Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots February 11, 2019 - Greg Schiano Plus Locked On AAF?

Episode Date: February 11, 2019

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What I thought I'd do today, for those of you who stuck around, the proud, the few, the proud that stuck around, I'm going to coach this just like our meetings. So what I brought down is Rutgers defense fundamentals. No matter what you run, if you run a 4-3, 3-4, all the different brands of defense they have these days, you've got to do a couple things. You've got to run to the football. We call it swarm. You've got to tackle.

Everybody in football, I don't care what scheme you line up in, you've got to tackle. And then you've got to create takeaways. Hey there, everybody. Welcome to episode 504 of the Locked On Patriots podcast and episode one of the Locked On Apollos podcast. This is Mark Schofield slotted into the big chair for Monday, February 11th, 2019. Yes, this is Locked On Patriots. We're going to talk about the Patriots first and foremost and most of the show. But yes, there is going to be some AAF football discussion at the end.

The Alliance of American Football kicked off this weekend. This is now a pro Orlando Apollos account. No, this is not going to become Locked on Apollos, but I will talk about it from now on again. Because look, we're getting into the draft season. Yes, we're going to do a ton of draft talk. You know that. But it's always nice to have some actual football to talk about. What we are going to talk about most of all today is the man you heard at the beginning of this show, a little cold open with Greg Sciano while he was at Rutgers, a little defensive clinic he did back in 2011, over an hour long clinic on defensive fundamentals that I watched

this week, and we're going to pull some audio from that. We're going to talk about Sciano, what to expect sort of from his defensive philosophy as he takes over as the new defensive coordinator of the New England Patriots. But before we do any of that, a 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, as you know, if they are covering football, chances are I am doing some work for them. Let's start. That was the intro. That was how Shiano opened this clinic. Hitting you with basically the three sorts of fundamentals that he stressed in his defense. Run to the football. They call it swarm at Rutgers. You got to tackle and you got to create takeaways. But this sort of dovetails into the three main tenets of how Shiano approaches defensive football and he can apply them to the college game. I believe you can apply them to the pro game, although we'll talk about maybe how one of the first tenets, the

reasoning and the underpinnings for why they believe that way might be a little bit flawed. But let's sort of run through the three sort of tenets, the three things Shiano wants to stress to his defenses. Our philosophy right off the bat, we're going to stop the run, number one. Now, here's something that I truly believe in, fellas. You cannot emphasize more than three things. I don't think the human mind, unless you're brilliant, can stay focused on more than three things. So what we do, we spend a lot of time deciding what the three most important things are of any phase, any undertaking. Right now, we're right in the middle of our winter program. Okay, so we have three things that are critically important. Competitive toughness is number one. We didn't feel we were very mentally tough. Number two is

bend. We felt we played too high. And number three is finish. Now, I can tell you, we had 100 different things on the whiteboard in our meeting room, and we narrowed it down to those three things for our winter program. We do that in everything we do. So our defensive football team, our philosophy

is a three-part philosophy. And why has it become our philosophy? Because I'll show you, statistically, it is the number one factor in winning football games from a defensive perspective. So number one is stop the run. Number two, limit big plays. Okay. Limit big plays. All right. And number three, create takeaways. So what does that mean? All right. Let's go through it. Stop the run. What we say, stop the run. We say under 100 yards. In college football, if we can hold someone to under 100 yards rushing, when we've done that, we're 24-1 at Rutgers since 2005. 24-1 when we hold people to under 100 yards.

Yet, when we go over 100 yards, now we're 20-19. So you can see why it used to be limit big plays was number one, but as we kept going and going, the statistical relevance was higher and stopped the run than it was in the next thing, limit big plays. What's a big play? 25 plus yards. That's what we found to be the tipping point. Some people use explosive plays of 20 plus. We found 25 to be the tipping point, and here we go. We don't say zero big plays because I don't think that's realistic. The people we're playing, they're on scholarship too, very talented.

But if we can limit people to two or less, we're 34-8. Two or less plus 25-yard plays. But click it forward, three or more, we're 9-13. Okay, guys? So really, those big plays, we'll talk about how we're going to do in a minute, but this is just so you understand where we're coming from. And then number three is create takeaways. And our goal in creating takeaways defensively is three or more takeaways per game.

Three or more. Now we cannot control, as a head coach I certainly have some control over the offense, but we cannot control as a defensive unit how they handle the football. All we can do is try to do our part on defense and take it away from our opponent. We used to call it turnovers. To me, turnovers is a passive turn. If you're waiting for someone to give you something, you're going to be waiting a long time.

