Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots January 11, 2019 - Gameday Edition

Episode Date: January 11, 2019

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Hey there everybody, welcome on in to a game day edition of the Locked On Patriots podcast. Mark Schofield back in the big chair for today, January 11th, 2019. We're going to do everything we can to get you ready for this Patriots-Chargers game that lies ahead of us on Sunday, as well as taking a look at the other divisional round games. We're going to talk sort of set in expectations at the beginning because I've been poking around online, done a couple of different things via social media, and it's interesting to see sort of where public sentiment is on this Patriots-Chargers game. We're also going to talk what I'm looking for when the Patriots have the ball, when the Chargers have the football, some stuff on special teams,

and even the weather. That's going to be our second segment. And a little bit later, I'm going to have predictions which are destined to be wrong. Because, remember, I was 0 for 4 last week. Can't believe, can't believe the bad week that I had. Although I heard from some of you via DMs and elsewhere that a lot of you struggled in the picks as well. So it gives me comfort to know that I'm not alone. What also gives me comfort, knowing that you all follow the work,

which you can do via 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, and of course, the easiest way to find me, on Twitter, at Mark Schofield on the Twitter machine. Also, if you want to get in touch via the Locked On Patriots phone line, 240-670-6016 is that line. We'd love to hear from you there.

We'd love to hear from you before we go to Sunday. We'll have our Sunday morning tailgate show. Also, a little bit later, I do have one question that I got from a listener, Reluctant Trade. Always love to hear from Reluctant Trade. He has a great question, which I'm going to get to in our third segment. But first, let's sort of set expectations for Sunday, sort of set the mind frame of not Patriots fans, but more football fans and football minds sort of league-wide. And how I want to sort of start that is this way.

I put out a poll on Twitter, one for the AFC, one for the NFC, to sort of gauge how people felt about the quarterbacks that are left in the dance. And I'll start with the NFC because this one sort of blew my mind. Now, numbers could change, numbers could move. Not all precincts have reported yet, so to speak. But as of right now, with 87% of the vote, Drew Brees is the quarterback that at least the respondents to this poll are the most confident in. That's followed by Nick Foles with 8%, Dak Prescott with 4%,

and Jared Goff with just 1%. Now, that sort of rank and that sort of spread, I can understand it. Brees won, Foles 2, Prescott 3, Goff four. I mean, Drew Brees has won a Super Bowl. Nick Foles won a Super Bowl last year. You know, Dak Prescott just won a playoff game. Jared Goff has yet to sort of prove himself in the postseason. So the rankings, I'm okay with. The blowout margin of victory for Brees, I'm really surprised at. And I understand why people, again, I get the rankings, but the margin of victory, running it up, and what are bound to be some non-Saints districts or precincts or states or however you want to make sort of an electoral comparison here, that sort of stunned me. And I'm actually, part of the reason I put this poll out there

is because I'm working on a piece, sort of my quarterback confidence rankings going into this weekend that's going to be up over at Big Blue View by the time maybe you listen to the show. So I was curious to sort of get public perception on that. Now let's flip to the AFC. And this one, I will say say completely stunned me now numbers could move again but as I'm recording this right now we've got just under 700 votes on this again not super

scientific but in fourth place right now in the AFC is Phillip Rivers with just 7% of the vote. Currently tied with 29% of the vote each, Patrick Mahomes, who I thought, and he might get a bump because, look, the Locked on Chiefs guys just retweeted this, so you might see this number move by the time you listen to this show. But for right now, Mahomes is tied at 29% with Tom Brady, meaning the quarterback that, as of this moment, responding to this poll, are most comfortable and most confident in in the AFC is Andrew Luck,

which I will admit, that stunned me. And I get that, look, there might be some recency bias at play here luck won a playoff game last week technically won one in week 17 when they had that winning get in situation against the tennessee titans but to see luck with 35 percent of this vote is a bit shocking brady at 29 tied with Mahomes, interested in the sense that, look, I think Brady in any sort of poll like this, any sort of confidence list or article or whatever,

is going to get some of the, he's Tom Brady. Whatever you want to say about how he's played at times this year, it's Tom Brady and can you really, really bet against him in the playoffs? And so I thought that was interesting. I thought I would sort of share that around. The other thing, of course, look, you know, you see guys like Ron Parker, for example, put together their, you know, list of teams that they're confident in. And you see the Chargers 1, Patriots 8,

