Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots January 15, 2018 - Divisional Round Recap and Jacksonville Early Look

Episode Date: January 15, 2018

Mark Schofield recaps the rest of the action in the Divisional Round and has early thoughts on facing the Jacksonville Jaguars on both sides of the football.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Good evening and welcome on into Locked On Patriots for Sunday night, January 14th, 2018. Mark Schofield here in the big chair as I am five, sometimes six days a week, bringing you everything you need to get ready for your upcoming New England Patriots action. Reminder, you can follow me on Twitter at Mark Schofield. Follow the work over at InsideThePylon.com. Believer Report, the NFL 1000 Project, LockedOnPatriots.com as well. Some interesting videos posted recently. Some QB stuff over at the YouTube page for InsideThePylon.com.

You can check that out over at YouTube.com backslash InsideThePylon. You might be listening to the show on Monday, January 15th, Martin Luther King Day in the United States. I hope you do take some time on Monday and reflect on the life, the lessons, and the teaching and the words of Martin Luther King and his legacy. I hope you take some time to reflect on that. What we're going to do today first, we're going to recap the other three games from Divisional Round weekend.

And there's a reason that people sometimes point to the Divisional Round games, myself included, as the best weekend in football. And for what we covered on last night's show, obviously the Patriots-Titans game, not a lot of excitement to it. The other three games, however, lots of excitement to go around. So we're going to start whipping through those three games. Then we're going to start getting ready on what I'm already looking forward to seeing next Sunday afternoon when the Patriots host the Jacksonville Jaguars in the AFC Championship game.

Got some notes from watching their game against the Pittsburgh Steelers. But first, let's start early Saturday afternoon. The game that sort of kicked things off between the Eagles and the Atlanta Falcons. The Falcons coming in as the sixth seed. The team that had come in after a win on the road against the Los Angeles Rams. And as you all know by now, 15-10. The Eagles, the underdogs in the game. They come out with the victory. And I think there are a couple of takeaways from this game. Obviously, one, questions about what the Eagles would look like after Carson Wentz. We saw Nick Foles in his first start, let up the New York Giants for four

touchdowns, but shaky since that. Now, he spoke to Mike Tirico in an interview during the week, and he said, look, they came back and beat the Raiders, even though he played poorly, and he thought that was his favorite game in his career interesting comments from foals but he comes out and completes 23 of 30 for 246 and more importantly no interceptions you know that's probably what they want to see from foals going forward and he had perhaps one of the biggest plays of the game was a fumble recovery on a on a play early in the game. They were on the goal line. The ball was just sitting there on the turf. Foles dives on it, sets up a fourth and goal touchdown run.

Gutsy call there from Doug Peterson, but that's what they've been doing all year. Eagles have been aggressive all year long. They go forward on fourth down there. They get a touchdown. This play really comes down to, at the end though, and I'm sure Atlanta fans and Atlanta players

maybe might even be wondering this themselves. The sequence events in the final moments there because Eagles kick a field goal to go up 15-10. Under six minutes remaining when Atlanta gets the ball back. They

end up in a first and goal situation at the nine yard line and some of the play call in there just was not what people might expect including a shovel pass toward which i don't think people wanted to see in that situation and finally the fourth down play where you know you roll out to the one side of the other of the field you'd like to at least do it from the opposite hash mark to have a little bit more room. But here, they're on the right hash. They roll out that way anyway. It just condenses the field. It closes everything down. Ryan seemed to just basically lock on to Julio Jones, who was pushed, it seemed like, but might have been within five yards. It wasn't called. Jalen Mills on the coverage there.

Ryan ends up late in the play. Lofton one towards Julio Jones, who doesn't make the catch. Even if he did, I don't think he comes down inbounds with it. And the Eagles move on to the NFC Championship game. Who would they host? Well, that was decided late Sunday night. But before we get into that game, just a reminder, check out our friends over at Locked On Eagles.