So we change it to takeaways. So three takeaways per game. Here's a stat. When we are minus as a football team, we're 32% victorious. When we're even, just even, we're 70%. And when you jump up plus, we're 91%. So you can say, why are those the three most important things to us? Stop the run, limit big plays, and takeaways.

That's why, guys, because it ties to winning. All right, how are we going to do it? What's the method that we do it and how we teach it? That's what I'll try to go through with you today, and I'll teach it just the way we teach our kids. First thing we do, we start every defensive meeting. Pick a guy. I'll pick one of the seniors, Shiano, and he's got to yell tradition,

and then he'll yell three things, smart swarm, tackling. All right, so smart swarm, tackling, ball disruption. That's how we're going to do it, how we're going to stop the run, how we're going to limit big plays, and how we're going to do it. How we're going to stop the run, how we're going to limit big plays, and how we're going to create takeaways. That's our goal. Stop the run, limit big plays, create takeaways. How are we going to do it?

Three things again. Smart swarm. Swarm. Everybody uses swarm. Run to the football. But you know what you get? Even if you're giving great effort, mules give great effort, but they're not very efficient.

We want to be smart when we're doing it. We want to swarm the football in an organized manner. So we're a single-gap control defense. We want to swarm the football through our gap. The premise of swarming the football right now, start it right off the bat. In every defense, we set an edge to the defense. Now, we set the edge with either an edge setter who

is a human being or at times the sideline could be the edge. Then away from the edge setter we have a guy all the way on the other side that is the cutoff player. The cutoff player is going to make sure that he stays behind the football at all times and if the ball breaks is going to have an angle that he can get to the pylon before the football does. So you have an edge setter on one side and you have what we call the cutoff player on the other side. That leaves you with nine defenders. The nine defenders that remain, we call those hip pressers. You got to press the hip. That is our vision point as a defensive football player. So there you have it, right from Greg Sciano. Those are the ways that they're going to be a successful defense, and they tied those

three things to winning. And you heard some of the numbers from Sciano. Those big three things, stopping the run, limiting the big plays, and creating takeovers, they tied to winning percentage. Sciano basically said when they looked at when they held opponents under 100 yards, they were 24-1. When the opponent got over 100 yards, 20-19. Now, you could probably quibble with that from a causation correlation standpoint and say, look, maybe for other reasons, you've now gotten behind, they get the lead,

and then they run the ball out to drain the clock. And so you can kind of tweak with that a little bit, but the 24-1, that's kind of a big number. You get ahead on a team, you turn them into a one-dimensional team. There's also a correlation thing there. But you can tell that Shiano wants to stop the run first. That is going to be his big thing. I do wonder about when he gets to the NFL if the second thing becomes his priority. Limiting the big plays, plays of 25 or more. Limiting them to two or fewer per game.

And then, of course, you get the sort of creating takeaways, the other thing he wants to stress. How are you going to stop the run? Shiano outlined it there at the beginning, that swarm technique. Talk about setting the edge, whether Viera, an edge defender, or even the sideline. That's going to be music to Patriots fans' ears, as we've talked about for years on this show. And elsewhere, setting the edge, always a big thing for the Patriots

and their defense. And then you get that ninth defender, the one away from the ball that backside corner for example he's now your cutoff player he's not going to over pursue he's not going to be aggressive towards the ball he's going to stay behind the football at all times just in case you get that bounce back that cut back that reverse of the field you're not now behind the eight ball from a defense you've got one player who will still have the angle in making the tackle. And then finally, you've got your other nine players.

What do they do? They press the hip. He wants those nine players pressing the hip of the ball carrier, getting to that player, getting to that hip, and taking him down. That is how Shiano stresses stop in the run. It's an all 11 or 10 player, depending on whether you're using it as an edge defender or not,

mentality. Everybody has a job to do. Everybody finishes that job on every single defensive play. You can probably see right then and there some of what gets Bill Belichick excited about Craig Sciano. Up next, we're going to have some more from Coach Sciano from this clinic, talking about creating takeaways and limiting the big plays. And a little bit later, my thoughts on the Orlando Apollos, an opening weekend of the AAF here on a Monday episode of Locked on Patriots. Hey there, Pats fans. I'm excited to talk to you about our great friends over at Lo-Kai. You need a little extra swag for game day or the offseason or draft season

or just to flash the fact that look you're a Patriots fan and they're against Super Bowl champions well Loci has got your back with their brand new game day collection if you haven't heard that name before well now you have this company is amazing I've been wearing their bracelets for a while now and they're a bracelet with an amazing message and it also supports incredible causes the Loci bracelet comes in Patriots colors and holds water from Mount Everest, the highest point on earth, and mud from the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth. The bracelet is a daily reminder to stay balanced during life's highs and lows.

