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