Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots January 15, 2019 - Tape Tuesday

Episode Date: January 15, 2019

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Hey there everybody, welcome on into a taped Tuesday installment of the Lockdown Patriots podcast. Mark Schofield back in the big chair for today, January 15th, 2019. Show getting out a little late today, well you can thank the weather gods for that one. Had a bit of a snow day yesterday, a little sledding, a little cleaning the neighborhood, cleaning the snow out from my driveway, some other driveways, doing the neighborly stuff. You know, that's what we do around here.

What we're going to do today, though, tape Tuesday fair, as voted on by you, the dear listeners, to the Locked On Patriots podcast. We are going to look at the New England Patriots defense in the division around game against the Los Angeles Chargers. A close second to that was taking a look back at what Indianapolis and Kansas City did on Saturday. We'll talk about that game a little bit as we get in later into the week. Also this week, we're going to have a crossover show with the guys over at Locked on Chiefs.

That will be Wednesday, Thursday. Haven't decided yet if we're going to do a take Thursday or if we're going to do a tape Thursday and look at that Chiefs. That will be Wednesday, Thursday. Haven't decided yet if we're going to do a take Thursday or if we're going to do a tape Thursday and look at that Chiefs game. And then Friday your game day edition. Sunday your Sunday morning tailgate. The usual stuff over here at Locked On Patriots. Before we do what we're going to do today, which is talk about run defense,

talk about coverages and pass rush, start to peek ahead at the Chiefs. A reminder to follow me on Twitter at Mark Schofield. Check out the work at places like InsideThePylon.com, Pro Football Weekly, The Score, Matt Waldman's Rookie Scouting Portfolio, Big Blue View, part of the SB Nation family of websites, friends as I've said. If there is an outlet that is covering football, chances are they have me doing some work for them.

Let's get into it now, and I'm going to start looking at an idea that Bill Belichick himself has advanced whether he's in sort of a press conference situation or an interview or anywhere else coaching clinic. It's the idea that you have to have a sound marriage when you're playing defensive football and that marriage between the pass rush and the coverage. You can be a good defense if you have just one, whether it's a dominant pass rush or a stout secondary. But the way to be a great defense is to marry those two. The pass rush and the coverage sort of working in concert together. That's what we saw on Sunday from the New England Patriots and it started early on their first pass attempt of the game a second and 10 on their own 33 this was the deep shot to Mike Williams

Patriots just rush four you know they drop into coverage here they drop seven and it's not like they get a ton of push on Rivers, but they do get something. They get John Simon over the right tackle, pushing the right tackle basically back into the lap of Phillip Rivers, just as Rivers tries to unload this deep shot. And yes, Rivers has a bit of an awkward throw in motion to begin with, but what you see when he releases this pass is while it's not a full back foot throw, he's leaning back. He's shying away from potential contact, i.e. his right tackle getting driven back into his lap. The pass is under thrown.

Now, Williams has a chance to make a play on this, but he doesn't make the play. There's a great job by Devin McCourty to sort of swipe his right hand in there at the last second. And what do you see after the end of the play? You see Rivers sort of throw the arms up like he's frustrated. And this was just the second play of the game. Chargers' second offensive possession. The second play of that drive is a second and nine. Rivers is the gun.

Empty formation. Patriots, they show three-man pressure up front, but they move around a little bit. They slide John Simon inside, and then right before the snap, they bring down extra guys. So they have one, two, three, four, five, six down in the box, although Patrick Chun is a little bit different looking because he's got a tight split with a tight end to deal with.

And the Patriots show pressure again, but they drop one of the guys. So they send one, two, three, four, five. They show six, but Van Noy drops. But Daunte Hightower, actually Adrian Claiborne, excuse me, gets free. Has a free run at Rivers. Rivers tries to float one from Mike Williams, and it's overthrown. And again, you have a free rusher. It influences the pass from the quarterback.

Rivers backfoots and floats it, and it's nowhere near Mike Williams. This is one of those sort of cover zero blitz plays. And we've talked about these types of designs before. If you're going to go zero blitz, you got to get home because if not, the band is going to play. And here, there's a protection breakdown. Left tackle fans out, right guard fans inside. That parts the sea for Claiborne, who just gets, like I said, a free run. And the left guard who fans inside to take on an inside rusher, the player that he's doing that against is Kyle Van Noy. And like I just said, Van Noy showed pressure and then drops.