I wasn't a big bracelets guy before I am now because of their bracelets. They've got an amazing message and it personally helps keep me focused on both the good and the bad times in life. Since Loci is friends with the show, they're offering you an exclusive discount of 25% off all game day collection bracelets. This is the best deal. Just use the promo code PATRIOTS25 when checking out and boom, you can thank me later. Go to L-O-K-A-I.com and use the promo code PATRIOTS25

to take advantage of this amazing offer. We do a sack fumble drill. We do a second man in strip drill. We do a chase strip, mirror the throwing hand, and sideline recovery. Catch the ones they throw you. That's what C-T-O-T-T-Y, our guys will yell that out when a guy drops a pass. They'll yell those letters out. Catch the ones they throw you. Studied in the National Football League, studied at Miami, studied at Rutgers. If you catch the balls that are thrown to you as a secondary,

and I don't mean the spectacular plays. I just mean the ones that those silly quarterbacks throw right to you. If you catch the ones they throw you, you will lead your league in interceptions, guarantee it. It's been true at every level. But think about how many interceptions you drop. How about that screen? I didn't think that screen was a spectacular play. It's right in his hands, right? If you catch the ones they throw you, you'll lead your league in interceptions. First drill, the easiest takeaway there is in football, the sack fumble. Everybody wants to talk about all these different things. How do you have a better situation than a quarterback? I know this is exaggerated, I mean they don't stand with it here, but they do stand with it here and they

don't see you coming. How the heck can you not take advantage of that? You know what, how many times do you see kids bury their face mask in the back of that quarterback? And then they get up and they go, you know, I'm sitting there screaming. I literally will be screaming, running off the field. Our job is to create the takeaway. Here's the ball on a platter. We're not looking about, we don't even use the word sack at Rutgers. Everything is sack fumble, sack fumble, sack fumble. So when you have a blindside hit on the quarterback right now, you want to use the old wax on, right?

Wax on, wax off. You want to hit between the elbow and the wrist, and you do not want to let him know you're there with your other hand. Coach, can I bother you one more time? Mark Schofield back with you now to close out this Take Tuesday installment of Locked On Patriots. And as I said, going to talk some news

here, set some stuff up. Some more immediate future of the Locked On Patriots podcast. We're going to do five shows this week. Like I said, we've got a crossover show that's going to go up Wednesday. Thursday, we're going to do our tape stuff. We're going to do some odes. Kind of a good way to put the cap on this regular season and postseason.

Doing what we do sometimes on Tape Tuesday with some odes to some players. Friday, we're going to do a little countdown. This is an idea that was proposed to me by Jeff Farrer of Inside the Pylon. Top 25 plays of the Super Bowl era for the New England Patriots. All six Super Bowls. So I'm going to count those down. It's going to be fun to put together, and I'm sure everybody's going to agree.

But that's what we're going to do on Friday. And then we're going to four shows a week, Monday through Thursday, for the rest of February. Because, look, Papa Bear needs some time, okay? Papa Bear's going to get himself a taste. You know, I'm going to sit here for a minute, think some things through. Papa Bear's going to get himself a taste. You know, I'm going to sit here for a minute, think some things through. Papa Bear's going to get a taste.

Papa Bear needs some time. But then when we get back into March, we're going, you know, full bore, five shows a week, all the way through the draft, and then for the week after the draft, five shows after that. And then Papa Bear will slow things down again. Look, we get it. Football, it's, you know, 52 weeks a year, 365. We get it.

But sometimes, you know, you need to recharge the batteries a batteries a bit look this show is dropping later than my shows usually do because after that super bowl and everything else look i basically just shut it down on monday i was just like look i can't even deal partly because for those of you that do expose yourself to the absolute um hive of scum and villainy that Twitter can be. Football Twitter on Monday was just an absolute nightmare. And I don't know if it was people seeing that game and were just angry. I don't know if people saw that NFL 100 commercial and were like, I want to bring that to the timeline.