Michael Kist, Benjamin Solak, you might want to give those guys a listen this week. They will have this game covered from end to end. And let's get to that Viking Saints game because there's a ton you could probably talk about here. But it's hard to cover anything beyond skipping right to the end, right? Tim Kirchhen, who covers baseball, has for years for ESPN, has often said that you go to a baseball game, you will see something for the first time. You will see something that you have never seen before. Well, I've felt the same way about football for a while, too. And I've been in this game, in this sport, whether playing it, following it as a fan, following it now professionally for over 30 years.

I don't think I've seen an ending like this in my lifetime outside of maybe a video game. Minnesota looked like they had absolutely no way to pull this game out. You know, they're done. They're done. It's a third and ten with ten seconds left or so. They're out of timeouts. They're on their own 39-yard line. They somehow need to get 25 yards or so, maybe more, to kick a field goal.

But, you know, you're looking at a situation where middle of the field is probably close to you. Although on the previous play, the second and 10 play, Keenum had somebody wide open over the middle. He was pressured by Sheldon Rankins, but he had somebody wide open in the middle. You know, you had a little bit more time there to possibly complete that, get up, spike it, and kick a field goal. He was pressured by Sheldon Rankins, but he had somebody wide open in the middle. You had a little bit more time there to possibly complete that, get up, spike it, and kick a field goal, but now with just 10 seconds left, trying to complete something over the middle,

getting everybody up there and spiking the ball with 10 seconds to go on the clock running, probably not going to happen, so you need to attack the boundary. Saints, they were covering the boundary. But Williams, the rookie safety, Marcus Williams, breaks on a throw in the direction of Stephon Diggs. And if you watch the replays, literally closed his eyes when he went for either the ball or the tackle. It's still not quite clear what he was doing.

Diggs comes down with the reception and I, like probably most of you, instantly thought you got to get out of bounds. But then it hits you that there's nobody back there. And Diggs takes it the distance and just a stunning finish all around. And then by rule, once the play was confirmed via replay, the rules require that you have to kick the extra point or at least line up for the extra point try and snap the football. So they had to pull Saints out of the locker room. You had guys like Austin Carr, Thomas Morrissette,

the punter who was playing with broken ribs. He broke ribs during this game. He said it only hurt when he punt. He has to come out of the locker room and line up. So he had just absolutely demoralized Saints players having to come out back onto the field. An incredible moment there where Case Keenum leads the Saints fans in the skull chant. Sports can be magical. Sports can provide you with moments that just are everlasting. And I think anybody who was at that game, who was watching that game, let me tell you, I don't know exactly off the top of my head

the capacity at that stadium. But let me tell you this. U.S. Bank Stadium, capacity of 66 655 five years from now three or four million people will say they were at that game that's what kind of moment it was sports can provide those kind of moments and whether you were just watching it on tv whether you were there whether you were scrolling on twitter and saw the timeline exploded. My friend Jeff Risden's down for the Shrine game. He was at a bar, and so the place just erupted. It was just one of those moments.

But so many things had to happen to build into that. You had Sean Payton challenging everything under the sun and wasting two timeouts there. You had a third-and- one situation for the Saints where they decide that we're going to throw a wheel route to Alvin Kamara and we're going to have Willie Sneed throw it. You had Case Keenum making the one mistake. This is something I've been talking about a ton with Keenum coming into the playoffs into this week. Arif Hasan, who covers the Vikings for zone coverage and does like 15 million podcasts on the Vikings. You should follow him on Twitter at Arif Hassan NFL.

He had written a piece basically saying Case Keenum could be a liability in the playoffs. He threw the bad interception that really allowed the Saints to get back in it. Then you have the breeze touchdown pass to Kamara, a back and forth game in the closing seconds. And to have it end that way,'s just a just a fantastic moment of sports so the vikings they move on they'll head to philadelphia next for next sunday night's nfc championship game now finally we're going to talk about what happened early sunday and that was the jacksonville jaguars were three seed in the afc making the trip to pittsburgh to take on the

pittsburgh steelers and coming into this game everybody said you know coming into the playoffs three seed in the AFC, making the trip to Pittsburgh to take on the Pittsburgh Steelers. And coming into this game, everybody said, you know, coming into the playoffs actually, it's just setting up for another rematch between the Patriots and the Steelers. Well, somebody forgot to tell the Jacksonville Jaguars because the Jaguars came out and from the, basically the opening drive of this game, you game, they just really sort of punched the Steelers right in the mouth from the jump and never really let up. And they go on 45-42 victory. Obviously, we'll talk about this probably more throughout the week,

starting tonight as well, but turnovers were a factor in this game. Steelers turn the ball over twice. You get an early interception thrown by Roethlisberger. Roethlisberger also gets strip sacked for a scoop and score situation. 14 points directly off turnovers. Roethlisberger still, though, completes 37-58, 469, five touchdowns with one interception. So for the big sort of Jaguars defense, the historically good pass defense, there were still plays to be made against them through the air. Antonio Brown doing Antonio Brown things.