And that little deke right there, that gets that left guard to fan inside. He ends up blocking air because Van Noy drops into an underneath hole. And Adrian Claiborne now has that free run at Phillip Rivers. So that's a perfect example of what we were talking about. So this idea of Marion pass rushing coverage. You get the deke, you get a protection breakdown, a free rusher that influences the quarterback, forces a quick throw that is off target. The coverage is good, but you would need a perfect throw to complete the pass. And because of the pressure, you don't get it. So there it is, that idea of sort of Marion pressure and coverage.

It was similar on the next play. Next play is a third and nine situation. Patriots now looking to get off the field, force a three and out on the second drive, their second defensive possession of the game. And they have a twist inside between Butler and Flowers. Normally, we talk about the Patriots. They use a lot of outside twists. This is an inside twist. You got Hightower coming off the edge. Butler and Flowers are inside. Flowers aligned over the right guard like we talked about

leading up to this game they twist inside and as they twist inside it's butler who skips scrapes free he flushes rivers to rivers is right almost into the arms of donta hightower rivers has almost nowhere to go and he's forced to turf it on 39, and on comes the punt team. So there come some of the things we've talked about going into this week as well as some of the ideas we've talked about in the postgame show. You get Flowers inside against the right guard. You get some pressure on him, forces him to get off his spot. Pressure equals production.

Force the throw away. On comes the punt team. Running out of time, there's a ton more plays that I could talk about, but I do want to talk about the interception. You know, this obviously comes a little bit later in the game when things were kind of getting out of hand, but still it's another example of this idea of marrying pressure and pass rush with coverage.

The Gilmore pick, it comes in the fourth quarter, and it's 4-18 left in the game. It's 41-22. The game's not in doubt anymore. The Chargers have a third and ten of their own, 14. But what we see here is, again, the pressure doesn't get home, but it influences the throw. Patriots show 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 down in the box with Hightower

and Van Noy lined over the center and left guard. Similar to what the previous play was. They show pressure, but Van Noy drops. Only Hightower comes. So they brain four. Hightower loops around from that spot over the left guard all the way to the opposite end, and he comes free late. And Rivers, who at this point is beaten up, he's battered, he's bruised,

he's been hit a ton, he's been hurried a ton. That clock in his head is beaten up, he's battered, he's bruised, he's been hit a ton, he's been hurried a ton. That clock in his head is speeding up. And as somebody that has been there, when that clock in your head starts speeding up, you make quick decisions, you try to get the ball out of your hands, and sometimes you make some bad throws as a result. And that's what happens because Rivers doesn't really get pressured or hit here. But that clock is sped up to the point that when he sees Hightower looping around, when he sees on the inside Trey Flowers start to scrape free,

he's like, I got to get rid of this ball. I'm going to get hit again. And he doesn't fully step into it, tries to throw this corner out to Keenan Allen, and Stephon Gilmore is able to get underneath him in good coverage position and make the interception. The pressure doesn't truly get home. He doesn't truly take a big shot. He doesn't get sacked or anything like that.

But because of the accumulation of everything you've done to this point, that clock is sped up in the quarterback's mind. He makes a bad throw, and it leads to the interception. So that's sort of the culmination of this idea of marrying pressure, pressure production, and pass rush with good coverage, and it leads to an interception. So I wanted to highlight some of those plays. I have about 10 more I could talk about.

The Patriots did such a great job against Rivers on Sunday. Up next, we'll talk a little bit about the run defense. Run defense had another very good game on Sunday, and a little bit later, we're going to start looking ahead to the Chiefs. That's ahead on this taped Tuesday installment of Locked on Patriots. Mark Sofiel back with you now on this taped Tuesday installment of the Locked on Patriots podcast. Going to talk a little run defense right now. Probably won't be the focus the rest of this week as we think about the Chiefs, but do want to highlight a couple of plays here, a couple of individual efforts.