I don't know what it was. But people on football Twitter were just throwing haymakers at each other. It was just a free-for-all. It was like the fight scene in Anchorman. It was just a vicious cockfight. And so I was just like, look, y'all can have fun with that. I'm going to lay down. I'm going to read Michael Beshalos, President of the United States of America.

By the way, I'm working my way through that book right now. Fantastic book. Check that out. So anyway, that's kind of the structure of this week and the next couple of months which gets us into this and this is what i kind of want to show close down the show with i got a john lamaroccus who i mentioned easier um his take he tweeted that to me yesterday next year's roster turnover is going to be rough it's a lot easier to see your team win excuse me It's a lot easier to see your team win. Excuse me. It's a lot easier to see your team struggle a year after Super Bowl win. Next year might, and I stressed might, be a slight

step back. And I'm okay with that. The draft is one of my favorite things on to YouTube scouting season. And I can kind of understand what John's coming from. Look, we've got some issues that are looming, the Gronkowski retirement or not, or whether we want to sort of address that and get a tight end anyway in what might be a good tight end class. What do they do with Trey Brown, Trey Flower, Trent Brown, Trey Flower? So we might need another offensive lineman perhaps. You could probably slide Isaiah Wynn in, but you still probably want to address offensive line maybe a day two, day three

if you do lose Trent Brown. If you lose Trey Flowers, yeah, you've got some guys wise and rivers but you might want to address that position as well you know patrick chun just got hurt devin mccourty's hinted at retirement you might want to think safety and what might be shaping up to be a good safety class and then of course you all know where my heart's at quarterback it's always fun to talk about draft we've got a ton of prospects at all these positions that might be positions of need for the Patriots. And that's where I want to drop something fun on you guys. Because as John sort of alluded to, it's scouting season. I think one of the things

that I've learned doing this and doing things like the Inside the Pylon Draft Guide is part of the fun of scouting and a great way to learn about it is making it a collaborative effort. You have a bunch of people, you watch a bunch of players, and then you talk about them. You work through what they do well, what they don't do so well, and if we're going to do it right, we're going to be focusing on what they do well. Hashtag Patriots, hashtag Super Bowl champs. And then you decide, do they fit into what the Patriots do? Do they fit into what our team does? And so here is what I am proposing to do for our draft season. Over at the Locked on Patriots Slack channel, we're going to have watch lists. We're going to watch these players, and we're going to talk about them

in the Locked on Patriots Slack channel. I want to work through some tape with you guys. And so what I'm going to announce today is that project,, that project, first of all, that, you know, we're going to watch some players together. We'll all do some homework. We'll get together. We'll show some video clips, share some stuff around, and talk about players and whether they fit.

We'll do that over the Locked on Patriots Slack channel. Again, some more incentive. If that sounds like something you'd like to be a part of, hit me up for an invite, at Mark Schofield on Twitter, mark.schofield, at insidethepylon.com. I'll get you a Slack channel invite. We can watch some players. I'll find some ways to get you guys taped.

There are people that do cut-ups and stuff like that. I'll point you guys on the right direction. And I'm going to drop right now our first, there might be some additions, our first positional group watch list for the 2019 NFL Draft for the New England Patriots. And that is tight end. Why? I felt like it. Why reason two? Patriots might need one. Why reason three? It's a good tight

end class. It's a very good tight end class. I like tight ends too. So here's your list, friends, and we can decide at some point. There's a guy I want to watch first, but his tape might be the hardest to get for everybody else. Papa Bear has the hookup. I'm just saying. So we'll see who we're going to watch first. But here's your list. Maybe we can debate either here on the Locked on Patriots Slack channel or Twitter or wherever who we want to break down first.

And I'm thinking like a week or two down the road, we can carve out a time, whether it's during the day, at night, whatever, spend like an hour, talk about the player on the Locked Up Patriots Slack channel. And hey, that makes some free and easy content for me too, because then I can take that and just create a podcast around it. So the people that didn't partake,

but still want to learn about the player, they have the access to our minds. How about that? Anyway, here's your tight end watch list. Noah Fant, Iowa. TJ Hawkinson, Iowa. The Iowa tight ends are great. They're so much fun.

Herb Smith Jr. from Alabama. Dawson Knox from Ole Miss. Isaac Nata from Georgia. Fabian Moreau from LSU. And Dax Raymond, the kid I like, from Utah State. So there you go, friends. There's your initial tight end watch list here at our collective Locked on Patriots scouting project.