My goodness. Didn't seem like that calf was bothering him. Two incredible touchdown receptions from him. But some curious decisions as well from Mike Tomlin, from Todd Haley, from perhaps even Ben Roethlisberger himself. Steelers had two fourth down and one plays. On both, they were stopped. The first time came earlier in the game. They tried a toss play, which gets stopped. Turnover on downs. Later in the game, they don't even run the ball this time. They try a deep crossing route to Jujo Smith-Schuster, who may have been held.

Yes, he might have been held on that play. But here's the thing. On both of those plays, it seemed like Roethlisberger was given two plays and the freedom to sort of decide at the line what they wanted to run because he made some pre-snap adjustments on both plays. But after the game, look, he was asked, you know, why didn't they sneak it? And he basically said, it's over his head.

It was a decision made over his head. And Alex Cazorra, friend of the show, he's been on Locked on Patriots with me before, you know, writes over for Steelers Depot and he basically said, look, Roethlisberger in his career, on 4th and 1 Russian attempts, 19 attempts, 18 first downs. Highest success rate, 94.7% of any player with over 10 attempts since 2004, including the playoffs. And yes,

given the audience, I will say even better than Tom Brady. He was widely regarded as the league's best at the sneak. But for whatever reason, Haley, Roethlisberger, however that sort of play call determination went, the sneak was off the table. They overthought both of those situations and it came back to hurt them. Other than it came back to hurt them, the decision to sort of kick the onside kick when they did. I did not agree with it at the time. And of course, the poor execution makes it look even worse. Because you get a touchdown to make it a seven-point game. And what was important about when they scored, they scored right before the two-minute warning.

They had two timeouts left. So they basically, whatever they did on the ensuing kickoff, they had three stoppages left. They had the two-minute warning and two timeouts left. I think even though this Steelers defense has struggled at times to stop Jacksonville, which is a crazy thing to say, but here we are, I think you still kick it deep and you take your chance because you have those three chances to stop the clock. Instead, what do they do? they try the onside kick it's botched horribly you get an illegal touch-in penalty as well and basically the Jaguars start the

drive pretty much in field goal range and they manage only nine yards on three rushing attempts they kick the field goal and it's now back to a ten-point game and then clock management at the end of the game as well from Pittsburgh. They get basically into field goal range with 45 seconds left, first and goal at the 5. At some point, teams are going to realize that the thing to do there is to just kick the field goal, get the points now, because you're relying on an onside kick,

and you're going to need time to score a touchdown. Just kick the field goal. Get the points now because you're relying on an onside kick and you're going to need time to score a touchdown. Just kick the field goal. But Steelers don't do it. They end up scoring on basically the final play of the game. So it looks nicer on paper, 45-42. But hats off to the Jacksonville Jaguars who will be making the trip to Foxborough for the AFC Championship game. And up next, I'm going gonna go through some of what I saw from both the Jacksonville defense and the Jacksonville offense as we start thinking about what this AFC Championship game is gonna look like that's ahead with me Mark Schofield and locked on Patriots okay let's start diving into this Jacksonville team right

now and obviously we're already looking ahead to the AFC Championship game Patriots have been installed as early nine point favorites in this game i tend to think that number is gonna come down a little bit i think we might see some some people sort of wondering about what jacksonville can do and how well they can play given how they played against the pittsburgh steelers but some of the things that i saw from this Jacksonville offense, first of all, on a more sort of global perspective, I think Matt Patricia's job is somewhat easy, or a little bit easier, facing sort of Titans and Jacksonville in back-to-back weeks than it would be Titans and Steelers, even though you've already played the Steelers this year. But I think the game plan is going to be relatively similar facing these two teams back-to-back, Tennessee and Jacksonville.

