Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots February 12, 2019 - Kyler Murray

Episode Date: February 12, 2019

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

Hey there everybody, welcome on into a Tuesday installment of the Lockdown Patriots podcast. Mark Schofield in the big chair for Tuesday, February 12th, 2019. Just two days until Valentine's Day, friends. So make sure you've got yourself covered. You've got your loved ones covered. You've got your gifts and all that good stuff. What are we going to do today? Well, we're devoting an entire show to one player and with good reason

because yesterday, Monday, early in the afternoon, the football world got kind of the news that many, myself included, were waiting for. A Twitter slash Instagram post from Oklahoma Sooners quarterback slash Heisman Trophy winner slash Oakland A's first round draft pick Kyler Murray that read as follows. Moving forward, I am firmly and fully committed my life and time to becoming an NFL quarterback. Football has been my love and passion my entire life and time to becoming an NFL quarterback. Football has been my love and passion my entire life.

I was raised to play quarterback and I very much look forward to dedicating 100% of myself to being the best quarterback possible and winning NFL championships. I have started an extensive training program to further prepare myself for upcoming NFL workouts and interviews. I eagerly await the opportunity to continue to prove to NFL decision makers that I am the franchise QB in this draft. Now, this comes as myself and others are studying Kylo Murray to determine if he is a franchise quarterback. And for many of us, that was a question mark given some of what we've seen and heard and things like that. So what I figured, and this came at a

perfect moment. So what I figured I'd do today was walk through some of his strengths, some of his weaknesses, because I am in the middle of studying Kyler Murray again. That's why this is a perfect moment. And then in the third segment of the show, going to talk some more philosophical stuff about Kyler Murray, the quarterback position and and where the NFL is trending, and of course, tie it into the New England Patriots. But before we do all 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 Wathman's Rookie Scouting Portfolio, Big Blue View, part of the SB Nation family of websites, friends as I've said.

If there's an outlet that is covering the game of football, odds are, bare naked ladies hit, I'm doing some work for them. Let's talk Kyler Murray. Let's talk strengths here at the outset. And of course, anytime you watch Kyler Murray, whether it's just as a fan, whether it's casually watching him live, whether it's studying him on tape, as I've been doing for the past couple of days now. The first thing that jumps out is his raw athleticism. Look, he's an explosive athlete with the football in his hands, sometimes with the football not even in his hands. You watch him on designed runs, quarterback scrambles, scramble drill situations. He is that kind of angle eraser that is rare both at the college game and now at the NFL level. I just got done

watching his game against Army, for example, and there was a play. It was a designed run, and the linebacker and a safety, two players on Army, had the perfect angles against him as he ran to the left edge, and he erased them in the blink of an eye. Just absolutely obliterated these angles. Now, yes, that's Army. Can that translate to other teams? Yeah. Watch his game against Iowa State, pretty good defense.

Watch his game against TCU, his games against Texas, all the other games that he played, even the playoff game against Alabama. You see moments where he just obliterates angles. That athleticism will translate to the National Football League. Of course, there are questions about his size and his frame and whether he could expose himself to big hits in the NFL and sustain seasons, live through that kind of punishment. What he does extremely well is protect himself, is slide. He's not somebody that's going to fight for additional yardage in situations where he doesn't need to. For example, you see a lot of runs on tape from him where he'll pick up a first down and more,

and he's got defenders closing in on him. Rather than fight for additional yardage when he's already got the first down, he'll just give himself up, slide all over the field. If he can't get to the sidelines and get out of bounds, he'll just slide, and he's very adept at that, and he's going to need to remain adept at that if he's going to survive life in the NFL as an undersized quarterback. Now, when it comes to Murray as a passer, obviously because of his athleticism, his footwork, I think, is very good. Now, the majority of their passing plays in this Oklahoma offense

begin off of a play action or a mesh-type fake in the backfield. So you don't get a lot of, you know, what are his drops like? You know, this is a shotgun predominant offense. The NFL is trending shotgun anyway. So the days of needing somebody who can line up under center are long gone. But those rare moments when he's asked to make sort of a three-step drop from the gun, the footwork is pretty good. And so I'm not really worried about that. What I'm more impressed with is his footwork and creating space, which is something he's also going to have to do a ton of because as an undersized quarterback, you need to do a better job than others at finding throwing lanes. He's not Josh Allen. He's not Tyree Jackson. He can't just stand

