Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots January 13, 2019 - Sunday Morning Tailgate

Episode Date: January 13, 2019

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

Hey there, everybody. Welcome on in to a special Sunday morning tailgate installment of the Locked on Patriots podcast. Mark Schofield sliding into the big chair on this Sunday morning, January 13th, 2019. Two divisional round games down, two more yet to come today. Starting to fill in some of the pieces in what will be Championship Sunday. We know a couple of things now. Let the path to the Super Bowl through the AFC will run through Arrowhead Stadium. And we've got two of the final four pieces filled into that Championship Week puzzle.

What we're going to do today, we're going to recap what we saw in Saturday's action. We're going to sort of reset the stage to think about what Saturday perhaps told us about what championship week might look like. But before we do all of that, a reminder to follow me on Twitter at Mark Schofield. You can 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 of websites. Friends, if there's a website that is covering the game of football, chances are I'm doing some work for them. Let's sort of dive into things right now. And let's start in the AFC because it was the first game. So it's easy to do that way, sort of go chronologically. And I think this sort of AFC game gave us a couple of things to think about as we look ahead to a

potential, a potential AFC championship game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the New England Patriots. First of all, though, the Chiefs, they take care of business. 31-13 over the Indianapolis Colts. And what was interesting about the lead-up to this week was that a lot of people sort of thought that you could make a case for each of the four road teams in these divisional round games. And a lot of people started to sort of coalesce around the Indianapolis Colts. Look, they had an impressive run after starting one and five just to get to this point. They win the like Sunday

night game on the final night of the regular season to get in. They go down to Houston. They have an impressive victory over the Houston Texans. You start looking at the offense and how Andrew Luck is playing, going up against that Kansas City Chiefs defense, which has struggled at times more than that in a second. And so people started to think that, look, Luck and company, they got a good chance to go in and sort of steal one and get themselves to an AFC championship game. Any ideas that that was going to happen might have gone out the window pretty early in this game. First six possessions.

Remember last week with this same team, the Colts, in that game against Houston, I said, look, the story of this game is pretty much told in the first quarter. You had something almost similar happen with this game. Only a flip of the script. Indianapolis, they get the ball first, three plays, seven yards, a punt. What do the Chiefs do?

Five plays, 90 yards, three minutes off the clock, and a touchdown. You got Mahomes to Tyreek for 11, a penalty on Autry, who had a fascinating penalty that we'll talk about in a second. You get Damian Williams, left tackle for for four yards Mahomes to Kelsey for 16 Mahomes to Watkins for 34 plus a horse collar tackle penalty and then Damian Williams for 10 with the extra point right down the field 90 yards of five plays a touchdown Colts three plays plays, zero yards, punt. Chiefs, eight plays, 70 yards, and a touchdown. Tyreek Hale with a 36-yard touchdown run. Colts' next drive, their third possession of the game. They've run six plays so far, and they've got two-deck credit, seven yards. Well, they really

put a big drive together. Three plays, five yards, and a punt. Kansas City then responds. 15 plays, 53 yards, and a field goal. It's 17-0 early second quarter. And this game was 24-7 at the half. It could have been worse for the Colts. Could have been better too, as we'll talk about, but they get a blocked punt for a touchdown to make it 17-7. But then the Chiefs go right down the field and score. So it's 24-7. Colts actually get a drive going. They do some stuff through the air.

They go a little no huddle, a little up-tempo with Luck in a final two-minute situation. They had a chance. They had a third and one at the five. Actually, they had a second and one on the five. Luck tries to hit Molly Cox in the back left corner of the end zone. That falls incomplete, and with just three seconds left, they burn out Adam and Terry, who doinks one off the left upright.

And so that's a situation you're down 24-7 when you take over. You've got a chance to make it a 10-point game. Okay, you can't get into the end zone. You're at least going to make it a two-score game. Vinatieri misses a kick. You know, the Colts' offense struggled in this game. And the defense did some things to give them some chances. They forced a fumble.

The opening drive of the second half, you get the sack by Autry. Tacking on, unfortunately, for the Colts that unsportsmanlike conduct penalty where he gives the business to the ref, gives him a little shimmy, gets flagged for it. It was kind of funny. Probably shouldn't do it, though. But the Colts have to punt. Chiefs, you know, defense forces a punt.