And one thing, obviously early on this game, great early opening script from Jacksonville in their offense. They did some stuff in play action. They had some play action boots to Ben Koyak on their opening drive. Play action dig to Lee on Bortles' second pass in an attempt at the game. A wide flat concept to O'Shaughnessy. So they did a lot of stuff early off of play action because everybody expects, you know,

Blake Bortles, questions about him, coming in on the road, you're going to come out and run the ball. What did they do? They're running on the first play and then did some play action stuff early. And they ended that drive on a fourth and one inside the one-yard line,

and they go for it. Fournette with a touchdown. Actually, it was more like on a 2, but Fournette sort of diving over the top for the touchdown. They're going to be aggressive. That's what's cutting them there, similar to the Eagles, what we talked about. So play action is going to be key.

Also, I made a note of it on Twitter during the game. It seemed like particularly in those second and long, second and 8, second and 9 type situations, Steelers started sort of selling out on the run. I was wondering if Jacksonville would sort of be aggressive enough, be bold enough to dial up a deep shot off of those. Well, they did it. They hit Cole on a big throw in the fourth quarter. And their final touchdown of the game, they came on a second and long. It was inside the red zone, but it was still a second and long

play where they had Bohannon in the fullback. He makes it look like he's going to be a lead blocker. Stutters at the second level by the linebackers and then releases up the seam. Play action stuff is going to be critical. New England is going to have to be disciplined. Even though you know they're going to want to sell out

and stop the run and stop Fournette. That's job one. Still have to be disciplined, particularly in the secondary. So play-action stuff is going to be big. Talking about Bortles here, he is going to make a mistake or two. It's just a matter of can you capitalize him. He might do some silly things. There was a play on their third drive where he's pressured. He's about to get sacked and just kind of flip the ball a couple of feet forward in the general direction of Leonard

Fournette. Jaguars were lucky that that just went as an incompletion, but it's those ball control type things that can sometimes burn you as a quarterback. I'm having flashbacks and starting to break out into a cold sweat because I'm remembering a practice, my junior year, a Wednesday practice in the week leading up to playing Hamilton. I was going to be starting that week. Hamilton running a lot of zone blitz stuff. Coaches were really sort of preaching ball control. They were preaching it the entire week because in the game, the Saturday prior against Tufts, I was running around, swinging the ball all over the place. Wasn't really tucking it away. They thought about actually giving me a ball to walk around campus with,

but they just had me carry a ball all the time near the practice field. But at the end of a play in practice, the play was blown dead with a whistle, and I just jokingly flipped the ball to one of my running backs, and the coaches went ballistic. It was after the play was dead, but still, they just wanted to stress it that much. You have to take care of the

football. And it sounds silly, but that's what Bortles did on this play, and he got away with it, but he's prone to do things like that. So the Patriots, if they can force a turnover on something like that, it's a chance to really sort of get on top of Jacksonville. Stick concept. If it's third and five or four or maybe even six and jacksonville looks to throw stick concept is what they like to run it's a three receiver concept to the right side of the formation or the left side either way but you have three receivers outside receiver goes vertically middle receiver runs an out route inside receiver has that little option where he can like curl at five yards or if he feels man coverage he goes to five yards then it breaks outside that's a stick

concept they had multiple third and four third and five type plays and that's what they ran so you have to be ready for that on third down here's where i want to sort of get into this similarity from a game plan and perspective for matt patricia as to last week. Bortles is a threat with his legs. Maybe not as athletic as Marcus Mariota, but he can still make you pay if you don't spy him, if you lose track of him, if you go man coverage at third and long type situations and everybody has their back to the pocket, back to the quarterback.

He can beat you with his legs. So it might be a situation where we see more zone looks or we see spy looks at times because the last thing you want to do is have a third and eighth situation and you're looking to make Blake Bortles beat you from the pocket and he extends and beats you with his legs. It's a lot like we talked about with Marcus Mariota. So similar from a game plan and perspective.