back there and scan over the offensive line because of his size. He has to create throwing lanes and his footwork is good enough. I haven't seen a ton of moments where he's really needed to create throwing lanes yet, but his footwork is good enough where he creates a space. And so I think, you know, when I get deeper into studying him, this is something I'm going to keep looking for. Can he sort of create throwing lanes? I know other people have studied him and said he struggles at doing that. I haven't seen yet instances where he truly does, but maybe I haven't seen the right moment. That's why the work goes on.

But he does a very good job at creating space as a passer. When it comes to throwing the football, I love his touch. I love his understanding of placement of leverage. There are some throws middle of the field where he's trying to throw a receiver into space or protect a receiver into space or protect a receiver based on a secondary player a safety type rotating down and I love where in those moments he puts the ball to the right shoulder to protect his tight end or his receiver you know there's a couple of plays where he's going to throw between the hash marks he's got that safety

rotating down so he puts the football kind of to the back shoulder and it looks like poorly placed like a poorly placed throw when you're watching it but then when you go back and sort of see the play from his view you understand why he put it there great touch in the downfield ball missed some throws here and there but the arm talent is there what i think is undersold with respect to kyler murray and this is something that we tie in with the Patriots here, is his ability to make anticipation throws. This got better as the season went on, and it was still in a pretty good place. Like, what was interesting was watching him make some throws, you know, that backside comeback, for example. Seeing him get the ball out well ahead

of or on time with the receiver's break. He made some anticipation throws to the middle of the field. Dig routes to the tight end, for example. Getting the ball out of his hands as the tight end is clear in that underneath linebacker. Remember, you want to throw between linebackers, not over them. But you got to be ahead of the game when you're making those throws in the middle of the field. So you got to anticipate them. And he does a very good job of that. One of the designs that they'd love to run, mesh-wise sit, where you've got maybe a post route and a wheel route, maybe a wheel from the running back, post from the backside receiver. You've got those crossers underneath. And then you've got sort of the

tight end sitting down over the middle of the field. They sometimes pair that with a seam route. So you've got a stack set. Somebody's running the sit. Somebody else is running the seam. As the season wore on, they ran that twice, for example, against Iowa State, one of the earlier games he had. And he threw that sit route. It was a good read. It could have been anticipated better the first time he did it. Later in the game, he anticipated it much better. Later in the season, he was getting it out well before that sit route sort of made its break. And so when you start to hear people talking about Murray and they say, well, he's more of a see-it-throw-it type guy, I would personally push back on that a little.

I think his anticipation is a little bit better than we're giving him credit for. But it's something, again, we're going to keep watching him and look for that. So those are some of his strengths, both as an athlete and as a passer. As for some weaknesses, some things he might need to improve on, we're going to get to those in a second as well as a little bit later some philosophical stuff on Kyler Murray and his potential transition to the NFL. That's all ahead on this Tuesday installment of Locked on Patriots. Hey there, Pats fans.

I'm excited to talk to you about our great friends over at Loci. 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, again, Super Bowl champions, while 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. They're a bracelet with an amazing message and it also supports incredible causes. The Lo-Kai bracelet comes in Patriot's 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 Lokai 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 LOKAI.com and use the promo code PATRIOTS25 to take advantage of this amazing offer. Mark Schofield back with you now on this Tuesday installment of the Lockdown Patriots

podcast, focusing in today on Kyler Murray. Now, as every single team is into draft season, I know there are fans of other teams that are listening to this show. Since this does have a Patriots focus, you're going to get some news from elsewhere. So I would invite you to, again, listen to all the shows across the Locked On Podcast Network, two shows that you're definitely going to have on your radar this draft season, our Draft Dudes with Kyle Krabs, Joe Marino, and of course, Locked On NFL Draft with Travis

Sikama, John Ledyard. Those four gentlemen from the Draft Network do fantastic work. You got to check those shows out. Also, speaking of the Draft Network, later this week, we're going to have Brad Kelly on from the Draft Network. He's going to talk some wide receivers and tight ends. That will be for Thursday. And on Wednesday's show, my good friend Michael Kist from Bleeding Green Nation, the Kist and Solak show and other outlets, he's going to stop by.