and I think that's a little questionable. But it's clear that maybe the public is not as confident in the New England Patriots as Patriots fans might be. And if you want another example of that, look towards the West. Look at Vegas right now. And again, this is with the spread at play. And the Chargers have been great on the road against the spread this year. But of all the potential bets out there right now,

the one that the public is most in on is the Chargers. 61% or 62%, depending on where you're looking of public money is on the Chargers right now, and that line has barely moved. You might see it move a little bit, but still, public seems to be pretty confident in the Chargers. 61% of money on them, 58% with the Colts, 57% with the Cowboys, 55% with the Eagles. So public money

seems to be on the underdogs in these games, but let's not forget Chiefs are favored by six. Rams, they're favored by seven and a half. Saints are favored by 10. So some of those, you're looking at two score games, which might explain some of the public money there. Patriots favored by four. So you put all of these different little data points together and it points to you, points you in the direction that public doesn't seem to be that confident in New England,

at least right now. Now that could change. We'll talk about how it could potentially change up next on this game day edition of Locked on Patriots. Mark Schofield back with you now on this Friday game day edition of the Locked on Patriots podcast. And let's talk what I'm looking for,

what I'm going to be watching for on Sunday when these two teams kick it off. And we're going to start on the Patriots offense and snap counts. Not the cadence or anything like that. Snap counts specifically with James White. And we're going to talk, obviously, in a moment about what the Chargers do from a pressure perspective. I spent basically an entire show on that Wednesday. I don't want to dive into that again too much

and rehash what we were talking about on Wednesday. I'd invite you to go back and listen to Wednesday's show. I enjoyed putting that one together. And also check out the piece I did on it over at insidethepylon.com. James White snap counts as a percentage of offensive plays. His four highest totals this year as a percentage of the Patriots' offensive plays

were their game against Tennessee, 63.6 percent. Their game against Chicago, 70.3. Their game against Green Bay, 78.9. And their game against Buffalo, that first game against Buffalo, 80.3. Three of those four games they won. Every time he saw 70 or more percent of the Patriots' offensive snaps, they won. His bottom four? Week 16 against Buffalo, 38.7%. Week 17 against the Jets, 39.7%. Week 14 against Miami, 40.7,

and week 15 against the Steelers, 41.9. Now, two things stand out. One, they lost two of those games. So they were 2-2 in games in which he saw 41.9 or fewer percent of the Patriots' offensive snaps. The other thing, they're the four most recent games. So which is it going to be? Now, if it were me, I want to see James White out there as much as possible.

Why? I trust him in pass protection right now, and I think it gives him a little bit more of an ability to sort of spread the field. Spread the field. Don't condense the field. If they want to rush four, fine, but now you've got, you know, you go empty or you go three by one, two by two, whatever. You get Brady in the shotgun.

It gives them a better chance to see the field. Spread out that defense a little bit. If they want to sit there, rush four, drop seven, and play cover three, fine. You spread the field. You give Brady some bigger throwing lanes against that cover three look. But as I've said before on this show and others, trying to guess what the Patriots, Bill Belichick, Josh McDaniels, do from a usage perspective, from an active versus inactive perspective,

from a game plan perspective, is often fool's gold. It's often a fool's errand because they will come at you in a different way. They may say, look, you know, those earlier games where he was seeing a ton of reps, Sonny Michel was a little dinged up. That's not the offense we are right now. The offense we are is a little bit more ball control, a little bit more run game. And that's why the four most recent games has been his lowest percentage of usage in the season. Or it could have been

pitch count type situation like we saw last year with Amendola. They're trusting him in the playoffs. They're going to get him on a pitch count at the end of the regular season to make sure he's 100% ready to go come playoff time. Who knows? That's why, no matter what, I'm curious to see that. I also want to see, obviously, protection. Can they protect Tom Brady? We know, we know how they get after the quarterback. They do it with four, sometimes with five. They'll move Melvin Ingram around. I think whatever they come out over the football on offense, the first thing you got to do is identify where 54 is on the field. That's what you've got to do first.

And then you go from there. You go through your regular identification process, the mic and things like that, who you're setting the protection against. And that might be a number in the 30s because they've been playing a lot with those defensive back packages because they've got guys banged up. However they set the protections, they've got to protect Brady. They come after you with four, they come after you with five, and they can still get pressure that way.

Yeah, the sack totals for them as a team aren't off the charts. It's middle of the pack or even below average. But the way they get home with just four, the majority of the time, 27 of the 39 regular season sacks came with four, that has to be a cause for concern. And so they need to protect Tom Brady. I want to see how they handle protection situations. Finally, when they have the football and they look to throw, cover three beaters. We talked about it a ton on the show over the last year and a half or so that I've been hosting it.