Stop the run, contain Bortles in his legs, make him beat you from the pocket. He can do it, but that's the much tougher road for Jacksonville, so to speak, is putting it all on Blake Bortles' shoulders. Leonard Fournette missed a couple of series with the ankle injury. His spin move is something to watch. If you're a defender, if you're looking to tackle, he's going to look to spin at this you know at first contact there are times when he's gonna look to it that's his go-to moves you have to be ready for that and you know Bortles did make some

plays in this game there will be times when he can make reads from the pocket but Jacksonville's mo that what they want to do is sort of establish the run, keep his throws to a minimum, and sort of win the game with their defense, which is great, with the play-action game, which they can get going. They'll take some deep shots. But those are sort of the things that stuck out to me watching this Jacksonville offense.

Up ahead, we're going to talk about this Jacksonville defense. That's probably the toughest, easily, the toughest part of this team. Patriots, Josh McDaniels, Tom Brady, they're going to have to be at the top of their game to put points on the board against this Jacksonville defense. And that's ahead with me, Mark Schofield, in Locked on Patriots. Okay, let's take a quick look now at some of the stuff I noted from this Jacksonville defense, and the main thing that I noted, I'm looking back at my notes from this game right now, and it's written in here almost two dozen times.

You cannot run east-west against Jacksonville. You just can't do it. Can't do it. Period. Full stop. Don't even try. Don't even think about it. It's pointless.

That defense is too fast up front. They are too fast at the second level. You cannot run slow developing plays, toss plays, outside zone plays, stretch plays. You can give it a couple of cracks at it, but then just take that section of the playbook and just tear it up. Just tear it up. It's just not going to work. You've got to get north-south on these guys. You've got to get between the tackles. And it sets up rather interestingly for the New England Patriots in the running game because as we've seen the development of Deion Lewis as a first and second down back as opposed to a third down scat back type guy, they can run him between the tackles. They can run him maybe off tackle. They can run him inside. And so they can do that stuff. But if you start trying to stretch plays

out against them, Jacksonville is just too fast up front. That first fourth and one play where they tried to run toss, you can't do it. Those guys are too quick up front. But things like inside zone, power schemes, even inside draw type plays, those plays will be there. And so guys like David Andrews, Shaq Mason, Joe Thune, they're going to be critical to the run game because you've got to sort of get it on the interior against this defense. Relying on quickness to the edges is not the way to go. So New England's got to get the north and south run game going.

That's job one. Their cornerbacks are tremendous. I mean, Antonio Brown had two touchdown catches on both of those. AJ Boye was in perfect, and I mean perfect, position. It just required perfect throws and perfect superhuman catches from Antonio Brown to get those plays in. And they don't really travel too much. What I mean by that is, if Jacksonville's looking at this and they think, oh, Brandon Cooks is the guy we want to shut down, they're not going to just stick one guy on him and travel him, whether it's Patrick Ramsey or,

I mean, Jalen Ramsey, excuse me, or A.J. Bouye. They're comfortable keeping Ramsey on one side of the field, Bouye on the other. If you go twins with two wide receivers only on the same side of the formation, then one guy will travel. But they're fine leaving those guys wherever they are and covering whomever. So the sort of question mark here is the Gronk factor. Is it going to be Miles Jack? Is it going to be Barry Church? Who's going to be on Gronkowski? How are they going to handle them?

Because the way I think New England makes hay in the passing game is through Gronkowski to Amendola, out of the slot, down to the running backs. Yeah, I think Hogan. I think Cooks. They're going to have a tough day of it against these two corners. They're very talented corners. Tough to get separation from them.

Takes perfect plays to make plays against those guys. This past game, I said this early in the game, and I know it sounds funny when Roethlisberger threw for five touchdown passes and put up 469 yards, but a lot of that came when you're sort of in catch-up mode. But early you could see that there aren't many easy throws against this defense. That first interception with Jack undercutting a route from the tight end, Roethlisberger maybe should have drilled that in a little bit more. He just uses just a little bit of touch on it,

and Jack's able to get under it for an interception. There are not going to be a lot of easy throws. If you get easy throws, you've got to make them count. This can't be a game where you start getting into the third quarter and you're like, oh, Brady's missed some opportunities here, and this game is close. You get opportunities against this defense. You gotta convert them.