He got done studying the safeties in this class, so I want to pick his brain about some potential safeties in this group that maybe the Patriots might want to have their eye on. Again, we've got Devin McCourty hinting about retirement. Patrick Chun's going to be coming off some surgery, so the Patriots might look to address the safety position in the upcoming draft. Let's get back to Kylo Murray now. We just got done talking about some of his strengths. I want to talk about some of the things I'd like to see some improvement on for him. And I know that most people, when you look at Kylo Murray,

they're going to have two sort of buckets of question marks with him. First is obviously the size. And we're going to have two sort of buckets of question marks with him. First is obviously the size. And we're going to take that and just put it aside. We're going to ignore it for right now. I don't want to get into that issue. It will be an issue for him. The most important place for him is the scale of the combine. I firmly believe that for reasons I've talked about.

The TL's semicolon DR version of that. If he comes in at 5'10", 205, he's still an outlier, but he's Russell Wilson-sized outlier, not Mark Schofield-sized outlier. Russell Wilson, with his background, that kind of outlier, probably still has a general manager or more than a couple of general managers comfortable drafting him in the first round. Mark Schofield-sized outlier, that's a bigger question, but we're going to put the size then aside. And then there's the baseball issue. Yes, he says he's firmly committed to baseball, and I believe that.

You know, we take him at his word. But that's a big sort of issue handing out there. And if you draft him in the first round as a general manager, you're showing confidence in him as a quarterback. But say things don't go his way right away. He's not playing or he struggles a bit. You've got to be sure that he's not going to up and walk away. Again, taking that, putting it aside. Deficiencies as a quarterback, as a passer. One of the things that sort of stands out to me

watching him are his mechanics. Now, again, I'm Mr. Mechanics don't matter until they matter. But here's one thing that I've noticed with him a bit. Like other baseball players, Mahomes, Wilson, the mechanics can get a little unwieldy at times. Now, I haven't seen it become an issue. I haven't seen them sort of resort to situations where the ball isn't where it should be when it should be. So I don't have a big concern about them. But the concern I do have is this. There are times when he needs to dial up the RPMs. He needs to dial up the velocity a bit. Now his natural throw in motion when he doesn't need to do that, he has a bit of a draw to it, kind of like an archer pulling back on the bow. So he'll draw back, then come

forward and release. And the throw in motion when he does that is usually pretty quick, pretty crisp. The ball gets out of his hands quickly. And look, because of his baseball background, he can throw from a variety of platforms. That's one of his strengths. Didn't have time to get to it in the earlier segment. And this is something I've noticed, for example, with Russell Wilson. Noticed it a couple of years ago. It might have, you know, might've been an injury thing, but when Wilson needed to sort of dial up those RPMs, that drawback became a windup. And so you're seeing the ball dip, loop, come overhand, more like Sam Darnold.

Kyler Murray does that too at times when he needs to dial up those RPMs whether it's throwing say the deep comeback from right hash to left sideline whether it's trying to fit a throw in into the middle of the field he'll have that sort of dip and loop to it and again even when he does that the ball comes out pretty quickly but it is something to watch it is something to keep an eye on similar to the conversations we had about Sam Darnold last year. Does that become an issue as he gets to the NFL, as he starts trying to fit and throw us into tighter windows against better athletes, faster athletes? Does that extra little second or half second or quarter of a second mean the difference between completions that he had in the Big 12

and incompletions or interceptions in the NFL game? So that's one area I'm going to be watching. Here's the other thing, and I'm working my mind through this right now. Is Kyler Murray the transcendent type, mold-breaking type talent that makes you take the process and throw it out the window? And here's what I mean by that, and I'm working through a piece on this that's going to go up over at Matt Waldman's Rookie Scouting Portfolio in the next day or so. Studying quarterbacks, I always come to the process part of things. I don't, you know, box score scouting, for example,