The cover three beaters, your post wheels, your Mills concepts, your exit enter concepts, things like that. Ways to attack cover three. So if they want to sit there, rush four, drop seven, play cover three, I want to spread them out. I want to attack those corners. If you want to drop Desmond Kinn into a you know an outside zone okay that's what he's best suited to do he's a zone corner and he's good at it but you've got to have ways to attack him you've got to have ways to high low him you've got to have ways to run him off

and run somebody back into that zone behind him you've got to be able to get Robert Gronkowski working up those seams nothing will make me happier than Brady getting the ball out in 1.7 seconds to Gronk on a seam 10 yards down the field. I will take that every single day, every single snap, every single drive. So I want to see that.

And obviously, as we're going to talk about in a second, the weather might be an issue. If it is, can they get the ground game going? Can they use tempo as well? Can they do some things to sort of soften up that defensive front get them a little winded get them a little tired get the ground game going a bit it doesn't have to be established you don't have to really rely on it but if the weather conditions do turn bad it'd be a nice thing to have a nice little club to have in the back when When the Patriots are on defense, one thing I want to see how they handle Keenan Allen, Mike Williams,

Tyrell Williams, and those wide receivers. Is it going to be a Stephon Gilmore traveling with somebody? If so, who is he going to travel with? That's something to consider. When you're looking at these Chargers wide receivers, you might think, well, Keenan Allen's probably their best guy.

Might not be the case that Gilmore would travel with him this year if he travels with anybody because you look at Keenan Allen you know size wise it might make sense but he's a guy that wins as we talked about this week more with quickness and stuff like that is that the best match up for Stephon Gilmore or do you look at a Mike Williams and say, look, Mike Williams, 6'4", bigger, longer guy, not a quick guy, more of a vertical guy, downfield type guy. We're going to put Stephon Gilmore on him and then have J.C. Jackson with safety help against Keenan Allen.

The thought right now of entering a divisional round game with putting J.C. Jackson on Keenan Allen is something that would not have crossed our minds, say, back in, you know, September, October, even, frankly, November. But we might see that, or we might see them say, look, you know, we're not going to travel. We kind of like the matchups. We kind of like the way things pan out. So we're going to just kind of play it straight up. I'm curious to see how they handle that stuff in the secondary. Can they get pressure on Rivers?

And they don't need to get home. This is one of those games where I think pressure equals production. I don't care about sack numbers. I don't care about sack totals. They're nice. But what I've seen from Rivers over the past couple of weeks is this. Pressure has influenced some poor throws and led to some turnovers. So if Trey Flowers and company don't get home but pressure them and influence some bad throws,

I'm completely fine with that. I'm over the moon with that because I think that's a way to sort of get some turnovers. Special teams. I think this is one of those games that one big special teams play might not make the entire difference but might go a long way towards determining

who emerges victorious. And frankly, the Chargers seem to feel the same way. They just signed a kicker and made a kicker active just for kickoffs this week because they're worried about Patterson, what he can do in the return game. And so that tells you that the Chargers are thinking the same way. And so that's going to be something to watch as well. And then finally, look, weather. What is it going to be?

We've spent some time talking about it this week. I can tell you that sort of poking around the weather threads here and elsewhere on that American Weather WX site. It doesn't seem like there's going to be a sort of massive snow type event in Foxborough, you know, come game time. But what might we see? What might we see from a weather perspective? I mean, right now, looking at the weather channel, Sunday, 29 of a high, 17 is the low, no precipitation, wind out of the north, 6 miles per hour. That's right now. It could change, but it's looking like this weather event that is coming, you know, towards the east coast is going to sort of stay south.

You know, by juxtaposition, you know, the weather where I am right now in Chevy Chase, Maryland, we had a little bit of a freak snow flurry, looked up pretty white out conditions on Wednesday. And as for this weekend, afternoon snow showers on Saturday, coming into morning snow showers on Sunday. We're looking at accumulation probably an inch or so, but this is something that's sort of staying south of New England. And so the hopes of, oh, this might be a weather game, it might be a situation where it's going to be snow, rain, ice, slow up that pass rush, maybe not.

But it's going to be cold, and we talked about cold earlier this week. So that's kind of what I'm going to be watching this weekend as we get into Sunday. Those are the things I'm going to be watching on the field, off the field, all sorts of fun, fun stuff. And no matter what happens, I will be back Sunday night to break it all down, hopefully with a glorious victory edition episode of the Locked on Patriots podcast. Up next, I'm going to close this out looking around the league where you're going to make some picks.