Chiefs get the ball back. Colts defense forces another punt. Colts defense forced a fumble, but then Andrew Luck fumbled it right back. And so I think the Colts defense did everything they could to sort of keep themselves and their team in this game. Eventually, the Chiefs hung up 31 on them, but their offense just wasn't doing anything to help them out. And, of course, you know, the takes have started to fly on the timeline. You know, what have we learned about this game?

Did we kind of oversell Andrew Luck and how he looked? And I think what's interesting about this game is it sort of reminded me of an early season game that the Colts had in Philadelphia against the Eagles. It was cold, it was wet, it was rainy, and it was early in the season and luck seemed to lack any sort of velocity on its throws, any zip on its throws. And people, myself included, started to wonder, is this an offensive scheme thing or is this a shoulder thing? Like, was it a weather thing? Like, what was the situation?

It seemed like luck struggled to throw the football in these elements, in these conditions. It seemed like his throws lacked velocity. A lot of passes he threw were underthrown. How many throws did he make where receivers had to either reach back for the football, come back towards the ball, make an adjustment back towards the line of scrimmage? And so I think we learned a little bit about where Luck is right now. So that's one thing to set aside. This Chiefs defense did look good, certainly did their job. But how much of that was due to Luck and perhaps his struggles in these conditions

or the fact that the Chiefs defense has been pretty good this year, at least at home? You know, Chiefs watchers, Chiefs analysts, Seth Kiesel, for example, who does work for the Athletic Kansas City, he's been harping on Twitter and elsewhere that, look, yes, this Chiefs defense isn't great, but they're better at home than they are on the road. And if you look at how they've sort of done this year, the numbers kind of bear that out. I mean, you look at some of the games where the Chiefs gave up a ton of points. Obviously, we think of that Rams game where they gave up 54. That was in LA. Pat's

game where they gave up 43. That was at New England. Seahawks game where they gave up 38. That was at Seattle. But some of the games where they put together some good games on the defensive side of the ball. Jacksonville gave up 14 points. That was at home. Cincinnati gave up 10. That was at home. Arizona gave up 14. That was at home.

Oakland gave up three in the final week of the season. That was at home. Now, when you look at some of the offenses they played at home, maybe some of that goes into it. Their home games, they played San Francisco at home, and that was with Garoppolo, and they gave up 27. Jacksonville at home, we saw what that offense started to do after they won their Super Bowl against New England back in Week 2.

You know, that was at home. Cincinnati, Denver, Arizona, those were some offenses that struggled. You know, Baltimore, that was during the Lamar Jackson period. They get the Chargers at home, and they gave up 29. You know, Baltimore, that was during the Lamar Jackson period. They get the Chargers at home and they gave up 29. You know, and then Oakland at home. And now this game against Indy when luck seemed to struggle. So part of it might be they are better at home. Part of it might be the teams that they got to play at home.

You know, and next week they're going to get either a team that put 29 on them in Arrowhead back in mid-December or a team that hung 43 on them back Arrowhead back in mid-December or a team that hung 43 on them back in Week 6, albeit in New England. And so I'll be interested to watch that play out. But I do think that this game, the Chiefs' defense was probably the reason why they won this game more than anything else. Mahomes did some Mahomes-type things with the arm angles and the adjustments and the no-looks, and he's fantastic to watch.

But I think the storyline this week going into the afc championship game will be this chiefs defense up next the night game that tilt between the rams and the cowboys and a little bit later what we learned this week about the chiefs looking ahead to a potential afc championship game an airhead between the chiefs and the patriots sort of as well as some draft quarterback news that I felt, since it broke Saturday night, might as well talk to you guys about it. That's ahead on this Sunday morning tailgate edition of Locked on Patriots. Mark Sofio back with you now on this Sunday morning tailgate installment of the Locked on Patriots podcast.