you see a game where the quarterback throws a bunch of TDs, but you might study that. You might get into his process on each of those touchdowns and realize either the process was flawed, his reads were flawed, he got bailed out by his receivers, he made some mistakes, and it isn't as impressive as a game in terms of evaluating that player and projecting their development in the NFL. And there can be the converse. You could look at a game where a quarterback struggled. For example, Brett Rippon against San Diego State. They lost that game. He looked bad

in that game. But there's still one of my favorite plays from any of the quarterbacks in this class where he identifies the blitz, changes the protection, gets hit anyway, and throws a perfect rope on an out route to move the change on a third and 10. And so I always try to get into the process. Murray is going to make me question with him whether that's the right approach. And here's a play to sort of highlight that. It's a play against Army and they run sort of a sticks concept out of a two byby-two formation where two receivers on the left, two receivers on the right, each one running a curl route right at the first down marker. It's like a second and eight type play. And he works it between the two inside curl routes. It's kind

of like when we talk about four verticals and you bracket in that free safety in the middle of the field, you look to one, you throw the other. It's kind of a similar situation. And now he opens to the curl inside from number two on the left, the number two receiver, the inside receiver. And that's bracketed. Safety over the top, linebacker underneath it, can't throw it. Then he comes to the inside curl from the receiver on the right. He falls down. Now, they're running this against a cover three coverage. So, each of the outside curls is wide open. But at this point, he's starting to get pressured a little bit. And now, this is a play on the cusp of the red zone. So, they're on the plus 24 or so. Both of those boundary curls are open. For me, I want to see him, even as he starts to

climb and slide to the right a little bit in response to that edge pressure, I want to see him keep his eyes downfield and throw that curl to the outside to the right. If he wasn't pressured, I'd love to see him stay in the pocket and throw to either one of those outside curls. But because he's flushed now to his right, I want to see him keep his eyes downfield and throw that curl. That's the process I would like to see an NFL prospect go through. But what does he do? He tucks and goes. And he runs it for a touchdown, a race in every angle, outrunning the safety, and it's just one of those explosive athletic type plays. Now, here's the thing that I'm going to be struggling with for the next couple of months

and NFL GMs likely will be struggling with as well. Is that enough? Is that talent and explosiveness enough to make you sort of take your mold of what you expect a quarterback to be, break it, throw it out the window and say, look, I don't care that the process wasn't what I wanted it to be on that play or plays like that. That type of talent is rare. And that will still work in the NFL. That will change games in the NFL. That will win games in the NFL. And so everything we thought about quarterbacks, we're throwing it out the window because this guy is that

transcendent. That, I think, might be putting aside, again, the height and the baseball and all that stuff. That might be the ultimate question for Kyler Murray. Is there a general manager out there who will look at stuff like that and say, I don't care how he got there in terms of his decision making and his process. I don't care how we're going to get there in terms of how we evaluate quarterbacks. That will work in the NFL, and we've got ways to make it work.

What can he do? You might see where I'm going with this, and we'll talk about that next here on Locked On Patriots. All right, 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 enclosedinlingerie.com with the code PATRIOTS for $35 off the best gift ever. Mark Schofield back with you now to close out this Tuesday installment of the Locked On Patriots podcast. Reminder, I'm going to have Michael Kist on to talk some safeties for Wednesday's show. Brad Kelly from the Draft Network on Thursday to talk wide receivers and tight ends.

If you've got any questions for those fine gentlemen, send them in at Mark Schofield on Twitter, mark.schofield at insidethepylon.com or via the Locked On Patriots Slack channel. You can hit me up for an invite there at Mark Schofield or that email address as well. Or via the Locked on Patriots phone line, 240-670-6016. Let's close out this Kyler Murray discussion with Kyle. I kind of teed it up at the end of there.

Could Kyler Murray be a fit for the New England Patriots? And to sort of ton and cheekily frame this discussion i want to start with a tweet not to toot my own horn but to show you sort of where my head is at on this that i put out after murray's decision crazy belichick scheme draft murray load up on linemen and running backs and run a spread slash flex bone slash wing T hybrid against all these defenses that cut light and athletic to stop the spread. Now, they got some pushback. They got some people that liked it as well.