First is the very first run play, the very first play from the Chargers on Sunday. This is a first and 10 at their own 33. And they're going to run Melvin Gordon to the right side on a power toss play. Chargers come out with Rivers under center. They've got sort of a three-player bunch to the right side with three big guys. They've got three tight ends here to this bunch. They've got Henry, they've got Gates,

they've got Green, and they run power. We have Hunter Henry and Gates blocking down. You pull one lineman, you have Green, the other tight end sort of pull to the outside. And the player that's aligned over this bunch is Kyle Van Noy, who fights off the initial block attempt from that crack block from Hunter Henry. Now, Henry might have had some rust that he was sort of knocking off on this play, but Van Noy does a great job sort of fighting through that block.

Then Gates tries to come down on him, fights through that one as well, and gets to Gordon to stop him for no gain. You know, this was kind of what we talked about going into this week. Patriots need to be stout on the edge, mostly because we were worried about cutbacks and end arounds and things like that. But you still need to be stout on the edge. And on this very first play of the game van noy is fantastic on that edge next one play i want to talk about it's a first and 10 at the chargers 25 yard line this

is with 127 left in the first quarter during the game in the locked on patriot slack channel there were a couple of mentions of a landon rober Roberts seeming like he was shot out of a cannon. This is the first example of that. Rivers is under center and they run Gordon to the left side. And Roberts just explodes downhill. He's basically the backer over the right side of the offense. So he's aligned sort of in the B gap between the right guard and the right tackle and they have the center try to get out to him and he tries to cut block him and roberts explodes

downhill steps around the center's attempted cut block and just hits melvin gordon right as he gets to this hole. It's a perfect example of a linebacker sort of reading his keys, flying downhill, avoiding contact, and making a tackle. Landon Roberts had a number of examples like this. Later in the game, we'll talk a little Kyle Van Nooy. This is into the second quarter now. This is a play that comes on a first and 10 situation. Chargers near midfield. They're at about the 49-yard line or so. And we're going to get Melvin Gordon running inside. It's going to be an inside handoff here.

And the players to watch are Van Noy, Simon, and Guy. Because Simon, I mean, excuse me, Van Noy, first of all, he has to stay home here. He's on the right edge of the defense, left edge of the offense, and they bring a receiver in that sort of motion towards the formation and then deep. And with the potential reverse end around to Travis Benjamin, he stays home. That's the first thing that we talked about

when we were talking about this run game this week. I'm going to stay home on the back edge. Van Noy does that. Now inside, you get John Simon. He comes out on this play. He's aligned inside of Guy, so now he doesn't have to worry about contain here. He's over the left tackle.

He meets the left tackle he meets the left tackle and shoves him back this is you know john simon an edge outside linebacker type against the left tackle he meets him at the point of attack low man wins he gets that left tackle number 76 rocked backwards and that allows him to scrape downhill also scraping from the other side, Lawrence Guy. So you have three players doing their jobs incredibly well on this play. You get Kyle Van Noy staying home against sort of that potential end around like we've been talking about this week. You get Simon rocking the left tackle back at the point of attack and you get Guy doing the same thing on the other side. So it's, you know, defense working in concert up front. The guy's just making some great plays against the run. And they didn't have to do a ton against the run because, again, this game got out

of hand. The Chargers became a one-dimensional team. But when you're seeing players like Roberts, Guy, Van Noy, Simon, stepping up in these moments and making these kinds of stops, winning these one-on-one battles, that bodes well for a run defense going forward. And just to look at one more play from the run game when we get into the second half here, when you look at this play, for example,

this is a first and 10 at the 4-13 mark of the third quarter. It's a first and 10 at the New England 17. The Patriots are up 38-7. But they put Rivers in the gun, and they show that sort of end-around motion with Keenan Allen working from right to left. And then they try to run Gordon backside on an outside stretch run. First player to mention, John Simon. Sets the edge. Turns this back to the inside.

Then coming from the backside pursuit, now that he knows that he doesn't have to worry about that, sort of end around to Keenan Allen because it gets well to the outside before the ball is snapped. You almost wonder if the cadence was off is Claiborne he's working downhill Simon turns him around Gordon tries to cut back and there's Claiborne right there for the stop minus three now it's second and 13. Now maybe the cadence was off so they didn't have that sort of same end around type look but clayborne sort of checked it for a second saw he could scrape downhill runs right into melvin

gordon who is forced to turn back inside because john simon sets the edge so all in all all facets facets of the game the defense was fantastic on sunday we knew that i think that's why you guys wanted to hear about it up next a few quick thoughts on what I'm going to be looking for when I start to talk about Kansas City. That's ahead on this tape Tuesday installment of Locked on Patriots. Mark Schofield back with you now. A couple of quick things that I want to talk about, sort of put in your mind when we start thinking about the Kansas City Chiefs.