I'm also going to handle my one-take Friday question from Reluctant Trade, one of our great listeners, to the Locked on Patriots podcast. That's next. Mark Schofield back with you now. And to show you how quickly things can turn around when it comes to a poll, before we dive into the one question I want to get to

as well as my predictions for this weekend, on that question, the confidence question about the quarterbacks and which AFC quarterback you are most confident in right now, currently we've got a huge chunk of votes in from the Kansas City region because right now it's Patrick Mahomes at 37%, Andrew Luck at 31%, Tom Brady at 25%. We've got like 330 votes just in the like 10 minutes since I started recording the show. So numbers are moving.

We did get one Take Thursday question in, which is now getting rolled over to Take Fridays from our great friend Reluctant Trade. He said, basically, putting your biases aside, which one team remaining would you like to be the head coach of? And it's a fascinating question. And I will take the New England Patriots and set them to the side. And I think looking at the sort of landscape of the National Football League right now, I would want to be a coach of a team that has a young rookie quarterback on his rookie deal. Why?

The competitive advantage it gives you. We've talked about it a ton. And so you're looking at maybe the Bears and the Rams in the AFC. I mean, excuse me, the NFC. Yes, maybe the Eagles. Maybe I take them over and just run them into the ground because I'm still bitter about last year. I'm just kidding. I wouldn't do that. I mean, coaching Mahomes would be fun. I loved him coming out of college. Look at the AFC. Watson, although he's going to be paid soon. Mahomes, certainly interesting there. And so I think there are some coaches, some coaching spots that you could look at and say, man, you could do some work there. And I think, honestly, if I can't be coaching the Patriots and Tom Brady, I'd be coaching

Patrick Mahomes and Kansas City Chiefs because you look at the talent they have on the offensive side of the football, you can do so much fun stuff. And as an offensive minded guy, former quarterback, the chance to be running that kind of offense, coaching Patrick Mahomes, that's one I don't want to pass up. Let's get to some picks here. And look, again, I was 0 for 4 last week. So maybe I should just do some reverse jank stuff and pick against, but I'm not going to do that, even when it comes to the Patriots' charges. And we are going to go super chalky this week. All the home teams, all the higher seeds, that's how we're going. Kansas City and the Colts, look, I know that there's some growing sentiment about what the Colts can do. Here's something you've got to remember.

The Colts, again, play the most zone defense in the league. 59% of their snaps came with zone coverage called. The bulk of that, cover two. What does cover two have? Three predominant weak spots. Deep outsides, deep in the middle between the safeties. Those are the sort of soft spots. What do you need to attack those areas?

Vertical receivers along the boundary and a tight end that can split those safeties. Do the Kansas City Chiefs have anybody on their roster that might fill one or both of those roles? They certainly do. I think the Chiefs roll in this one. Now, again, I could be wrong. And if I am, you know I will own up to it in our Sunday morning tailgate show. But I look at the Rams and I look at the Cowboys. I think the Cowboys' defense is good, particularly if you try to stubbornly run the ball against them. Do I think Sean McVay does that?

I don't think so. I think the Rams win this one. You heard my prediction about the Patriots-Chargers games. I think it's 23-20. I think the Patriots win it, but it's going to be close. We're going to have a little bit of agita around 3.30 or so Sunday afternoon, waiting this one out, but I think the Patriots win it. And finally, the Saints, the Eagles, that rematch from Week 11. Does Jim Schwartz try to use a double-double team look on Michael Thomas, Alvin Kamara, as he did in week 11? I don't think so. He'd be crazy to do so because the Saints hunt 41 on his defense. Either way, I think the Foles magic runs out. I think the

Saints advance to the NFC Championship game, which would set up one versus two in each conference. You'd have Patriots at Chiefs, and then you'd have Rams at Saints. Are they the four best teams in the league? Maybe, maybe not, but I think at one point or another, you could say that these were the four of the people we're looking to to be your final four. I think that's how it ends up. Will we see that? That remains to be seen, but I will be back here Sunday morning breaking down the first two games, you know, the Kansas City-Indianapolis game, and then that Rams-Cowboys game. And I'll also sort of reset the

stage. Maybe we do see a freak weather event coming our way. Either way, I'll be able to talk about it on Sunday morning. So until then, enjoy the game Saturday, everybody, and keep it locked right here to me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on Patriots. Patriots. Peace.