But we talk so much here and elsewhere about Belichick zagging while the rest of the league zigs. And if everybody's going to go light, go athletic, like the Big 12, wouldn't it be a Belichick-type move to go in the opposite direction and get back to sort of his roots? Draft a guy like Murray, an athletic quarterback, focus on sort of blocking angles, getting those surfaces that you like in the run game,

but you still have the explosiveness in him as an athlete to throw the ball downfield as well. If you get those light boxes, you'll run against them. If you get those heavy boxes, you'll throw against them. You've got a quarterback that can do that with some athleticism. So my mind began to wander and sort of explore the studio space of Belichick doing something like that. And so to kind of bring this full circle, I want to talk about somebody that was an inspiration to many in my field, Paul Zimmerman, Dr. Z. And from his book from years ago, The Lost Memoirs of an Irreverent Football Writer. I want to read something to you.

This comes from that book. Mine eyes have seen the glory, sort of the chapter that he's talking about here. A few years ago, I had a dream. So vivid was that dream that I couldn't shake it for days. And at odd times, I would catch myself committed parts of it to paper. And they took the form of football plays. Yes, that's right. I dreamed about the X's and the O's, except that they didn't line up into patterns that

would be recognizable by today's players. They were lined up in the single-wing formation. The what? You know, the single wing. The running pass, tailback lined up deep, behind the center in an abbreviated shotgun, the fullback set a step or two in front of him on either side, the windback on the flank,

and the blocking back up near the line, cruising like an H-back or second tight end of today, searching for the murderous blocking angles. What was different, though, was that I had lined up the current Michael Vick of the Atlanta Falcons in that formation that hadn't been regularly used in the league since 1951, and only by one team in those days, the Steelers.

Vick was my pass-and-run tailback star in that dream, 254-pound T.J. Duckett was my fullback, also known as the spitting fullback in the old days because he'd often do a half turn and hand the ball off or fake a handoff. Little Warwick Dunn would be my win back. I could just see him slicing through the weak side on a short reverse behind the block of 250 pound Brian Kozlowski, my blocking back, and wouldn't cause that fun, leveling all those pigeons from the blind side. I couldn't get the idea out of my head. The single win was still used by some successful college teams when I was in school. It was a thing of beauty when Mighty Michigan ran it with Charlie

Ortman and Wally Tenga and Killer Kempthorne. Formable and flashy when used by UCLA and at times USC with a dazzling tailback named Frank Gifford and downright nasty when you had to line up against it. Nope, no fun at all if you were a tackle, which I was, and you were playing in front of the imbalanced strong side. It felt like a half dozen different people were either double teaming you or trapping you, playing against that short sidemen and lining up over the weak side end. What a racket. It was like stealing. But that was another thing about facing the single win. The unfairness of it made you want to cry. After a few days, that strange dream became a reality in my poor, tormented brain. I've seen quite a few guys who would have been brilliant as run-pass stars

working out of a deep tailback set. Randall Cunningham, the two youngs, Vince and Steve, and of course, Vic. I remember once asking Vince Lombardi what would happen if a team all of a sudden surprised everyone by coming out on a single win. It would embarrass the hell out of us, he said. I put the same question to Bill Walsh. Oh my goodness, he said. I've never thought of that. You could double team right down the line and you could trap it almost every hole. My God, it would just chew up those three and four man

lines. Now, the beauty of Zimmerman as a writer aside, the idea behind that is something that I haven't gotten out of my head since it popped into my brain while I was at the gym and Maureen made his announcement and I put out that tweet. Is there somebody else in the league that might have similar thoughts on perhaps the single win and blocking angles and all that stuff that Zimmerman and Walsh were talking about? Well, of course. Of course. That's Bill Belichick. You know, Belichick, back in 2014, was asked about unbalanced lines and using an extra offensive lineman in place of a tight end. And his response? It's certainly an interesting aspect going all the way back to the single win days.

The whole single win offense was the balanced single win and then the overloaded single win, then the block shift back to the weak side. It was all overload, block, and angles trying to create. I don't think the plays were checked back then. You were just trying to show power over here. Now you've got power over there and show power over here and run counter back the other way and all that. That was a huge part of the game.