At some point, we can decide on who we want to watch first, set up a time. We'll get together in the Locked on Patriots scouting project. At some point, we can decide on who we want to watch first, set up a time, we'll get together on the Locked on Patriots Slack channel, we'll have a few laughs, watch some film together. Kind of what I'm thinking is we can all sort of watch them, maybe if people identify a couple of clips they like, they can send them to me or give me a timestamp or something

on whether you're watching them via YouTube, and I can cut together some clips and put them together either in a Twitter thread or something where we can all sort of work off the same stuff. So it should be fun. Maybe it's crashes and burns and we do it once and we realize this is dumb,

but I think it will be fun. I hope you think it'll be fun. And it's a way to sort of get excited about the draft and do it together and learn from each other. And so I'm excited about doing that and sharing some of my thoughts with you and your thoughts with me and learning from each other. I think it'll be fun or it could be completely

boring. Either way, we'll give it a shot. That will do it for today. For those of you who are on your way to the parade, at the parade, coming home for the parade, I hope it was a blast. I hope you loved it. Weather seems to be nice up there. Nobody throw a beer at people. You can throw it at your friends. Don't throw a beer at Edelman or something. We don't want another Alex Cora repeat. But have some fun at the parade. Do so responsibly. Have a blast. I'll be back tomorrow with a crossover.

Until then, keep it locked right here to me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on Patriots. But I do want to return to that fourth item, mirroring the throw of Heron for a minute here because I thought Shiano's insight on this was fascinating. I was blown away hearing him talk about this, so I wanted to play a little bit more of that for you. Mirror the throwing hand. This is the one that I think you can get a lot of mileage. Those others,

you can get mileage out of, but you have to be in the right situation. This mirror the throwing hand, another Belichickism that I think is the biggest thing you can do with your defensive front or any of your pass rushers. And very, very simple. If I'm the quarterback and I'm about ready to throw, what do I do? The good ones at least, when they're ready to throw, they take, we call it the the long arm of the quarterback. When he takes the long arm off the ball, you're gonna mirror the throwing hand. So just like you were looking in a mirror, you want to do it. This is how we practice. This is how we practice it.

So they're going to come running right at the coach. And as soon as that front hand comes off, the defender is going to mirror the throwing hand. Now understand, in this picture right here, mirroring the throwing hand is his left hand. Not exactly, probably for a righty, the most comfortable thing to do. They'd probably like to go up with this hand. But mirroring the throwing hand does so much. Number one, you will get passes batted down, absolutely. But as importantly or more, you make the quarterback adjust his flight pattern by that much.

And when he adjusts it by that much, it doesn't change it much in the first five yards. But it's kind of like, I've never sailed, so I don't want to sound like I know what I'm talking about, but you change the compass a little bit, and then when you get 200 miles away, you're pretty far off course. It's the same thing if you're throwing a 30-yard pass. The first five yards, when you made him alter it just a little bit, it's not that big a change. But when he gets 30 yards down the field, it may make the ball this much different in its path,

and that's this much different that leads to an interception. You hear that? A Belichickism. A Belichickism. We're bringing it full circle here. And I love the sort of compass analogy there when you think about a quarterback having to perhaps adjust his trajectory on a throw because of somebody in his face,

because of that mirrored long arm in his face. Maybe it won't matter on a quick five-yard out or a seven-yard hitch, but if you get downfield, it might make the difference, and it could be the difference between an interception and a completion for a touchdown. And so those are some of the Shiano things I wanted to point out. There's a ton of this stuff out there. If anybody's interested, I can get you the link to the video

or even get you a copy of the video itself if you want to see more from Greg Sciano and this Rutgers defensive clinic. Up next, close things out with some thoughts on the AAF and my Orlando Apollos. That's ahead on this Monday installment of Locked on Patriots. Alright, let me talk to the guys for a

second because I know what you've been doing since the playoffs started. You've been waking up, getting yourself ready for work, going to work, eating, going home, sleeping, and all those moments in between, you've been doing everything you can to consume every little bit of information about the NFL playoffs, hopefully by listening to every episode of Locked On Patriots. But I also know what you haven't been doing. You haven't been getting ready for Valentine's Day. So let me help you out. How about giving your wife or girlfriend something totally different, something romantic that celebrates the unique connection between you and her. I'm talking about a luxury

gift service called Enclosed that delivers designer lingerie to your lady month after month. Enclosed is like a flower of the month or a beer of the month, but instead of flowers, she gets surprised with ultra high-end lingerie. Seriously high-end stuff. The kind of quality that will really impress her. Enclosed was designed specifically to help guys find gifts for their wives or girlfriends. Enclosed is all about helping you make her happy. And Enclosed is effortless. Every month, Enclosed sends your wife or girlfriend a custom curated lingerie gift selected just for her. And they back the gift up with a 100% size guarantee so you never have to worry about fit. You can join more than 30,000 couples that love enclosed.