Also, with respect to Brady, you must never hesitate to quote Captain John Mason from The Rock. You can never hesitate against this defense. You can't be double clutching in the pocket. You can't be taking too much time

to get through progressions. Ball's going to come out because this defense will get home fast. So those quick throws, the things that have been a staple of New England over the past couple of seasons, they're going to be critical on Sunday afternoon because you need to get the ball out fast. A perfect example of what I'm talking about with the potential matchup between Gronk and Barry Church was a

third down third quarter thrill from Roethlisberger to tight end Vance McDonald on Pittsburgh's opening drive of the third quarter. It was a simple out route, but McDonald was able to get Church sort of turned towards the middle of the field before breaking to the outside.

Church was slow getting his turn, had to use the sort of baseball turn, slow to get his hips around. That's from Vance McDonald. Gronkowski, I think, is a little bit of a better route runner. So I think if that's the matchup, New England should be able to make some plays to Gronkowski in those situations.

Again, what do, you know, what does Jacksonville do? What does their defense do when they see Y.I. So who's it going to be out there? Are they going to be comfortable leaving a Bouye or a Ramsey on Gronk in those situations? Or are they going to slide those guys around? That's something to watch as well. Also, with respect to what the patriots like to do motion and shifting you can catch jacksonville sort of trying to get adjusted if you use motion and shifting wise there was a play in the second half where they steelers used mesh they had a motion returns concept where they motioned a guy out and then brought him back in and it caused some confusion in the secondary

then they ran a mesh concept. Guys were open. Roethlisberger was able to make a play there. So I think there are ways to use motion and shift and sort of get this defense thinking. It's a very talented defense, but it is a younger defense. And so if you sort of do the things that the Patriots like to do, which is motion and shift and all sorts of adjustments, you get that defense thinking a lot pre-snap,

they'll be able to find ways to scheme the matchups that they want. That's what the Patriots love to do. It will give Brady the advantage to sort of find pre-snap where he wants to go with the ball. And hopefully the look is there and he can get the ball out quickly. As we've been talking about, that's going to be a premium. Steelers like to involve the tight end. They used McDonald a lot on screens, even on

shovel pass plays. I don't know if the Patriots are going to dial up any sort of tight end shovels, but the Steelers used that a couple of times. It might be another way to sort of attack this defense sort of north to south. You show that stretch play, then bring tight end shovel underneath to the interior. Just something to think about. Finally, is Gronkowski a better blocker than the Steelers had at the tight end position? Because there was a third and one play in the fourth quarter, I believe, where McDonald was tasked with blocking Calais Campbell. Couldn't do it. Campbell makes the stop on 31.

And I believe the Steelers ended up punting on that play. So some differences there, but I still think that there are opportunities for the Patriots to make hay against this Jacksonville defense. It's just not going to be any sort of cakewalk at all. This is an incredibly talented, fast defense. There are ways to attack them. I think there are different routes you can take. Run of the ball on the inside, first of all. In the pass game, I think you've got to get the running backs involved. Amendola out of the slot.

Gronkowski, of course. Those are your best options to begin with. And then doing motion and shifting and scheme stuff to get matchups that you want. So this game can be won, of course. But it's not going to be a cakewalk. And that early nine-point line looks a little bit big to me. But we're going to keep rolling through this game throughout the week. We're going to do some crossover stuff with the guys over at Locked On Jaguars, Zach Goodall,

Christopher Thornton. We're going to also have Mike Kay on. He covers the Jaguars. He's a beat reporter for them. We're going to have him on the show as well. We're going to do a lot of stuff here to get ready for the AFC Championship game. It's going to be a fun week here at Locked On Patriots. Hopefully the Patriots can punch their ticket to Super Bowl 52.

So a fun week ahead. And then we'll be getting into even more draft coverage as the weeks go on. But it's going to be a fun week. Can't wait to dive into it all with you here at Locked on Patriots. Until the next show, which will be a taped Tuesday show, I'll get into some more taped stuff on both Jacksonville and the Patriots.

Until then, keep it locked right here to me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on Patriots.