It's interesting to see how all that, how they tried to create those different things, both offensively and what they tried to create, and defensively, what the answers were to them. He was asked a follow-up question back in 2014. Did he ever wish he coached in that era? We ran the single win. He talked about the T-Birds in Annapolis, somewhere in the early 1960s. This is a 110-pound football league. We ran the single win. Really, looking back on it, it was a great experience experience i never would have gotten otherwise hardly anybody was running it the principles and the elements of it are interesting i'm glad i got to experience it i got to experience the win teen high school then the single win at

pop warner the wishbone in college and then my exposure to the nfl stuff back then and it was all about creating those blocking angles and blocking angles are something he uses the fullback with. This year, in November, he was asked about, you know, evolution of football. He was asked about the shift in the usage of fullbacks. And here's what Balachek said. I'd say in the 70s with college football, really, you know, and then certainly by the 80s, you had one runner. So the one-back teams, the Gibbs and Coriel and Marks and so forth,

those guys all went to one runner and the blocker was the blocker. So that became, instead of the fullback, sometimes the tight end and it transitioned from there. I would say basically you've got an offensive lineman,

but whether he carries the ball or doesn't carry the ball, the block and angles from the backfield are different than they are from the line of scrimmage and the ability to build a four-man surface or a three-man surface after the snap is different than being in a four-man surface and then trying to get to a three-man

surface or being in a three-man surface and trying to get to a four-man surface by running the guy all the way across the ball. There's different blocking angles. It's a fundamental difference. And so, yes, some super nerdy football stuff. But would Bill Belichick be the kind of guy to take a chance on a Kyler Murray, sort of go back, everything old becoming new again, and run that kind of offense in today's NFL? It's a dicey proposition, but it's one that has me, a football nerd, excited. Of course, the bigger question about Kyler Murray, could he fit into what the Patriots do right now? And again, putting the baseball question, the size question,

all of that stuff aside, I think there are some signs that he can. You see him running sort of haas with that seam on the outside and the comeback or the hitch. I mean, excuse me, the seam on the inside, the comeback, and the hitch on the outside. Again, we saw that in Super Bowl 53. He can run that. He's running it now. I think his ability to make anticipation throws, which is a big part of the Patriots' timing and rhythm offense,

he's doing that better than I think he's getting credit for. I saw him running plays like tosser and topper, parts of the New England Patriots playbook, making the right reads and the right throws with good ball placement on those. And so I think generally he could fit into what the New England Patriots want to do. The question becomes, more than anything else, are you willing to roll the dice on a kid like him? And again, putting aside the height and all that stuff, one of the things I've often said about Murray is that his skill set fits with where the league seems to be trending, the more wide open spread type stuff. But he might be sort of a year or two ahead of that full curve, a year or two ahead of that time. But as the Patriots do, you still have Tom Brady.

And you're probably going to have Tom Brady for another year or two at least, given what he's saying. Do you draft a guy like Kyler Murray, knowing that that's where the league is trending, knowing that you'll probably have a year or two to work with him, put him behind Tom Brady, maybe get a package here and there with him, get creative with him a little bit like we've seen with Taysom Hill, for example, like we saw with Baltimore before they turned that offense over to Lamar Jackson. Do the Patriots do something like that and sort of ease the way for the transition from life from Tom Brady to a Kyler Murray? Talk about a juxtaposition in quarterbacks. Maybe they do. It's enough to get this football

nerd excited about what could be. Now, having spent an entire show talking about Kyler Murray, let's face it, quarterbacks are in demand. They always are. And this is not a great quarterback class. And Kyler Murray, when it is all said and done, might be QB1 on a lot of draft boards from a talent perspective. Could the Patriots be in a position to draft him? Maybe not. Probably not. But on a Tuesday in January, it's certainly nice to think about.

That will do it for today's show. I will be back, like I said, tomorrow. Michael Kist from Blaney Green Nation. We're going to talk some safeties a little bit later in the week. Brad Kelly, we're going to talk some wide receivers, tight ends. Remember, we are down to four shows a week until we get a little bit closer to the draft, probably mid to late March. We'll get back into it five shows a week, but it's February. You know, your boy needs a little bit of a rest here, okay? I'll be back tomorrow. Until then, keep it locked right here

to me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on Patriots.