jets.

Both of them losses. A loss to the Saints down in New Orleans and a loss to the Chargers at home. Both of those games, rather close. The Saints game got out of hand at the end. Saints scored on a long Russian touchdown from Mark Ingram to put that game away. But it was a one-score game

until the final minutes. Chargers, they won 14-7. So two games that were pretty close against teams that are either already in or contended for playoff spots. Against the Saints, betting 19-39 for 179 yards, one touchdown, two interceptions. One of those came on a Hail Mary type throw late in the game. So you can't really dock him for that too much. Similar situation against the Chargers last week. 15 of 28 for 119. One interception. Again,

it came on a Hail Mary type of situation. But I want to sort of talk about the strength that I've identified in him as a passer right now, the weaknesses that he still has, and talk about his sort of ideal scheme fit. And that's where I really want to start because, as we just talked about for a minute, he was coming out of a system in Baylor where our browse coach system, a lot of curl routes, a lot of hitch routes along the boundary, converted vertical routes, and then screens, tunnel screens, smoke screens, stuff like that. It was an offense designed to give the quarterback some friendly reads, give him some one-on-one matchups, and take advantage of them.

And what's been interesting watching watching petty the past couple of weeks under offensive coordinator john morton is how morton has sort of you know i adapted some of what he does well into the jets offensive schemes right now and as an aside john Morton has gone from intriguing new offensive coordinator to suddenly becoming hot name in the offseason head coach and carousel type search. You know, when the Patriots played the Jets a couple weeks ago, I was a little bit more than that. But I talked a lot about how, you know, it was an offense rooted in sort of West Coast concepts. He was from the West Coast pass and train of Sean Payton.

They did have some, you know, they've run some air raid stuff mixed in with that. They've done some things to scheme receivers open, give Josh McCown some quick reads, some quick decisions. And McCown played really well this year. And we're seeing, even under Petty, Morton's ability to sort of adapt to what he wants to do offensively to what Petty does well as a quarterback. I mean, their first play against the Saints, they run slant flat to one side of the field with a mesh concept tagged on with it.

So you've got an air raid concept of mesh and a slant flat concept, which is a West Coast staple. And that was his first throw of the game but other stuff that they've been doing they've been doing a lot of curls and spacing concepts things that we've talked about yeah they're like west coast rooted concepts but those are the throws that petty likes to make and he can make them well so i think morton's done a really good job of sort of adapting what the Jets do anyway and tailoring it around what Petty is familiar with running. So we can bring that sort of to the strength that I can see in Petty right now. And this probably isn't a surprise given his background, but one of the areas where he's still

pretty good is sort of identifying leverage situations pre-snap and then taking advantage of them, whether it's off coverage. That's something he did all the time at Baylor. You see off coverage, you get a free access hitch route, you throw it. He's doing a lot of that right now with the Jets. Slant concepts, things like that, where you can get inside leverage quickly as a receiver. He's pretty good at identifying those situations and taking advantage of those as well. When they run some of the concepts he's familiar with, those curl routes, those spacing concepts,

maybe it's more slant flat type stuff where it's stuff he was running at Baylor, the process and speed there is actually pretty quick. He can make quick decisions in those situations, quicker than some other quarterbacks around his age frame. Like, if you look at where he is from a mental processing standpoint and juxtapose that with, say, Brett Hundley, Petty is advanced beyond where Hundley is right now, I'd say. And those are guys in the same class that have a similar amount of playing experience, although Petty played more last year. But still, I think Petty is ahead in that game, in that aspect of playing the position.

And vertical concept. He's made some nice throws in the vertical passing game. He had one to Chad Hansen. It was against the Saints, I believe. Yep. It was a cover two man look. He pumps on a throw to the middle of the field. Then has Chad Hansen along the left sideline.

Hits him in that nice soft spot. Deep along the boundary before the safety can rotate over. So some of that vertical inconsistency. He's gotten better, I think, in that aspect of playing the position. But there are still some weaknesses. He's a young quarterback that's learning on the fly and still trying to transition and adapt his college game to the pro game. The process and speed on other route concepts. Stuff that he's not really familiar with. That can be slow

at times. There are times like many other young quarterbacks where he'll stare down routes. His eyes will lead you to the football. So safeties, Harmon, Chun, McCourty, they should be able to make some plays against this kid because his eyes are going to lead them to his target. I'd expect to see some

zoned looks from the Patriots, particularly maybe doing some two-man, some single high, giving the safeties a chance to sort of read his eyes and break on the ball. We talked about some inconsistencies in passing. It trickles down to inconsistencies in ball placement as well. And these are the routes on all levels of the field. He had a flat route, designed flat route to Robbie Anderson, for example, where he was coming in motion across the formation, then released to the flat.

Throw was a simple throw. He put it to the wrong shoulder, forces him to make an awkward twist and attempt at the reception, and he ends up basically falling down and being tackled behind the line of scrimmage because of that. So inconsistency is a ball placement.

You know, last sort of thing I'll identify, he burps the baby. And I've probably talked about this before, but Petty's one of those quarterbacks that right before he throws, he pats the ball with his offhand. And it's a split-second thing, but as we've talked about with his eyes leading you to the quarterback, add in that pat, it's an extra split second before the ball comes out and it's another trigger another cue for any defender reading him

to start to break on the ball so those are some of the strengths the weaknesses a quick little mini scouting report on Bryce Petty where he is as a passer right now I think the Patriots secondary should be able to exploit some of these weaknesses. I'd expect to, like I said, I'd expect to see some zone coverage looks, give guys in the back half a chance to read his eyes, to let him take them to the football. So that's what I'm expecting to see Sunday when these two teams meet in the season finale.

So that's been your Wednesday edition, your Tuesday evening edition, a quasi-emergency edition of Locked On Patriots. Thanks again for tuning in. Reminder, check out all the work over at InsideThePylon.com, Bleacher Report, the NFL 1000 Project, Final Quarterback Rankings coming out next

week, right after the New Year. Nice little birthday gift to myself. Everybody yelling at me about those. Looking forward to it. Also, follow me on Twitter at Mark Schofield. You can always at me with questions. Also, closing in on the big 8K number there on Twitter. That'd be a nice little birthday gift to myself as well.

As always, friends, thanks for listening. Keep it locked right here to me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on Patriots.