Took a quick peek back at that Week 6 game as well, some charting stats that I and others have sort of put together on the Chiefs. Number one, and this is a question that came up in the Lockdown Patriots Slack channel. Again, if you'd like to be a member, at Mark Schofield on Twitter, mark.schofield, that's insidethepylon.com. The Chiefs are a cover one heavy team. That is their main coverage. That is their primary coverage.

Bob Sutton in years past has been more of a cover three guy, but they have become a cover one heavy team that is their main coverage that is their primary coverage Bob Sutton in years past has been more of a cover three guy but they have become a cover one heavy team it's their predominant coverage they are a man coverage team and so what does that mean that might mean some tighter windows for Tom Brady to throw into you might not have sort of coverage busts or you know the big open areas that at times Tom Brady had playing against the Chargers who were, as we talked about, a zone-heavy team. So that's one thing to talk about. Then there's going to be the windows.

And the other thing is, look, Brady's going to have to be better with his eyes. When you talk about throwing against cover one, one of the things you need to do is you need to influence two defenders in particular. Cover one coverages have the free safety deep in the middle of the field who's reading the eyes of the things you need to do is you need to influence two defenders in particular. Cover one coverages have, you know, the free safety deep in the middle of the field who's reading the eyes of the quarterback. It's cover one or man free, as other people like to call it, meaning that safety in the middle of the field, he's free to do whatever he wants. And so you need to move him with your eyes.

But there's a second defender that you need to worry about. And that's that underneath defender, that linebacker who's sort of the whole defender. And a perfect example of how Tom Brady can influence that defender comes to us from a divisional round game between the Chiefs and the Patriots from a couple of years ago. And this was an early play in that game.

The Chiefs ran cover one. And the Patriots come out with Brady in the shotgun they go empty with three receivers to the right two to the left and that underneath hole defender you expect him to open and flow a little bit to the three receiver

side to sort of get over that number three receiver and Brady knows that but yet that's where he wants to go with the football because he's going to have Edelman running a slant route from the inside coming towards the middle right to where that guy's going to be. So Brady needs to move that guy. So what does Brady do when he takes the snap?

He opens his eyes to the left where they're running sort of a quick out combination with Danny Amendola. He stares at Amendola for a second. That linebacker, even though everything he has been taught tells him, you've got to worry about the other side, takes a step or two near Amendola because he's watching Brady's eyes. He's looking at the quarterback's eyes.

And what does Brady do then? Comes back, throws a dart to Edelman on that slant route for an easy gain of about 14 and a fresh set of downs. Playing quarterback against man teams, cover one teams, is a battle of manipulation. You've got to move those two defenders,

whether you're thrown short or deep, with your eyes. And as a quarterback, if you can get a defender to go against everything he's been taught, everything he's been told to do, not just this week, you know, back during training camp,

back during those day one installs, this is cover one, you are the underneath hole defender, you see three by two, you're going to open to the three receiver side, you're worried about that more than the backside stuff. You've had that drilled into your head,

and yet here you are on your biggest stage, biggest game of the season, and because Tom Brady looks one way, you bite. That's going to be a big story of this game. Can Tom Brady get these guys, whether it's the deep safety or that underneath hole defender, when they come out in this cover one coverage, can he get those guys to bite? Can he get those guys to do what they're not supposed to do? If he can, he's going to create some opportunities in the passing game just with his mind, just with his eyes. And so as we start to think about the Kansas City Chiefs and going up against Tom Brady in this passing game we think

cover one and attack in it it's going to be what Tom Brady can do with his mind there's going to be a ton said about all this is you know Brady the old guy gets Mahomes and what Mahomes can do and yes Patrick Mahomes is an insanely talented quarterback and he may get to a Tom Brady level at some point, but Tom Brady is who he is right now. And Tom Brady's mind, more than anything else, might be the difference in this game. That will do it for today's show. I will be back tomorrow, a little crossover action with the guys from Locked On Chargers. Until then, keep it locked right here to me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on Patriots.