And let's talk a little bit about the night game. A little NFC action between the Dallas Cowboys traveling west to take on the Los Angeles Rams. A bit of a star-studded game. You had LeBron in the house. You had Ty Burrell in the house. You had all sorts of celebrities, including Joseph Ferriola, one-time contributor to Inside the Pylon, now an NFL researcher for NFL Next Gen Stats, and Ted Wynn, also a one-time contributor to Inside the Pylon in the media box,

now with The Athletic. So you had big and small celebrities on hand to see this game. And if I had told you before kickoff or at some point this week that, look, in this Saturday night game, you were going to get a team rush 48 times for 273 yards and three touchdowns. You would have said, look, the Dallas Cowboys, they went in, they established the run with Ezekiel Elliott, and they come out victorious. Right? Right, Mark? That's what you're telling me because, look, that's the team that loves to run the ball. But what if I told you that you would be wrong? This is one of those sort of narrative busters that demonstrates that people like me and

various other people in the media that like to make predictions and think we know what we're talking about sometimes don't exactly know what we're talking about because going into this game I talked about it on the radio various shows I talked about it in a piece I wrote over at the score I said look one of the big differences in this game is going to be the fact that Sean McVay is not Brian Schottenheimer last week we saw Brian Schottenheimer kind of banged his head against the wall insist on trying to run the football against this Cowboys defense. And what happened? They lost. So I assume that, look, Sean McVay, he's going to stay aggressive.

That's who he's been all season long. They're going to throw the ball. They're going to trust Jared Goff. They're going to attack the Cowboys through the air. Instead, they established the run. They ran the ball incredibly effectively. C.J. Anderson, 23 carries for 123 yards and two touchdowns. Todd Gurley, 16 carries for 115 yards and a touchdown of his own. Gurley averaging 7.2

per carry. Anderson, 5.3 per carry. And here's another thing that they did. Now, they only ran this three times. They never scored on it. Robert Woods had one carry for nine yards. Josh Reynolds one carry for nine yards. Brandon Cooks one carry for five yards. But if you would watch this Los Angeles Rams team throughout this season, you would have seen that at times their jet motion, their jet sweep, all that kind of movement stuff that they do, it was working for them. They would use it as a decoy and get guys out of position with pre-snap movement. But around the time that they played the Lions and into that Bears game and the Eagles game, those teams decided, look, we're going to ignore this. It's just eye candy. It's misdirection.

They're just using it to get guys out of position. They never hand it off. They never throw to the guy if it's a pass and play. It's all just built in to set up other stuff. So we're just going to ignore it. And a prime example of that is if you go back to the Rams game in Chicago against the Bears, there's a Todd Gurley rush for minus four yards. It's right in that series of plays, I believe, right before the Jared Goff safety. And they use the motion. The Bears just ignore it. And so I thought that at some point,

Sean McVay is going to have to incorporate that motion, man, back into the structure of plays, whether it's these jet sweep handoffs or throw into that guy if he releases the flat, whatever. Just make defenses have to respect that. And they did that. That's going to be something to watch next week, whether they're at New Orleans or whether they're somehow able to host an NFC Championship game

against the Philadelphia Eagles. So watch that motion stuff. As for the Cowboys, look, they had a fantastic start to this game. They get a touchdown to Amari Cooper, but then the offense sputters a little bit. The run game sputtered. The guys up front for the Rams, they had some big stops in this game. Dak Prescott had some moments, had some plays in this game obviously the touchdown to amari cooper

was a bit of a laser throw there 20 of 32 for 266 but there are also some times when he struggled there's some times that he struggled with ball placement which is something that has plagued him back to his days in mississippi state and you can make the case that he outplayed Jared Goff, and maybe that's a valid point. Goff, 15 of 28 for 186, no touchdowns, no interceptions. But the Rams established the run. This was a narrative buster type of game. And if you're a fan of an NFC team that's alive, whether it's the Eagles or the Saints,

you have to look at this game and think, man, Rams can do it in a couple different ways now. And their defense played really well. Maybe not really well, but better than they had been throughout this season. You know, one of the things that people thought preseason was that, look, the talent that they are assembling on the defensive side of the ball, they are going to be a very tough defense. Well, maybe they weren't as tough as people expected throughout the year,

but they had some stops in this game that were pivotal. They stopped Dallas on a number of third and short, fourth and short. You look into the second half, they stopped them when it was a 23-15 game. They stopped them on a fourth, and I believe it was one with Ezek game, they stopped him on a fourth in. I believe it was one with Ezekiel Elliott going up the middle. And they had a stop at the end of the game,