And I'll give you a little gift. Right now, you can get $35 off your enclosed gift. Just go to enclosedlingerie.com, enter the code PATRIOTS at checkout to get $35 off any enclosed multi-month gift. Why not give your wife or girlfriend something that really reflects and deepens the connection between the two of you? Something that you would never give your mother. That's enclosed lingerie.com with the code PATRIOTS for $35 off the best gift ever. Mark Schofield back with you now to quickly close out this Monday installment of Locked On Patriots with just a couple of minutes here on the AAF because the Alliance of

American Football, new sprayed football league kicked off. It has, you can tell some backing of NFL types in the NFL itself. Bill Pullian involved, Jeff Fisher involved. You get guys like Mike Martz and Mike Singletary and Steve Spurrier, former NFL coaches, coaching up some of these teams.

And it got off to a pretty good start. More than anything else, I think, what surprised some people were the ratings, at least for the Saturday night games. I haven't seen the ratings for the Sunday afternoon games yet, but it beat NBA basketball. 2.1 versus a 2.0. Now, look, it's Saturday night. It's a brand new thing, so people were excited and interested and intrigued off of the start.

We'll see what those numbers look like in weeks, say, four and five of the AAF season. But I still thought it was fascinating to see. Was the football good? Wasn't great? Some of the rules are interesting. Hamstringing the defense in a bit. You can only bring five. You can't really blitz a quarterback.

You get flagged if you send six. Both linebackers can't come. You can't have moreitz a quarterback. You get flagged if you send six. Both linebackers can't come. You can't have more than four rushing from one side of the field or not. But I think there are some things that the NFL is going to be intrigued by. Outside kicks are out the window. If you want an onside kick situation, you go for it. It's like a fourth and 17 play or fourth and 12 play in your own territory. You can only do it in the final five minutes and if you're down by a certain score.

Kickoffs, again, those are out the window. Everybody starts at the 25. Everything's reviewable by what they call the sky judge. So if there's something that's missed by the refs on the field, it can be corrected. I thought the most fascinating thing, the first touchdown, a throw from Garrett Gilbert to Jalen Marshall that was called an incompletion on the field. They review it in the replay. That process, you see it happen.

So you have the replay official, and she's walking you through. She's seeing some angles. She's initially thinking it's still an incompletion, but then she sees another angle and sees the elbow underneath him. She's down. She overturns it, causes a touchdown. It's transparent, and it's happening live in front of you. Something else that was very cool that they did that I want them to copy immediately, the NFL that is, is the app. I was watching one game and tracking another on the app

on my phone and you've got sort of the GPS in each player so you can see live what's happening. I wish they would do that with football because I didn't know what was going on, but you could still see that. So they could tinker with that. I'd love to see the NFL expand that. They have NextGenStats. And if you go to NextGenStats.com or the NFL.com website and you find your way there, you will see their Super Bowl 53 headquarters. Every play had that. So forget having to do the X's and O's or the pad and however you want to break these plays down. They do it there for you. It's making my job super easy. And so the AAF, I think, was very exciting. Yes, my Orlando Apollos, big win under Steve Spurrier. Try not to think about when Spurrier had that huge opening win in his NFL career and then things went south from there.

But it's interesting. They're doing some different things and these are names that you do recognize you know lewis perez got the start today for the birmingham iron you know mike bercovici even though he got benched you know he got the start for the san and san diego fleet san antonio's quarterback logan woodside a guy we talked about a ton last draft cycle and so the nfl does need that sort of developmental league. If the AAF sticks, it could become that. Of course, we have the XFL launching next season, so it's going to be interesting how these leagues sort of end up.

But for one week, I was incredibly intrigued. That will do it for today. I will be back tomorrow. What we're going to talk about, I'm not sure yet. We'll come up with something, though. Hope you enjoyed today's show, talking some AAF, talking some Greg Sciano. Again, if anybody wants that clinic, the audio,

the video, whatever, hit me up. I can get you a copy of it. I've got a copy of it saved to my hard drive. That will do it for today. I will be back tomorrow. Until then, keep it locked right here to me, Mark Schofield and Locked on Patriots.