but then there was a defensive pass interference call. It's a bit of an interesting call. I didn't think that was pass interference. I thought it might have been more of an illegal contact type penalty. But so the defense played fairly well. They established the run. They got one play at the end when they needed it from Jared Goff, a third and seven. They called a defense played fairly well. They established the run. They got one play at the end when they needed it from Jared Goff, a third and seven. They call a little design rollout,

and they didn't talk about it on the broadcast. I don't know if you noticed this, but as Jared Goff keeps and gets upfield and gets out of bounds for the first down, does a little flip to Sean McVay, which I thought was pretty cool. So congratulations to the Los Angeles Rams. They move on. They await the winner of today's game, the afternoon one, the late one, Saints-Eagles. It's going to be a rematch of a Week 11 game that saw the Saints come out on top 41-7. Hopefully, we get a little bit of a better contest in the afternoon one. Up next, we're going to talk a little big-picture stuff as well as a little bit of a draft quarterback evaluation type stuff. Just a bit of news that dropped on Saturday that you may have missed while you were watching the games.

And that's ahead on this Sunday morning tailgate edition of Locked on Patriots. Mark Schofield back with you now to sort of close out this Sunday morning tailgate installment of the Locked on Patriots podcast. And that's sort of like, just sort of reset things. Because, you know, we've got two teams in. For you Patriots fans, probably the majority of listeners to the show, you know that if the Patriots get the job done today, they're going to Arrowhead.

And so let's sort of think about where this Chiefs team is right now. Differences between the Chiefs team as it's currently constructed and the Chiefs team that these Patriots took on, played back in week six, and won a game at home against. And obviously, you could look at a couple of things. You could look at the fact that Kareem Hunt is no longer their running back. It's a Damian Williams backfield, basically. You could look at the potential of Eric Berry coming back and what that might mean to this Chiefs defense. You know, you could imagine a situation where the emotional lift of having Eric Berry and his sort of comeback story in the lineup active for an AFC championship game, the first ever at Arrowhead Stadium, you could imagine what that situation is going to be

like. Another thing to bear in mind, Patriots fans have a somewhat clear I think memory of AFC championship games on the road for one and games at Arrowhead Stadium remember back in 2014 this was the they're not good anymore game courtesy of Trent Dilfer when they went down to Arrowhead and got embarrassed on Monday night and people thought look Steve's just not that good anymore. Belichick was being asked about Brady. That was the we're on to Cincinnati game, the aftermath there. But if you watch that game, that game at Arrowhead Stadium, or if you watch that AFC Championship game at Denver,

there were times with Brian Stork when the Patriots struggled with silent counts. In both of those games, Brian Stork, when the Patriots struggled with silent counts, in both of those games, Brian Stork, their center was telegraphed from the silent count with his head bob. They did not change the sort of snap count. Basically, when teams go silent, they will use the center. And if you watch the AFC Champions game, the Colts center would turn to the side. He's turned his head to the left. And once he comes back straight ahead, the ball would be snapped. Now what the Colts did, and they got the Chiefs to sort of soften up their attempts to jump the snap count, was sometimes he would move his head one, sometimes twice, sometimes three times or more.

And they would vary it. Whereas the Patriots, in both that game against the Chiefs down in Arrowhead and then later against the Denver Broncos at mile high or Invesco Field at mile high, whatever it's called these days, Stork would not adjust the snap count at all. He was telegraphing it. And so if the Patriots do take care of business today, that's one thing where I'm going to start talking about now.

You hope that they vary the silent count because I read a very interesting tweet from Amy Trask, obviously the princess of darkness, longtime member of the Raiders staff and front office. And she basically said that, look, of all the places that she's been, whether when she was with the Raiders or later in her career now working with CBS, there is no louder place on earth than Arrowhead. And she basically said that, look, when that crowd senses

that the opposition, that the visitors are sort of reeling, it's like they smell blood on the water. It gets even louder. So the environment, Sunday night, first AFC Championship game at Arrowhead, chance for them to get to a Super Bowl, you'd know what that environment is going to be like. That's why you look back at a couple of games, like say the Miami game and that Steelers game,

and you get angry all over again, but then you remember the kind words your cardiologist told you most recently, and you start doing your breathing exercises so you don't raise that blood pressure too much. I've said too much. Doing my exercises. So the silent count will be an issue provided the Patriots get by today.

What do they have to do to get by today? Well, we've talked about that. Quick little refresher. Block. Protect Brady when they rush four, when they rush five, when they blitz with five. Watch with Dern and James. Their safety, number 33, they will bring him off the slot. They will slant the rest of the defensive front away. First things first, though, number 54, Melvin Ingram. Where is he? Find him before every single

snap. Identify the mic second, find Ingram first. Maybe that's not how they're going to do it. That's how I do it because I want to know where he's going to be aligned. If they do insist on spot drop it into cover three, like they've done for the bulk of their defensive snaps this year, as long as you get Brady protected, he can pick apart cover three. When the Chargers have the football, pressure rivers. You don't even have to get home. You don't have to sack him, influence him. Pressure can be production in this game.

There's a variety of people in the football media world, such as a pro football focus and elsewhere, that believe firmly that pressure is production. You don't have to get home, but you can still have an impact on the opposition quarterback and force them into some mistakes. That's what has happened to Phillip Rivers over the past couple of weeks. The Patriots, they get pressure on opposing passers.

You look at, for example, NFL matchup. I talk about them, that show a lot. They had some statistics out over the past couple of days. I used them for an article over at The Score. You look at teams that have pressured the most on first down by a percentage of defensive snaps, the New England Patriots, tops in the league. Teams that have gotten the most pressure on third downs, the New England Patriots, tops in the league. Teams that have gotten the most pressure on third downs, the New England Patriots, tops in the league. If they hold true to form with those numbers, I'm expecting big things from this defense and one or two interceptions or turnovers from Phillip Rivers. Finally, special teams. We know the premium. We know the importance of them. Chargers went out and got a kickoff specialist just for this game because of Patterson. They're worried about him.

It looks to be cold, clear, so we don't expect sort of a sloppy type game, but this might be one of those contests where one or two big special teams plays could mean the difference. And so that's what I'm going to be watching for, keeping my eye on. Again, I think the Patriots win this one, but I think it's going to be close.

Looking now to the draft. We get some interesting draft quarterback news during the middle of this afc divisional round game between the colts and the chiefs jim nagy executive director of the senior bowl tweeted out that they added a ninth quarterback to the roster to the roster for the south and this is interesting because when i saw that they were adding a quarterback i thought that maybe they would add somebody to the north roster because Trace McSorley, the Penn State quarterback, did have that foot injury, whether it was fractured, broken, or what, we don't know in their bowl game. So I thought maybe they would add somebody to that roster. Maybe they still might. Maybe they look at Easton Stick

and Brett Rippon during the Shrine game, and if one of them stands out, maybe they add somebody to the North squad. But they're adding somebody to the South. You know, and that's a group that's got, you know, when you look at the sort of South roster of quarterbacks, you know, that's Will Greer, Gardner Minshew, Jared Stidham, Clayton Thorson. You know, none of those guys seem to be hurt, haven't heard anything like that. And so I think they might just be added a ninth and maybe even a tenth. Regardless, that player, Tyree Jackson from the University of Buffalo. I've talked about him a little bit on this show. I talked about him, I believe, in at least one show over the summer.

Big, athletic with a strong arm, probably a bit raw, might need some development. You do wonder if he would get that in the National Football League. It was rumored that he would put his name into the transfer portal and maybe with all the guys that have been moving around, whether it's justin fields now tate martell is in there jalen hertz is in there it's like free agency timing at the college game for the quarterback position so maybe tyree jackson took a look at the landscape saw that you know justin a herbert went back to school and so he thought look mom in this draft class i probably get better odds

and finding a future home in the n than I do in the college game, given the landscape changing around these quarterbacks. So now it looks like he's going down a mobile. So that's going to be fascinating to watch, and it's going to be fascinating to watch him up close, which you know I will do and report on throughout Senior Bowl week. But first things first,

we've got two more division-round games. We've got Patriots Chargers at one. We've got Eagles Saints at four. It's going to be a fantastic day of football. And regardless of what happens with the Patriots today, I will be back later tonight, hopefully for a glorious victory edition of the Locked On Patriots podcast. But I will be here either way. Hopefully I'm not cracking into the Cape Cod Cranberry too heavily.

I don't want to have to drown the sorrows. But if I have to, I will on air with all of you. That will do it for this morning. Enjoy the games, everybody. I will be back later. Until then, keep it locked right here to me, Mark Schofield. And locked on B. Thanks for watching!